The Neediest Cases: Medical Bills Crush Brooklyn Man’s Hope of Retiring

Andrea Mohin/The New York Times

John Concepcion and his wife, Maria, in their home in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. They are awaiting even more medical bills.

Retirement was just about a year away, or so John Concepcion thought, when a sudden health crisis put his plans in doubt.

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.

2012-13 Campaign

Previously recorded:

$6,865,501

Recorded Wed.:

16,711

*Total:

$6,882,212

Last year to date:

$6,118,740

*Includes $1,511,814 contributed to the Hurricane Sandy relief efforts.

“I get paralyzed, I can’t breathe,” he said of the muscle spasms he now has regularly. “It feels like something’s going to bust out of me.”

Severe abdominal pain is not the only, or even the worst, reminder of the major surgery Mr. Concepcion, 62, of Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, underwent in June. He and his wife of 36 years, Maria, are now faced with medical bills that are so high, Ms. Concepcion said she felt faint when she saw them.

Mr. Concepcion, who is superintendent of the apartment building where he lives, began having back pain last January that doctors first believed was the result of gallstones. In March, an endoscopy showed that tumors had grown throughout his digestive system. The tumors were not malignant, but an operation was required to remove them, and surgeons had to essentially reroute Mr. Concepcion’s entire digestive tract. They removed his gall bladder, as well as parts of his pancreas, bile ducts, intestines and stomach, he said.

The operation was a success, but then came the bills.

“I told my friend: are you aware that if you have a major operation, you’re going to lose your house?” Ms. Concepcion said.

The couple has since received doctors’ bills of more than $250,000, which does not include the cost of his seven-day stay at Beth Israel Medical Center in Manhattan. Mr. Concepcion has worked in the apartment building since 1993 and has been insured through his union.

The couple are in an anxious holding pattern as they wait to find out just what, depending on their policy’s limits, will be covered. Even with financial assistance from Beth Israel, which approved a 70 percent discount for the Concepcions on the hospital charges, the couple has no idea how the doctors’ and surgical fees will be covered.

“My son said, boy he saved your life, Dad, but look at the bill he sent to you,” Ms.  Concepcion said in reference to the surgeon’s statements. “You’ll be dead before you pay it off.”

When the Concepcions first acquired their insurance, they were in good health, but now both have serious medical issues — Ms. Concepcion, 54, has emphysema and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and Mr. Concepcion has diabetes. They now spend close to $800 a month on prescriptions.

Mr. Concepcion, the family’s primary wage earner, makes $866 a week at his job. The couple had planned for Mr. Concepcion to retire sometime this year, begin collecting a pension and, after getting their finances in order, leave the superintendent’s apartment, as required by the landlord, and try to find a new home. “That’s all out of the question now,” Ms. Concepcion said. Mr. Concepcion said he now planned to continue working indefinitely.

Ms. Concepcion has organized every bill and medical statement into bulging folders, and said she had spent hours on the phone trying to negotiate with providers. She is still awaiting the rest of the bills.

On one of those bills, Ms. Concepcion said, she spotted a telephone number for people seeking help with medical costs. The number was for Community Health Advocates, a health insurance consumer assistance program and a unit of Community Service Society, one of the organizations supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund. The society drew $2,120 from the fund so the Concepcions could pay some of their medical bills, and the health advocates helped them obtain the discount from the hospital.

Neither one knows what the next step will be, however, and the stress has been eating at them.

“How do we get out of this?” Mr. Concepcion asked. “There is no way out. Here I am trying to save to retire. They’re going to put me in the street.”

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DealBook: Michael Dell’s Empire in a Buyout Spotlight

The computer empire of Michael S. Dell spreads across a campus of low-slung buildings in Round Rock, Tex.

But his financial empire — estimated at $16 billion — occupies the 21st floor of a dark glass skyscraper on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.

It is there that MSD Capital, started by Mr. Dell 15 years ago to manage his fortune, has quietly built a reputation as one of the smartest investors on Wall Street. By amassing a prodigious portfolio of stocks, companies, real estate and timberland, Mr. Dell has reduced his exposure to the volatile technology sector and branched out into businesses as diverse as dentistry and landscaping.

Now, Mr. Dell is on the verge of making one of the biggest investments of his life. The 47-year-old billionaire and his private equity backers are locked in talks to acquire Dell, the company he started with $1,000 as a teenager three decades ago, in a leveraged buyout worth more than $20 billion. MSD could play a role in the Dell takeover, according to people briefed on the deal.

The private equity firm Silver Lake has been in negotiations to join with Mr. Dell on a transaction, along with other potential partners like wealthy Asian investors or foreign funds. Mr. Dell would be expected to roll his nearly 16 percent ownership of the company into the buyout, a stake valued at about $3.5 billion. He could also contribute additional personal money as part of the buyout.

That money is managed by MSD, among the more prominent so-called family offices that are set up to handle the personal investments of the wealthy. Others with large family offices include Bill Gates, whose Microsoft wealth financed the firm Cascade Investment, and New York’s mayor, Michael R. Bloomberg, who set up his firm, Willett Advisors, in 2010 to manage his personal and philanthropic assets.

“Some of these family offices are among the world’s most sophisticated investors and have the capital and talent to compete with the largest private equity firms and hedge funds,” said John P. Rompon, managing partner of McNally Capital, which helps structure private equity deals for family offices.

A spokesman for MSD declined to comment for this article. The buyout talks could still fall apart.

In 1998, Mr. Dell, then just 33 years old — and his company’s stock worth three times what it is today — decided to diversify his wealth and set up MSD. He staked the firm with $400 million of his own money, effectively starting his own personal money-management business.

To head the operation, Mr. Dell hired Glenn R. Fuhrman, a managing director at Goldman Sachs, and John C. Phelan, a principal at ESL Investments, the hedge fund run by Edward S. Lampert. He knew both men from his previous dealings with Wall Street. Mr. Fuhrman led a group at Goldman that marketed specialized investments like private equity and real estate to wealthy families like the Dells. And Mr. Dell was an early investor in Mr. Lampert’s fund.

Mr. Fuhrman and Mr. Phelan still run MSD and preside over a staff of more than 100 overseeing Mr. Dell’s billions and the assets in his family foundation. MSD investments include a stock portfolio, with positions in the apparel company PVH, owner of the Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger brands, and DineEquity, the parent of IHOP and Applebee’s.

Among its real estate holdings are the Four Seasons Resort Maui in Hawaii and a stake in the New York-based developer Related Companies.

MSD also has investments in several private businesses, including ValleyCrest, which bills itself as the country’s largest landscape design company, and DentalOne Partners, a collection of dental practices.

Perhaps MSD’s most prominent deal came in 2008, in the middle of the financial crisis, when it joined a consortium that acquired the assets of the collapsed mortgage lender IndyMac Bank from the federal government for about $13.9 billion and renamed it OneWest Bank.

The OneWest purchase has been wildly successful. Steven Mnuchin, a former Goldman executive who led the OneWest deal, has said that the bank is expected to consider an initial public offering this year. An I.P.O. would generate big profits for Mr. Dell and his co-investors, according to people briefed on the deal.

Another arm of MSD makes select investments in outside hedge funds. Mr. Dell invested in the first fund raised by Silver Lake, the technology-focused private equity firm that might now become his partner in taking Dell private.
MSD’s principals have already made tidy fortunes. In 2009, Mr. Fuhrman, 47, paid $26 million for the Park Avenue apartment of the former Lehman Brothers chief executive Richard S. Fuld. Mr. Phelan, 48, and his wife, Amy, a former Dallas Cowboys cheerleader, also live in a Park Avenue co-op and built a home in Aspen, Colo.

Both are influential players on the contemporary art scene, with ARTNews magazine last year naming each of them among the world’s top 200 collectors. MSD, too, has dabbled in the visual arts. In 2010, MSD bought an archive of vintage photos from Magnum, including portraits of Marilyn Monroe and Mahatma Gandhi, and has put the collection on display at the University of Texas, Mr. Dell’s alma mater.

Just as the investment firms Rockefeller & Company (the Rockefellers, diversifying their oil fortune) and Bessemer Trust (the Phippses, using the name of the steelmaking process that formed the basis of their wealth) started out as investment vehicles for a single family, MSD has recently shown signs of morphing into a traditional money management business with clients beside Mr. Dell.

Last year, for the fourth time, an MSD affiliate raised money from outside investors when it collected about $1 billion for a stock-focused hedge fund, MSD Torchlight Partners. A 2010 fund investing in distressed European assets also manages about $1 billion. The Dell family is the anchor investor in each of the funds, according to people briefed on the investments.

MSD has largely remained below the radar, though its name emerged a decade ago in the criminal trial of the technology banker Frank Quattrone on obstruction of justice charges. Prosecutors introduced an e-mail that Mr. Fuhrman sent to Mr. Quattrone during the peak of the dot-com boom in which he pleaded for a large allotment of a popular Internet initial public offering.

“We know this is a tough one, but we wanted to ask for a little help with our Corvis allocation,” Mr. Fuhrman wrote. “We are looking forward to making you our ‘go to’ banker.”

The e-mail, which was not illegal, was meant to show the quid pro quo deals that were believed to have been struck between Mr. Quattrone and corporate chieftains like Mr. Dell — the bankers would give executives hot I.P.O.’s and the executives, in exchange, would hold out the possibility of giving business to the bankers. (Mr. Quattrone’s conviction was reversed on appeal.)

The MSD team has also shown itself to be loyal to its patron in other ways.

On the MSD Web site, in the frequently asked questions section, the firm asks and answers queries like “how many employees do you have” and “what kind of investments do you make.”

In the last question on the list, MSD asks itself, “Do you use Dell computer equipment?” The answer: “Exclusively!”

---

This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 18, 2013

An earlier version of this article misstated when an MSD affiliate raised money from outside investors for a hedge fund. It was last year, not earlier this year. The article also misstated which hedge fund and its focus. It was MSD Torchlight Partners, a stock-focused hedge fund, not MSD Energy Partners, an energy-focused hedge fund.

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U.S. finalizes rules for financial firms to avoid foreclosures

In a major effort to heal the $10-trillion U.S. mortgage market, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has finalized rules designed to ensure financial firms offer every available option to keep delinquent borrowers in their homes.

The regulations, to be announced Thursday, address widespread complaints that loan servicers — the companies that collect mortgage payments and repossess homes — were woefully unprepared to help borrowers during the tsunami of foreclosures after the housing bust.

They are designed to complement previous settlements by major banks over allegations of widespread servicing and foreclosure abuses. But unlike earlier settlements, they will apply to all large mortgage servicers, not just banks, in all states.

Still, the rules drew immediate criticism from a prominent consumer group, which said they don't do enough to force servicers to consider easing the terms of mortgages and expressed fears that the rules might preempt stronger existing provisions.

"While the establishment of industrywide standards is important, the failure to require meaningful loan modification protections is a retreat from current safeguards under the soon-to-expire [Obama administration] loan modification program," said Alys Cohen, an attorney with the National Consumer Law Center.

The consumer bureau was created when Congress passed the sweeping Dodd-Frank financial reform act in reaction to the mortgage meltdown and the global economic crisis that ensued. The law also required lenders to ensure that they only make loans that borrowers can reasonably be expected to repay.

Last week, the bureau issued major regulations providing a "safe harbor" from lawsuits under that new requirement for lenders who make certain types of presumably sound home loans. A key requirement is that total debt payments for borrowers — including principal, interest, taxes and insurance on home loans — be no more than 43% of gross income.

The rules to be released Thursday, which take effect in a year, bar lenders from pursuing foreclosure proceedings against borrowers while applications for loan modifications are pending — the much-criticized practice of "dual tracking."

The consumer bureau said banks also must provide "direct, easy, ongoing access" to employees who are required to alert borrowers to missing information, provide status reports on modification requests and ensure documents don't get lost.

Banks also are required to inform borrowers who miss two monthly payments about options to avoid foreclosure and to wait until loans go 120 days delinquent before beginning a foreclosure — a provision that would preempt a 90-day requirement under California law.

Richard Cordray, the consumer bureau's director, said distressed borrowers had not gotten the help and support they deserved, such as "timely and accurate information about their options for saving their homes."

"Servicers failed to answer phone calls, routinely lost paperwork and mishandled accounts," Cordray said in remarks to be delivered at an industry conference Thursday.

"Communication and coordination were poor, leading many to think they were on their way to a solution, only to find that their homes had been foreclosed on and sold," he said. "At times, people arrived home to find they had been unexpectedly locked out."

The new rules don't apply to most small banks and credit unions. Bureau officials said they have had few complaints about these small institutions, which are more likely to keep loans on their books, rather than sell them, and generally devote more attention to individual customers.

Servicers often are collecting payments on behalf of loan owners, who may be the banks themselves but more often are trusts created on behalf of mortgage investors. The investors have mandated a wide range of relief programs for troubled borrowers in addition to government-sponsored programs such as the Obama administration's Home Affordable Modification Program.

In the past, servicers would sometimes not inform troubled borrowers about all the options, instead steering them into foreclosure or programs that provided the servicers with greater financial rewards, bureau officials said.

The servicers are now supposed to clearly explain all alternatives to borrowers so they can pick the best one. The new rules also establish clearer opportunities for borrowers to appeal servicers' denials of loan modifications.

In addition to worries that the bureau has not cracked down hard enough on servicers, consumer advocates expressed concern that the new rules will not take effect for a year.

"While we understand that servicers need time to implement complex procedures, we're still in the middle of a foreclosure crisis," Cohen said. "Many people will unnecessarily lose their homes if we wait a year."

scott.reckard@latimes.com

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A Google-a-Day Puzzle for Jan. 17

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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Drop Dead Diva canceled by Lifetime

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – “Drop Dead Diva” has been dropped.

The series has been canceled by Lifetime after four seasons, the last of which ended in September.

An individual familiar with the situation told TheWrap that the cost of producing the series had become prohibitive, and that Lifetime had approached Sony Pictures Television, which produced the series, about coming up with creative ways to keep the series on the air, apparently to no avail.

Ratings-wise, the series had performed well. In combination with “Army Wives,” “Drop Dead Diva” helped push Lifetime to the number one cable position on Sundays from 9 to 11 p.m. among the women 25-54 demographic last year.

“Drop Dead Diva” revolved around a shallow model who dies in a car crash and comes back to life in the body of a recently deceased lawyer who had led an altruistic life. Brooke Elliott, Margaret Cho and Jackson Hurst starred on the series.

Deadline first reported the news of “Drop Dead Diva”‘s cancelation.

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Some With Autism Diagnosis Can Recover, Study Finds

Doctors have long believed that disabling autistic disorders last a lifetime, but a new study has found that some children who exhibit signature symptoms of the disorder recover completely.

The study, posted online on Wednesday by the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, is the largest to date of such extraordinary cases and is likely to alter the way that scientists and parents think and talk about autism, experts said.

Researchers on Wednesday cautioned against false hope. The findings suggest that the so-called autism spectrum contains a small but significant group who make big improvements in behavioral therapy for unknown, perhaps biological reasons, but that most children show much smaller gains. Doctors have no way to predict which children will do well.

Researchers have long known that between 1 and 20 percent of children given an autism diagnosis no longer qualify for one a few years or more later. They have suspected that in most cases the diagnosis was mistaken; the rate of autism diagnosis has ballooned over the past two decades, and some research suggests that it has been loosely applied.

The new study should put some of that skepticism to rest.

“This is the first solid science to address this question of possible recovery, and I think it has big implications,” said Sally Ozonoff of the MIND Institute at the University of California, Davis, who was not involved in the research. “I know many of us as would rather have had our tooth pulled than use the word ‘recover,’ it was so unscientific. Now we can use it, though I think we need to stress that it’s rare.”

She and other experts said the findings strongly supported the value of early diagnosis and treatment.

In the study, a team led by Deborah Fein of the University of Connecticut at Storrs recruited 34 people who had been diagnosed before the age of 5 and no longer had any symptoms. They ranged in age from 8 to 21 years old and early in their development were in the higher-than-average range of the autism spectrum. The team conducted extensive testing of its own, including interviews with parents in some cases, to gauge current social and communication skills.

The debate over whether recovery is possible has simmered for decades and peaked in 1987, when the pioneering autism researcher O. Ivar Lovaas reported that 47 percent of children with the diagnosis showed full recovery after undergoing a therapy he had devised. This therapy, a behavioral approach in which increments of learned skills garner small rewards, is the basis for the most effective approach used today; still, many were skeptical and questioned his definition of recovery.

Dr. Fein and her team used standardized, widely used measures and found no differences between the group of 34 formerly diagnosed people and a group of 34 matched control subjects who had never had a diagnosis.

“They no longer qualified for the diagnosis,” said Dr. Fein, whose co-authors include researchers from Queens University in Kingston, Ontario; Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia; the Institute of Living in Hartford; and the Child Mind Institute in New York. “I want to stress to parents that it’s a minority of kids who are able to do this, and no one should think they somehow missed the boat if they don’t get this outcome.”

On measures of social and communication skills, the recovered group scored significantly better than 44 peers who had a diagnosis of high-functioning autism or Asperger’s syndrome.

Dr. Fein emphasized the importance of behavioral therapy. “These people did not just grow out of their autism,” she said. “I have been treating children for 40 years and never seen improvements like this unless therapists and parents put in years of work.”

The team plans further research to learn more about those who are able to recover. No one knows which ingredients or therapies are most effective, if any, or if there are patterns of behavior or biological markers that predict such success.

“Some children who do well become quite independent as adults but have significant anxiety and depression and are sometimes suicidal,” said Dr. Fred Volkmar, the director of the Child Study Center at the Yale University School of Medicine. There are no studies of this group, he said.

That, because of the new study, is about to change.

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State of the Art: Imagining Ho-Hum C.E.S. as an Action Movie - State of the Art

Hi boss! I’m back from the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. You assigned me to report on what’s new and exciting, but I have some bad news. The answer is: almost nothing.

I mean, think about it: Apple, Google, Microsoft and Facebook don’t even attend C.E.S.; they’d rather make their product announcements on their own schedules without being locked into this every-January thing. It’s still a big show, bigger than ever this year, with 3,200 exhibits and 150,000 attendees, but I wonder why people bother. Whose product announcement will get any press at all when it’s buried by 3,199 others?

C.E.S.’s organizers publish a daily magazine during the show that profiles new products announced there. Here are some actual examples: “Braven Expands Bluetooth Speaker Line.” “Armpocket Unveils Smartphone Cases.” “Bits Ltd. Expands Line of Surge Protectors.”

So if you want an exciting column from me, the thrills won’t come from the news of new products at C.E.S. I’ll have to spice things up another way. See what you think of this.

As he plummets toward the Nevada desert, two deafening sounds assail Daxton Blackthorne’s eardrums — the wind rushing past his ears at terminal velocity, and a deafening explosion over his head. Fumbling for his parachute cord, he’s blasted by the searing heat from the fireball that, until seconds ago, was his Cessna Citation.

For now, though, his concern isn’t the air-to-air missile that has just dispatched his jet, courtesy of the Bora Boran Mafia on his tail. It isn’t even the fact that Daxton Blackthorne is all that stands between them and the collapse of American democracy.

It’s finding a good place to land.

There! Squinting in the blinding sun, he spots an enormous chain of low-slung buildings, stretching through the bustling downtown like a sleeping cobra: the Las Vegas Convention Center.

He hits the roof of the South Hall hard — too hard. Keeping low, he scuttles across the gravel to a ventilation shaft and emerges, moments later, in a blasting cacophony of color, sound and electronics.

He hears the crash of boots behind him as his pursuers explode from the same shaft. Got to move, Daxton thinks. Detaching his ’chute, he darts among the booths, dodging clumps of buyers, reporters and electronics executives.

He weaves among the exhibits, barely noting their wares. External battery packs for phones. Car chargers for phones. Screen protectors for phones. Cases for phones.

What is this place? he thinks, pulse pounding.

Booth after booth. GPS units. Tablets. Earbuds. Bluetooth speakers. Phone cases. Row after row of Chinese manufacturers he’s never heard of. Like this one, Huwei, selling the world’s largest Android phone — the thin, shiny Ascend Mate, with a 6.1-inch screen. That’d be like talking into a cutting board, he thinks.

He bursts into the Central Hall, and the sensory overload is immediate; he pauses, gasping, to take it in. TV screens. Thousands. Screens bigger than a man. Screens stacked up to the distant ceiling. Screens brighter and louder than explosives in the morning. Sharp, Sony, Samsung, LG, Toshiba, Panasonic. The bombardment is almost as lethal as the one that took down his Cessna.

Here are OLED screens, with incredibly black blacks, vivid colors and razor-thin bodies; this LG model is only 0.16 inches thick. Panasonic and Sony each claim “the world’s largest OLED screen” — 56-inch prototypes.

Footsteps pound behind him. Too late to run. He’ll blend in. He merges into a throng of eager showgoers.

“Three-D may have been a flop,” a rep is saying. “But this year, the industry is back with an irresistible offering: 4K television. Ultra HD, we call it. You thought HDTV was sharp? Now imagine: four times as many pixels. Stunning picture quality, in stunning screen sizes.”

Daxton figures you’d have to sit pretty darned close to see any difference between HDTV and 4KTV. But never mind that — out of the corner of his eye, Daxton spots the black uniforms of his pursuers, fanning through the crowd. Play along, he thinks. “Excuse me,” he shouts in a faux French accent. “What is there to watch in 4K?”

“Unfortunately, 4K video requires too much data for today’s cable, satellite, broadcast, Blu-ray, or Internet streaming,” is the reply. “But at Sony, we’re leading the way! If you buy our 84-inch 4K television for $25,000, we’ll lend you a hard drive with 10 Sony movies on it — in gorgeous 4K.”

Daxton can think of better uses for $25,000; a jetpack would come in handy right about now. He dives into the crowd. Must. Find. Disguise.

A crowd wearing headsets is gathered before a Samsung TV. That’ll do. He grabs one; it covers both his eyes and his ears.

“You’re seeing a prototype of Samsung’s OLED dual-view technology,” the spokesman says. “This TV can display two 3-D video sources simultaneously, or four regular ones. Imagine: Your children can be playing Xbox while you watch the Super Bowl!” Daxton moves the switch on the earpiece; sure enough, the TV’s image changes accordingly, along with the audio from the tiny earpiece speakers.

But angry shouts in Tahitian are closing in. He bolts through an archipelago of audio booths, hawking celebrity headphones bearing the names of the rapper 50 Cent, the heavy-metal band Motorhead, the runner Usain Bolt, the N.F.L. quarterback Tim Tebow and the TV reality star Snooki. When did Snooki become an audiophile? he wonders.

By the time he storms into the North Hall, his lungs are screaming. He stands, panting, in a broader area populated by gleaming, polished automobiles. Here are Ford and General Motors, announcing new developer programs, open platforms for new apps that will run on their cars’ computer screens. Ford’s Sync AppLink bans games and video apps, for safety reasons. Good thinking, Daxton thinks. Wouldn’t want distracted driving.

Here are Audi and Lexus, announcing self-driving cars. Glancing at the video loop, he notes that the Audi prototype can, at this point, drive itself only through specially equipped parking garages, like the one set up at the Mandarin Oriental for a demonstration.

But on the Lexus stage, he spots something much more enticing: a car, festooned with sensors, that can actually drive itself on regular roads, much like Google’s fleet of 12 autonomous cars.

“California and Nevada have both made self-driving cars legal, with certain restrictions,” the executive on stage says. “And this Lexus LS safety-research vehicle is a pioneer. The 360-degree laser on the roof detects objects up to 230 feet away; the front camera knows if the traffic light is red or green. Side cameras, GPS and radar enhance what could someday be a safe, efficient, road-aware vehicle.”

There’s a burst of commotion from Daxton’s near right. It’s them. He vaults onto the stage. “Love the idea of self-driving cars,” Daxton tells the presenter. “But right now, I need a car I can drive myself.”

A saber blade shatters the air next to his ear. With a burst of adrenaline, he dives through the open window of the Lexus. His assailants push through the crowd and clamber after him, but he’s already powered on the car. Huddling low, he guns the engine and shifts into gear.

As a hail of bullets shatters the rear window, the Lexus arcs off the stage, plows through seven rotating shelves of phone cases, and, in a cloud of plaster and twisted beams, erupts through the wall of the convention center.

With a wry smile, Daxton adjusts his rear-view mirror just in time to see the knot of black-suited Bora Borans shaking their fists in the distance.

He brushes some safety glass off his shoulder, slips on sunglasses, and leans back into the leather seat.

“Now that’s what I call an exciting show,” he says, grinning, and he swings onto the open road for home.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 17, 2013

An earlier version of this article misspelled the name of a Chinese technology company. It is Huawei, not Huwei.

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All Boeing 787 Dreamliner jets in Japan grounded

All 24 of Japan's Boeing 787 Dreamliner passenger jets were grounded for safety checks after one of the planes operated by All Nippon Airways made an emergency landing in western Japan.

Details of the problem were still being checked, ANA spokesman Takuya Taniguchi said Wednesday after the flight to Tokyo from Ube landed at the Takamatsu airport, where NTV television reported passengers had used emergency slides to exit the jet. The airport was temporarily closed.

The plane landed after a cockpit message showed battery problems. It was the latest of a series of problems including a battery fire and a fuel leak on ANA Dreamliners parked at Logan International Airport in Boston last week. No one has been seriously injured in any of the incidents.

Japan's Transport Ministry said the airlines that operate Dreamliners had grounded the planes voluntarily. ANA operates 17 of the jets and Japan Airlines has seven. The Japanese planes represent almost half of the 50 Dreamliners being flown commercially worldwide.

After the Boston incidents, the Federal Aviation Administration launched an unusual "comprehensive safety review of Boeing 787 critical systems," including a sweeping evaluation of the way that Boeing designs, manufactures and assembles the aircraft.

Boeing said it would participate in the review with the FAA and believed the process would bolster the public's confidence in the reliability of the aircraft.

The move came despite an "unprecedented" certification process for the 787 in which FAA technical experts logged 200,000 hours of work over nearly two years and flew on numerous test flights, FAA Administrator Michael Huerta said. There were more than a dozen new special conditions developed during the certification because of the Dreamliner's innovative design.

Certification of the Dreamliner was completed Aug. 25, 2011, and the first plane was delivered to All Nippon Airways a month later. It was more than three years late because of design problems and supplier issues.

The Dreamliner, a twin-aisle aircraft that can seat 210 to 290 passengers, is the first large commercial jet with more than half its structure made of composite materials (carbon fibers meshed together with epoxy) rather than aluminum sheets. Another innovative application is the change from hydraulically actuated systems typically found on passenger jets to electrically powered systems involving lithium ion batteries.

Times staff writers W.J. Hennigan in Los Angeles and David Pierson in Shanghai contributed to this report.

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A Google-a-Day Puzzle for Jan. 16

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.

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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."

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Disney, AT&T U-verse enter expansive distribution deal

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – The Walt Disney Company and AT&T U-verse have signed a long-term distribution deal that will bring Disney’s sports, news and entertainment content to U-verse customers via a wide array of platforms, including television, computers, smartphones, tablets, gaming consoles and internet-enabled televisions, the companies said Tuesday.

The multi-year agreement will also bring a number of new services, such as ESPN 3D, ESPN Goal Line, ESPN Buzzer Beater, Disney Junior and an upcoming multi-platform network for English-dominant and bilingual Hispanics, which is a joint venture between ABC News and Univision.

Approximately 70 services are covered under the agreement, including numerous ESPN services and the upcoming Longhorn Network, which will be available in Texas, Louisiana and Virginia systems by next football season..

“We’re proud to deliver more Disney content and services to U-verse customers across the screens they watch most,” AT&T Home Solutions’ president of content and advertising sales Jeff Weber said of the pact. “Our U-verse customers expect access to content when they want it, where they want it, and this renewal gives them more value and access to a variety of live and on demand content in and outside the home.

Disney entered a similar multi-platform deal with cable and broadband provider Charter Communications at the end of 2012.

TV News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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