?Family Circus? creator Bil Keane dies at 89

PHOENIX?? For more than a half century, Bil Keane's gentle ?Family Circus? comics entertained readers with a mix of humor and traditional family values, intentionally simplistic because the author thought the American public needed that consistency.

Keane, who started drawing the one-panel cartoon featuring Billy, Jeffy, Dolly, P.J. and their parents in February 1960, died Tuesday at age 89. His comic strip is featured in nearly 1,500 newspapers across the country.

Claudia Smith, a spokeswoman for the comic distributor King Features Syndicate, confirmed his death but said no other details were immediately available. Keane has a home in Paradise Valley, near Phoenix.

Keane said in a 1995 interview with The Associated Press that the cartoon endured because of its consistency and simplicity.

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?It?s reassuring, I think, to the American public to see the same family,? he said.

Family friendly
Although Keane kept the strip current with references to pop culture movies and songs, the context of his comic was timeless. The ghost-like ?Ida Know? and ?Not Me? who got blamed for household accidents were staples of the strip. The family's pets were dogs Barfy and Sam, and the cat, Kittycat.

?We are, in the comics, the last frontier of good, wholesome family humor and entertainment,? Keane said. ?On radio and television, magazines and the movies, you can't tell what you?re going to get. When you look at the comic page, you can usually depend on something acceptable by the entire family.?

His friend Charles M. Schulz, the late creator of ?Peanuts,? once said the most important thing about ?Family Circus? is that it's funny.

"I think we share a care for the same type of humor," Schulz told The Associated Press in 1995. "We're both family men with children and look with great fondness at our families."

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Keane said the strip hit its stride with a cartoon he did in the mid-1960s.

"It showed Jeffy coming out of the living room late at night in pajamas and Mommy and Daddy watching television and Jeffy says, 'I don't feel so good, I think I need a hug.' And suddenly I got a lot mail from people about this dear little fella needing a hug, and I realized that there was something more than just getting a belly laugh every day."

Even with his traditional side, Keane appreciated younger cartoonists' efforts. He listed Gary Larson's "The Far Side" among his favorites, and he loved it when Bill Griffith had his offbeat "Zippy the Pinhead" character wake up from a bump on the head thinking he was Keane's Jeffy.

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Keane responded by giving Zippy an appearance in "Family Circus."

In later years, Keane continued to produce "Family Circus" with the help of his youngest son, Jeff. Keane sketched out the ideas, characters and captions and sent them to Jeff for inking.

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Only one ?L?
Born in 1922, Keane taught himself to draw in high school in his native Philadelphia. Around this time, young Bill dropped the second "L" off his name "just to be different."

He worked as a messenger for the Philadelphia Bulletin before serving three years in the Army, where he drew for "Yank" and "Pacific Stars and Stripes." He met his wife, Thelma ("Thel"), while serving at a desk job in Australia.

He started a one-panel comic in 1953 called "Channel Chuckles" that lampooned the up-and-coming medium of television. (In one, a mom in front of a television, crying baby on her lap, tells husband: "She slept through two gunfights and a barroom brawl ? then the commercial woke her up.")

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He moved to Arizona in 1958 and two years later started a comic about a family much like his own. Keane and his wife had a daughter, Gayle, and sons Glen, Jeff, Chris and Neal ? one more son than in his cartoon family.

"I never thought about a philosophy for the strip ? it developed gradually," Keane told the East Valley Tribune in 1998. "I was portraying the family through my eyes. Everything that's happened in the strip has happened to me.

"That's why I have all this white hair at 39 years old."

Smiles, not belly laughs
He is survived by the five children he had with his wife Thelma "Thel" Keane, who died of Alzheimer's disease in 2008 and was the inspiration for the Mommy character in the comic strip.

When his wife died, Keane called her "the inspiration for all of my success ... When the cartoon first appeared, she looked so much like Mommy that if she was in the supermarket pushing her cart around, people would come up to her and say, 'Aren't you the mommy in 'Family Circus?' "

She also served as his business and financial manager.

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Arizona and Keane had a mutual influence on each other. Keane's work can be found all around ? from children's centers to ice cream shops.

Likewise, Arizona could also be found in Keane's work. A 2004 comic saw the family on a scenic lookout over the Grand Canyon with the children asking "Why are the rocks painted different colors" and "What time does it close?"

Although Keane drew the funnies, his work was not necessarily intended to be comical.

His goal was this: "I would rather have the readers react with a warm smile, a tug at the heart or a lump in the throat as they recall doing the same things in their own families."

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Source: http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/45226304/ns/today-books/

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Kesa dumps money-losing UK Comet stores (AP)

LONDON ? Kesa Electricals says it has agreed to sell its money-losing Comet stores in Britain for a token payment of 2 pounds ($3.22).

Kesa said Wednesday that it would also invest 50 million pounds in the buyers, Hailey Holdings Ltd. and Hailey Acquisitions Ltd., and would retain liability for Comet's defined benefit pension plan, which has a deficit of euro46 million ($63 million).

Kesa shares were up 1 percent at 102.8 pence in midmorning trading on the London Stock Exchange.

"Clearly, the board has decided that sustaining Comet's losses into an uncertain future is the wrong thing to do and it is difficult to disagree with them," said Philip Dorgan, analyst at Panmure Gordon.

He downgraded Kesa from "hold" to "sell," calculating that the shares were worth only 80 pence because of wider problems in the group.

Comet, which operates 249 stores in the United Kingdom, is the second group of stores this week to fall victim to poor sales in the store-based electricals sector. Carphone Warehouse announced on Monday that it was shutting all 11 of its British Best Buy stores, which had been planned as the start of a nationwide chain.

Kesa said Comet's sales were down 18 percent between May and the end of October.

The company said group revenue in that period fell by 6.2 percent on a local currency basis.

Revenue in Darty France declined by 2.4 percent, while the BCC, Vanden Borre and Datar businesses combined for a revenue increase of 0.7 percent.

Developing businesses of Darty Italy, Darty Turkey and Darty Spain posted a 5.2 percent increase in revenue, though expansion masked an 8 percent drop in revenue comparing stores open for at least a year.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/britain/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111109/ap_on_bi_ge/eu_britain_kesa_comet

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Blogger on cartel beheading: 'Cannot kill us all'

Another blogger has been decapitated, purportedly in retaliation for postings about drug cartels, prompting users of social network sites to unite in their stance against the gangs.

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The gruesome slaying on Wednesday is believed to be the fourth since early September in which a drug cartel killed people in Nuevo Laredo for what they said online.

"I'm Rascatripas and this happened to me for failing to understand that I should not report things on social media websites. I am a ..... (text covered by body) just like La Nena from Laredo... With this last report I bid farewell to Nuevo Laredo en Vivo.. Always remem... Never For... Your moderator, RASCATRIPAS," said a placard left with the man's body at a busy intersection in Nuevo Laredo, according to Borderland Beat. The body was found at the city's Christopher Columbus monument, the site reported.

Nuevo Laredo, across the border from Laredo, Texas, has been dominated for about the last two years by the violent Los Zetas drug cartel.

The victim was described as 35 and identified on social networking sites by the nickname El Rascatripas or "belly scratcher."

The victim reportedly posted updates on the Zetas' activities and had collaborated with slain journalist Mary Elizabeth Macias, 39, who was butchered in the same manner and dumped in the same spot, El Universal.com reported.

Bloggers and users of online chatrooms reacted with shock.

"I'm doing some digging on it now," blogger Ovemex emailed msnbc.com when contacted on Wednesday. "I am also helping and working with my Twitter circle in creating a Twitter manifesto, calling out for us to unite, continue denouncing, and we will be offering tips on how to continue doing so safely and effectively."

Ovemex, who blogs on Borderland Beat, added, "THESE DEATHS WILL NOT BE IN VAIN...They cannot kill us all!!"

Mexican citizens have been increasingly relying on social media chatrooms and sites, such as Facebook and Twitter, as traditional media self-censor in the face of cartel violence.

Bloggers who cover cartels have been increasingly at risk.

In September, police found Macias' decapitated body alongside a handwritten sign saying she was killed in retaliation for postings on a social networking site. The message was signed with a "Z," the Zetas' trademark.

Earlier that month, the bodies of a man and a woman were found dangling from an overpass in Nuevo Laredo with a message threatening, "this is what will happen" to trouble-making Internet users.

'Killings, torture'
But according to a new report, the cartels are not the only side committing atrocities in Mexico's drug war, which President Felipe Calderon launched in late 2006.

Human Rights Watch in an investigation released Wednesday accused the Mexican government of torture, forced disappearances and extra-judicial killings in its war against organized crime.

The report outlines misconduct at all levels of authority, from prosecutors who give detainees prewritten confessions to sign, to medical examiners who classify beatings and electric shock as causing minor injuries.

The drug war had claimed more than 35,000 lives by the end of 2010. The government hasn't issued new figures since then, although news media and other groups put the number at more than 43,000.

The Associated Press contributed to this report compiled by msnbc.com's Sevil Omer.

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45230870/ns/world_news-americas/

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TED Conference on Behavioral Finance

I am at the TED conference on behavioral finance today.

First Session: Behavioral Finance in Action, 10:00 am (ET)

Speakers:

? Prof. Shlomo Benartzi, UCLA Anderson School of Management; Chief Behavioral Economist, AllianzGI Center for?Behavioral Finance
? Prof. Dan Goldstein, Yahoo! Research and London Business School
? Prof. Dean Karlan, Yale University
? David Laibson, Harvard University

Second Session: Behavioral Finance ? Choice Matters, 2:30 pm (ET)

Speakers:

? Prof. Sheena Iyengar, Columbia University
? Prof. John Payne, Duke University, The Fuqua School of Business
? Kathryn Schulz, Journalist & Author of ?Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error?
? Prof. Richard Thaler, University of Chicago Booth School of Business

Should be fun!

... Read the full article here

Source: http://equityjungle.com/2011/11/09/ted-conference-on-behavioral-finance/

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Verdict reached in case of Michael Jackson doctor

FILE - In a Thursday, Nov. 3, 2011 file photo, Dr. Conrad Murray listens as defense attorney Ed Chernoff, not pictured, gives the defense's closing arguments during the final stage of Conrad Murray's defense in his involuntary manslaughter trial in the death of singer Michael Jackson at the Los Angeles Superior Court in Los Angeles, Calif. The juryis set to resume deliberations Monday, Nov. 7, 2011 after spending their first day in discussions Friday without reaching a verdict. (AP Photo/Kevork Djansezian, Pool, File)

FILE - In a Thursday, Nov. 3, 2011 file photo, Dr. Conrad Murray listens as defense attorney Ed Chernoff, not pictured, gives the defense's closing arguments during the final stage of Conrad Murray's defense in his involuntary manslaughter trial in the death of singer Michael Jackson at the Los Angeles Superior Court in Los Angeles, Calif. The juryis set to resume deliberations Monday, Nov. 7, 2011 after spending their first day in discussions Friday without reaching a verdict. (AP Photo/Kevork Djansezian, Pool, File)

LOS ANGELES (AP) ? A jury reached a verdict Monday in the involuntary manslaughter case against Michael Jackson's doctor, deliberating for less than nine hours after the six-week trial that included the pop star's own recorded voice but no testimony from the physician accused of causing his death.

Court officials said the verdict would be read at 1 p.m. PST.

"I'm shaking uncontrollably!" Michael Jackson's sister LaToya commented via Twitter on the pending verdict.

Jackson family members arrived at the courthouse after court officials said a verdict had been reached.

Outside the courthouse, supporters and fans of Michael Jackson seemed to get word that the jury had reached a verdict. They started cheering and started chanting, "Guilty! Guilty!"

Prosecutors depicted Dr. Conrad Murray as a reckless physician who abandoned Jackson while he was under the effects of the powerful anesthetic propofol on June 25, 2009.

Attorneys for the Houston-based cardiologist countered that Jackson was addicted to the drug and self-administered the fatal dose when Murray left his bedroom.

Murray agreed to become Jackson's personal physician as the singer prepared for a series of comeback concerts in 2009.

Murray did not testify during the trial but previously acknowledged to police that he gave Jackson propofol and other sedatives on the morning the singer died.

The seven men and five women who hold the fate of Murray in their hands are a diverse cross-section of Los Angeles, people of varying ethnicities from different towns who might never have met if they had not been thrown together in the jury pool.

They are white, black and Hispanic, mostly middle-aged and live in an assortment of suburbs in the Los Angeles urban sprawl. Most have children and some have grandchildren.

They include a professor, postman, bus driver, actor and movie animation supervisor.

The panel was in its second day of deliberations when it reached the verdict.

Murray has pleaded not guilty to one count of involuntary manslaughter after prosecutors accused him of administering a fatal dose of propofol to the King of Pop.

The jurors, who were engaged by all the details of the case, were likely methodical in their deliberations.

Nine of them have prior jury experience and one woman, a native of Spain, has served on five juries, all of which reached verdicts. She was once a jury forewoman.

A woman who has worked as a paralegal for 30 years is serving on her first jury and appeared enthralled.

They knew about the involuntary manslaughter charge against Murray before they came to court and most of them know Jackson's music. A few said they were fans and one, the video animation specialist, said he had some interaction with Jackson when the singer was making the video, "Captain EO."

Details about their lives were culled from lengthy written questionnaires obtained by The Associated Press. Their identities have been kept secret and even lawyers in the case know them only by their jury numbers.

In six weeks together the jurors have displayed uncommon attentiveness to the task at hand. Several, including alternates, have taken notes and kept lists of evidence. Once, when the judge was at a loss to find the number of an exhibit, a member of the jury spoke up and told him.

There were no drooping eyelids or distracted glances. When a scientific expert was conducting experiments on the floor of the courtroom, panelists stood up in the jury box to get a better view.

Their attention to evidence and witnesses has impressed Superior Court Judge Michael Pastor, who commended them for their commitment, punctuality in getting to court and willingness to give up their personal lives to serve.

When the trial went longer than Pastor had predicted, he apologized, but the jurors seemed unperturbed.

Every night, when he gave them an admonition to avoid the news, the Internet and other sources of information about the trial, they listened as if it was the first time they had heard it and they nodded in agreement.

Many of the panelists have a familiarity with prescription drugs; most of them said they trust their doctors and several believe that celebrities receive a different kind of justice than average people.

Some have learned about the justice system from TV, watching such shows as "Law and Order" and "CSI." Others watched broadcasts of real-life, high-profile trials including the Casey Anthony case and the O.J. Simpson trial.

One woman, an accounting manager, remembered that during the Simpson trial, "a TV was brought to the office for everyone to follow it." A man in his 30s said he followed that trial in school as an educational experience.

While not sequestered, the jurors have had a rare opportunity to bond because they were kept together for lunch and transported together between a secret parking lot and the courthouse. In order to avoid exposure to events outside the courtroom, the judge had lunch catered for them every day.

___

Associated Press Entertainment Writer Anthony McCartney and Videographer John Mone contributed to this report.

___

McCartney can be reached at http://twitter.com/mccartneyAP

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/4e67281c3f754d0696fbfdee0f3f1469/Article_2011-11-07-Michael%20Jackson-Doctor/id-f894d59d1a404f9fa9bda95204895ef1

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Drainage madness (Offthekuff)

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Boehner says his friendship with Obama has cooled

WASHINGTON (AP) ? House Speaker John Boehner says his relationship with one-time golf partner President Barack Obama has grown "a little frosty."

The Ohio Republican complains in an interview with ABC's "This Week" that Obama is engaging in what Boehner calls "class warfare" by pushing for higher taxes for wealthy Americans.

Boehner says the rich pay enough taxes and it's wrong for the president to "pit one set of Americans against another."

Boehner says he and Obama have had a good relationship in the past, but it has grown cool in the last few weeks.

The Republican speaker and Democratic president played a round of golf together last summer in a mostly futile effort to bridge the ever-widening gap between the two political parties.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2011-11-06-Boehner-Obama/id-627aae1967a44fa08e19897a25a5eb4b

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