LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Liam Neeson is in negotiations to star in the crime thriller “The All Nighter (AKA Run All Night)” a person familiar with the situation has told TheWrap.
The story follows an aging hit man who, in order to protect his wife and son, must take on his former boss in a single night. He then winds up on the run from the mob and the authorities with his estranged son.
The film is being produced by Vertigo Entertainment‘s Roy Lee, along with Brooklyn Weaver for Warner Bros. which declined to comment. The studio acquired Brad Ingelsby‘s spec script “The All Nighter” in January for a reported six figure sum.
Neeson’s upcoming films include “Non-Stop” and “A Walk Among The Tombstones.” He will also be featured in a voice role in the upcoming film “Lego: The Piece of Resistance.”
Lee is working on a long-list of projects including Spike Lee’s remake of the South Korean thriller, “Oldboy,” which is currently filming. He is also producing the upcoming thriller “The Double Hour”; a feature film based on the hit video game “Deus-Ex Human Revolution”; “Lego: The Piece of Resistance,” and the action thriller “Sleepless Night,” which is also set up at Warner Bros. Weaver’s credits include “Thirteen” and “Picture Book.”
Ingelsby’s upcoming projects as a writer include “The Raid.” In 2008, he made another major spec deal for his revenge thriller “The Low Dweller,” which went to Relativity Media.
For years, Phillip Johnson was caught in what seemed like an endless trench of bad luck. He was fired from a job, experienced intensifying psychological problems, lost his apartment and spent time in homeless shelters. At one point, he was hospitalized after overdosing on an antipsychotic drug.
“I had a rough road,” he said.
Since his hospital stay two years ago, and despite setbacks, Mr. Johnson, 27, has been getting his life on track. At Brooklyn Community Services, where he goes for daily counseling and therapy, everybody knows him as Fabulous Phil.
“Phillip is a light, the way he evokes happiness in other people,” his former caseworker, Teresa O’Brien, said. “Phillip’s character led directly to his nickname.”
About six months ago, with Ms. O’Brien’s help, Mr. Johnson started an event: Fabulous Phil Friday Dance Party Fridays.
One recent afternoon at the agency, 30 clients and a few counselors were eating cake, drinking soft drinks and juice, and grooving for 45 minutes to Jay-Z and Drake pulsating from a boom box.
Mr. Johnson’s voice rose with excitement when he talked about the party. Clients and counselors, he said, “enjoy themselves.”
“They connect more; they communicate more,” he continued. “Everybody is celebrating and laughing.”
The leadership Mr. Johnson now displays seems to be a far cry from the excruciatingly introverted person he was.
As an only child living with his single mother in public housing in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, he said, he tended to isolate himself. “A lot of kids my age would say, ‘Come outside,’ but I would always stay in my room,” he said. He occupied himself by writing comic books or reading them, his favorites being Batman and Spiderman because, he said, “they were heroes who saved the day.”
After graduating from high school in 2003, he worked odd jobs until 2006, when he took a full-time position at a food court at La Guardia Airport, where he helped to clean up. The steady paycheck allowed him to leave his mother’s apartment and rent a room in Queens.
But the depression and bleak moods that had shadowed him throughout middle and high school asserted themselves.
“My thinking got confused,” he said. “Racing thoughts through my mind. Disorganized thoughts. I had a hard time focusing on one thing.”
In 2008, after two years on the job, Mr. Johnson was fired for loud and inappropriate behavior, and for being “unpredictable,” he said. The boss said he needed counseling. He moved back in with his mother, and in 2009 entered a program at an outpatient addiction treatment service, Bridge Back to Life. It was there, he said, that he received a diagnosis of schizophrenia and help with his depression and marijuana use.
But one evening in May 2010, he had a bout with insomnia.
He realized the antipsychotic medication he had been prescribed, Risperdal, made him feel tired, he said, so he took 12 of the pills, rather than his usual dosage of two pills twice a day. When 12 did not work, he took 6 more.
“The next morning when I woke up, it was hard for me to breathe,” he said.
He called an ambulance, which took to Woodhull Hospital. He was released after about a month.
Not long after, he returned to his mother’s apartment, but by February 2011, they both decided he should leave, and he relocated to a homeless shelter in East New York, where, he said, eight other people were crammed into his cubicle and there were “bedbugs, people lying in your bed, breaking into your locker to steal your stuff.”
In late spring 2011, he found a room for rent in Manhattan, but by Thanksgiving he was hospitalized again. Another stint in a shelter followed in April, when his building was sold.
Finally, in July, Mr. Johnson moved to supported housing on Staten Island, where he lives with a roommate. His monthly $900 Social Security disability check is sent to the residence, which deducts $600 for rent and gives him $175 in spending money; he has breakfast and lunch at the Brooklyn agency. To assist Mr. Johnson with unexpected expenses, a grant of $550 through The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund went to buy him a bed and pay a Medicare prescription plan fee for three months.
“I was so happy I have a bed to sleep on,” he said about the replacement for an air mattress. “When I have a long day, I have a bed to lay in, and I feel good about that.”
Mr. Johnson’s goals include getting his driver’s license — “I already have a learner’s permit,” he said, proudly — finishing his program at the agency, and then entering an apprenticeship program to become a plumber, carpenter or mechanic.
But seeing how his peers have benefited from Fabulous Phil Fridays has made him vow to remain involved with people dealing with mental illnesses or substance abuse.
He was asked at the party: Might he be like the comic-book heroes he loves? A smile spread across his face. He seemed to think so.
WASHINGTON — The outline of a compromise over impending tax hikes and spending cuts began to come into focus Friday after President Obama convened top congressional leaders at the White House.
Differences remain, especially as Republicans, led in the House by Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio, continue to fight to keep tax rates for the wealthiest Americans from rising.
But the contours of a two-stage deal are taking shape as leaders work to avert a year-end fiscal crisis and break the gridlock that has soured voters on Washington. The mood alone, with Obama congratulating Boehner on his birthday Saturday and Republican and Democratic leaders taking turns speaking to signify their unity, signaled a sharp change from past confrontations.
"We have the cornerstones of being able to work something out," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, as leaders from both parties emerged from the White House. "This is not something we're going to wait until the last day of December to get done. We have a plan. We're going to move forward on it."
Boehner, who presented his framework for a broad tax-and-spending overhaul to be undertaken in 2013, also sounded an optimistic note.
"To show our seriousness, we've put revenue on the table, as long as it's accompanied by significant spending cuts," Boehner said. "It's going to be incumbent on my colleagues to show the American people we're serious."
The first part of such a deal would be legislation this year that would commit Congress to specific revenue increases, favored by Democrats, and spending cuts, as advocated by Republicans. How those increases and cuts would be achieved would be worked out in the second stage next year by the new Congress.
Not addressed was how to resolve the standoff over this year's expiring tax rates. Resolving the tax breaks for wealthier Americans remains, in many ways, the linchpin to a deal.
Obama and Boehner appeared more comfortable together than a year ago, when they tried — and failed — to reach a $4-trillion deficit-reduction deal that many economists have warned is vital for the nation's long-term fiscal health.
The two leading actors exchanged a light moment as the president wished the speaker, who turns 63 on Saturday, a happy birthday and gave the known Merlot fan an expensive bottle of Italian red wine.
"My hope is this is going to be the beginning of a fruitful process that we're able to come to agreement on that will reduce our deficit in a balanced way, that we will deal with some of these long-term impediments to growth, and we're also going to be focusing on making sure that middle-class families are able to get ahead," Obama said as he opened the meeting in the Roosevelt Room. "We're going to get to work."
Friday's closed-door gathering was the first such sit-down since the election, which emboldened Obama and his allies on Capitol Hill. Americans spoke at the polls, they maintain, preferring the Democratic approach, which asks the wealthiest taxpayers to contribute more revenue while preventing steep spending to domestic cuts.
To rank-and-file Republicans, though, the election results signaled that voters want the GOP House majority to hold a final "line of defense," as Boehner puts it, against what they see as government overreach.
Efforts to raise new tax revenue while cutting spending has eluded the parties in the past, but this year's built-in deadline could give them a boost.
Unless Congress acts, taxes will rise on most Americans, a $2,000 average hit as current rates expire on Dec. 31. Massive federal spending cuts scheduled to begin Jan. 2 would cut across defense and domestic accounts, pulling funds out of the economy. Together, they have been referred to as a "fiscal cliff."
A shift can be heard in the rhetoric, as Republicans now say they are willing to consider increases in tax revenue, and Obama has softened his insistence that top income tax rates, now at 35%, must rise to 39.6%, the rate from the Clinton era.
"We all understand where we are," said Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader. "We're prepared to put revenue on the table provided we fix the real problem, even though most of my members, I think without exception, believe that we're in the dilemma we're in not because we tax too little but because we spend too much."
During the hourlong session Friday, Boehner presented his proposal to have the parties agree to targets for new tax revenues and spending cuts, which would be bound by statute and enacted in 2013.
Tax revenue could be raised by closing tax loopholes or capping deductions for the wealthiest Americans — couples earning incomes above $250,000, or $200,000 for singles. Such a broad deal would also require Democrats to agree to rein in spending on Medicare, Medicaid and other entitlement programs as Obama has previously proposed.
Both sides agreed to begin working now on the 2013 framework. Nothing will be decided until after the Thanksgiving holiday.
Obama has repeatedly sought to pressure House Republicans to at least extend the expiring tax rates for those who do not earn above $250,000. The Senate has already passed a bill that would do so, preventing a New Year's tax hike on the middle class, while talks continue over tax rates for the wealthy.
House Republicans have refused to budge, and Boehner gave no indication Friday he would allow rates to rise.
Not only is Union Square Ventures partner Fred Wilson the godfather of the New York startup scene, he also loves music. So who better than this self-proclaimed music nut to talk about the future of music and technology, and how companies straddling both have a shot at making money.
At the Billboard FutureSound conference in San Francisco this week, Wilson laid out four guiding principals for would-be music moguls. All you Russell Simmons wannabes, here you go.
1. It’s more expensive than you think, and it takes longer than you want.
Unlike a typical software startup that can get up and running with $500,000, music startups often need at least $5 million and up to $20 million just to get started, says Wilson. Much of that money goes towards licensing music content from the copyright holder, which is usually a record label. “The startup costs for a legal and legitimate music service are extremely high relative to any other sector,” he says. Translation: VCs have plenty of other cheap sectors to go hunting for promising startups, so funding for music startups is hard to come by.
Union Square Ventures‘ two music plays are group listening service Turntable.fm and social MP3 sharing site SoundCloud, both of which received sizable rounds from the firm. Turntable.fm has raised $7 million from Union Square and others, and SoundCloud banked $10 million in its Wilson-led second round of funding.
Unlike many web-based startups (mobile and otherwise), which latch on to massive distribution platforms offered by Facebook, Google and Apple, music streaming or discovery services can’t go global on day one because of copyright protections and country-specific licensing contracts.
Turntable.fm learned that lesson the hard way. When the service launched in 2011 it blew up thanks to its slick design and mobile-friendly approach. But the startup quickly learned that it was illegally offering music to overseas listeners. It immediately shut off service to international customers, and two-thirds of its users disappeared. The company is now hammering agreements with individual countries and record labels to stream music legally, but it’s going to be a long and tedious process, says Wilson.
2. No matter how many users you have, massive valuations are fleeting if you can’t make money – even if you are Spotify and Pandora.
Spotify recently banked $100 million from Goldman Sachs, valuing the company at $3 billion. Even though Pandora has been trading down 46 percent from its 2011 debut, the company still has a $1.21 billion market cap. But those valuations will disappear if neither company can stem their operating losses, and fast, says Wilson.
A PrivCo report shows that while Spotify earned $244 million in revenue during 2011, the company lost $60 million in the same period. Even though a leaked report says that Spotify’s revenue could double in 2012, if the company losses keep climbing, Wilson says Spotify’s value won’t stay in the billions forever. “Spotify is probably not worth $3 billion,” he says. “It might be worth something, someday to someone, but if they still can’t figure how to make money, they’ll lose.”
Pandora faces the same struggle as Spotify, trying to get users, not advertisers, to pay for its service. For the second quarter of its 2013 fiscal year, the company booked $101.3 million in revenue, but lost $5.4 million. Though its advertising revenue remains strong at $89.4 million, it is having a hard time converting freeloading listeners into paid subscribers, despite its own ad attempts. “Pandora will not be worth billions for long if they are losing money,” Wilson says.
3. That said, Pandora has the right idea. Advertising dollars will move increasingly to internet radio, and artists will start to make money from their music.
FM radio advertising is a $17 billion market, and Wilson believes that as Internet radio services like Pandora, Songza, and Rdio take the place of traditional broadcast, those ad dollars will move online. That’s good for online radio streaming startups, but even better for the artists whose music is played over these apps and websites.
When a song is played on the radio, the artists gets a royalty. But to play a song over Rdio or Pandora, those companies must pay licensing costs and higher royalties, which go right back to the artists. Pandora has said that it pays out $1 million to Adele, Coldplay, and others.
Wilson is optimistic that as more music enthusiasts ditch radios for apps, more money will find its way to artists. That might be the case for radio apps now, but that could easily change as Pandora has been looking for ways to reduce its royalty costs. The company recently sued the American Society for Composers, Authors and Publishers, a major royalty collection agency, seeking lower licensing fees. Pandora is also lobbying Congress to pass the Internet Radio Fairness Act to bring down it’s licensing costs, a piece of legislation that many artists oppose.
4. Selling virtual goods might be a better business than selling music.
Wilson would be remiss to not plug his own investment in Turntable.fm during his keynote. If you’re not familiar with the service, users create themed music rooms, like “I Love the 80s” or “Indiescribable,” which they join as a virtual DJ. Others join the room as listeners, and influence which songs are played based on a thumbs-up/thumbs-down voting system. Too many down-votes will force the song to skip to a new one on the playlist, but up-votes earn you “DJ points,” credits you can use to unlock new avatars.
Turntable.fm doesn’t charge its users for a subscription and doesn’t serve ads. Though it’s not bringing in revenue right now, there is talk of charging for DJ points, so anyone can get a little bit of cred without getting up on the virtual DJ platform.
While that will surely vex some current Turntable.fm users, charging for virtual goods might be the next big revenue-earning tool for music businesses. “Ads can carry a lot of the load, but not all,” says Wilson. “Turntable.fm’s virtual goods model could work well as a new revenue stream for other music businesses.”
The appointment marks a homecoming for Dadich, who served as Wired’s creative director from 2006 to 2010. He replaces Chris Anderson as the publication’s top editor.
“Scott has been at the forefront of the company’s digital innovation for the past three years, developing the design for a digital magazine that has become an industry standard,” Wallace said. “His return to Wired, where he served as creative director and won three National Magazine Awards for Design, will ensure that it continues its pace-setting growth.”
While Dadich was creative director at Wired, the magazine received three consecutive National Magazine Awards for Design. He is the only creative director ever to win both the National Magazine Award for Design and the Society of Publication Designers Magazine of the Year Award for three consecutive years (2008-2010).
“I’m excited to return to Wired, which has had such a tremendous impact on my life and my career,” Dadich said. “I’m honored to have the chance to build on the legacy of innovation that Louis and Jane started some 20 years ago. And I am grateful to my friend and colleague Chris and the incredible Wired staff. I look forward to finding new opportunities to delight and surprise the Wired community, both with the stories we tell and in the ways in which we tell them.”
Prior to Wired, he was the creative director of Texas Monthly, which was nominated for 14 National Magazine Awards during his tenure and won for General Excellence in 2003.
Three retired N.F.L. players received at least $2 million in disability payments as a result of brain trauma injuries from their playing days, according to an article by ESPN and the PBS series “Frontline.”
The payments were made in the 1990s and early 2000s by the Bell/Rozelle N.F.L. Player Retirement Plan, a committee comprising representatives of the owners, players and the N.F.L. commissioner.
The N.F.L. is being sued by several thousand retired players who accuse the league of concealing a link between hits to the head and brain injuries. The league denies the accusation and has said it did not mislead its players.
The article, however, cites a letter written in 2000 from the director of the retirement plan who stated that Mike Webster, who retired in 1990, had a disability that was “the result of head injuries he suffered as a football player with the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Kansas City Chiefs.”
Webster died in 2002. The article cites similar payments to Gerry Sullivan, a lineman for the Browns, and a third, unnamed player.
The article provides more details than were known about Webster’s case; his fight for disability benefits was known. The retired players say that “the N.F.L.’s own physician independently examined Webster and concluded that Webster was mentally ‘completely and totally disabled as of the date of his retirement and was certainly disabled when he stopped playing football sometime in 1990.’ ”
However, Greg Aiello, a spokesman for the N.F.L., said that the ESPN report “underscores that we have had a system in place with the union for many years to address player injury claims on a case-by-case basis.” The disability plan, he said, was “collectively bargained with the players.”
“All decisions concerning player injury claims are made by the disability plan’s board, not by the N.F.L. or by the Players Association,” Aiello said.
The board has seven members: three owner representatives, three player representatives and one nonvoting representative of the commissioner.
The disclosures in the article came a day after Commissioner Roger Goodell spoke at the Harvard School of Public Health, where he trumpeted the league’s efforts to increase the safety of its players and proclaimed that “medical decisions override everything else.”
Jeffrey Standen, a law professor at Willamette University in Oregon, said the details about Webster’s disability payments did not amount to a smoking gun. The plan’s determination that Webster sustained head injuries is not the same as the N.F.L. making that decision.
“The problem is the N.F.L. didn’t make the admission; it was the board,” Standen said. “They’re not the same body. As a legal matter, the fact that they paid Webster is not going to matter much in legal terms. But it’s evidence to throw in front of a jury.”
What might be the last Twinkie in America — at least for a while — rolled off a factory line Friday morning. It was just like the millions that had come before it, golden, cream-filled empty calories, a monument to classic American junk food.
But it is likely to be the last under the current management. After not one but two bankruptcies, Hostess Brands, the beleaguered purveyor of Twinkies, Ho Hos, Sno Balls and Wonder bread, announced plans to wind down operations and sell off its brands.
Since filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in January, Hostess has been trying to renegotiate its labor contracts in a bid to cut costs. But the talks fell apart, and last week one union went on strike.
The so-called liquidation will probably spell the end of Hostess, an 82-year-old company that has endured wars, countless diet fads and even an earlier Chapter 11 filing. Although the company could theoretically negotiate a last-minute deal with the union, Hostess is moving to shut factories and lay off a large majority of its 18,500 employees.
But Twinkies and the other well-known brands could eventually find new life under a different owner. As part of the process, Hostess is looking to auction off its assets, and suitors could find value in the portfolio.
“The potential loss of iconic brands is difficult,” said the company’s chief executive, Gregory F. Rayburn. “But it’s overshadowed by the 18,500 families that are out of work.”
The company’s current problems stem, in part, from the legacy of its past.
An amalgam of brands and businesses, the company has evolved over the years through acquisitions. In the 1960s and 1970s, the company, then called Interstate, bought more than a dozen regional bakeries scattered across the country. A couple of decades later, it paid $330 million for the Continental Baking Company, picking up a portfolio of brands like Wonder and Hostess.
As the national appetite for junk food waned, the company fell on hard times, struggling against rising labor and commodity costs. In 2004, it filed for bankruptcy for the first time.
Five years later, the company emerged from Chapter 11 as Hostess Brands, so named after its most prominent division. With America’s new health-conscious attitude, it sought to reshape the business to changing times, introducing new products like 100-calorie Twinkie Bites.
But the new private equity backers loaded the company with debt, making it difficult to invest in new equipment. Earlier this year, Hostess had more than $860 million of debt.
The labor costs, too, proved insurmountable, a situation that has been complicated by years of deal-making. The bulk of the work force belongs to 12 unions, including the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union.
The combination of debt and labor costs has hurt profits. The company posted revenue of $2.5 billion in the fiscal year 2011, the last available data. But it reported a net loss of $341 million.
With profits eroding, the company filed for Chapter 11 in January. It originally hoped to reorganize its finances, seeking lower labor costs, including an immediate 8 percent pay cut.
The negotiations have been contentious.
The Teamsters, which has 6,700 members at Hostess, said it played an instrumental role in ousting Hostess’s previous chief executive, Brian J. Driscoll, this year after the board tripled his compensation to $2.55 million. The union also hired a financial consultant, Harry J. Wilson, who had worked on the General Motors restructuring.
While highly critical of management missteps, the Teamsters agreed in September to major concessions, including cuts in wages and company contributions to health care. As part of the deal, the union was to receive a 25 percent share of the company’s stock and a $100 million claim in bankruptcy.
“The objective was to preserve jobs,” said Ken Hall, the Teamsters’ general secretary-treasurer. “When you have a company that’s in the financial situation that Hostess is, it’s just not possible to maintain everything you have.”
But Hostess reached an impasse with the bakery union. Frank Hurt, the union’s president, seemed to lose patience with Hostess’s management, upset that it was in bankruptcy for the second time despite $100 million in labor concessions. He saw little promise that management would turn things around.
“Our members decided they were not going to take any more abuse from a company they have given so much to for so many years,” said Mr. Hurt. “They decided that they were not going to agree to another round of outrageous wage and benefit cuts and give up their pension only to see yet another management team fail and Wall Street vulture capitalists and ‘restructuring specialists’ walk away with untold millions of dollars.”
About a month ago, Mr. Rayburn said, the bakers union stopped returning the company’s phone calls altogether. For its part, the bakery union said the company had taken an overly aggressive approach. David Durkee, the union’s secretary-treasurer, said Hostess had given an ultimatum. “They said, ‘If you do not ratify this, we are going to liquidate based on your vote.’ ”
With the company standing firm, the bakery union struck last week, affecting nearly two-thirds of the company’s factories across the country. The Teamsters drivers honored the picket line, further shutting down the operations. The company gave union members until 5 p.m. on Thursday to return to work.
Mr. Rayburn said the financial strain of the strike was too much for the company, which had already reached the limits of its bankruptcy financing. Over the last week, Hostess lost tens of millions of dollars as many customers’ orders went unfilled. And its lenders would not open their wallets one more time.
By Thursday morning, Hostess’s executives were ensconced in the company’s headquarters in Irving, Tex., still hoping that enough employees would return to work to resume production. A small number of workers had already crossed the picket lines that had sprung up at most of the baker’s factories, but more than 10 plants remained well below their necessary capacity.
Mr. Rayburn’s deadline of 5 p.m. passed without either side backing down. Soon after, executives asked the company’s legal advisers to finish the court motions that would begin the liquidation. Papers had been drawn up well before that afternoon.
Around 7 p.m., Mr. Rayburn had his final discussions with the company’s board and his senior managers and made the call to begin winding down.
“We were trying to focus on where people were having success, but I had to make a call,” Mr. Rayburn said.
A long-awaited review of the Los Angeles Fire Department found the agency relied on inaccurate data, which provided the public with an erroneous portrait of the department’s performance that was used to make critical staffing decisions.
“All prior reporting data should not be relied upon until they are properly recalculated and validated,” the task force appointed by Fire Chief Brian Cummings concluded.
While the Fire Department has acknowledged some mistakes in its data, the 32-page report found more widespread problems and delves more deeply into a series of factors that contributed to the faulty figures. Among other things, the experts found systemic flaws in a 30-year-old computerized dispatch network and a lack of adequate training for firefighters assigned to complex data analysis.
INTERACTIVE: Check response times in your L.A. neighborhood
The probe was launched after department officials acknowledged earlier this year that LAFD performance reports released to City Hall leaders and the public made it appear rescuers were getting to emergencies faster than they actually were.
The task force report, scheduled to be discussed Tuesday by the Fire Commission, said the department has corrected the computer-system flaws that led to the inaccurate figures.
“The No. 1 goal was to restore confidence in the Fire Department's statistics in the eyes of the public and city leaders,” said Fire Commissioner Alan Skobin, who helped oversee the report. “We now have the ability to identify and pull out accurate data.”
Still, the report paints a picture of a department woefully behind in using technology to help speed up emergency responses and improve efficiency by analyzing thousands of dispatch records that churn through the department's computer system each day.
The report recommends installing GPS devices on fire units so dispatchers know their location at all times, an upgrade that has been discussed since at least 2009. That could ensure that the closest rescuers are sent to those in need.
The task force also said upgrades or replacement of the aging computer system at the heart of dispatch operations may be needed, as well as hiring professional analysts to scrutinize the data.
Some money has been set aside to help pay for the GPS upgrade and the dispatch system changes. But whether all the changes raised in the report could be funded is unclear, given that the LAFD already is projected to run a $5.2-million deficit in its current budget.
The report’s findings in some ways parallel recent probes by City Controller Wendy Greuel and Jeffrey Godown, an expert brought in by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa as questions grew about the department’s performance figures.
The task force includes members of the chief’s own staff, as well as experts from USC, the RAND Corp. and the Los Angeles Police Department’s COMPSTAT unit, which is recognized for its crime data analysis.
Indeed, the Fire Department hopes to roll out its own version of the LAPD’s data-reporting system, called FIRESTATLA. It would allow managers, elected officials and the public access to regularly updated reports on detailed response times and other statistics by neighborhood, Skobin said. The new system is estimated to cost up to $500,000, he said.
In March, fire officials acknowledged that they had changed the way in which they evaluated response times without telling the public or city officials. Their method made it appear that crews surpassed national standards more frequently than they actually did.
Those faulty statistics were used by Cummings and other top fire officials to push for a new cost-cutting deployment plan that shut down firetrucks and ambulances at more than one-fifth of the city's 106 firehouses. Cummings initially defended the department’s data when questions arose about its accuracy.
Later, he acknowledged that yet another set of numbers used in reports on the proposed deployment changes were projections, not actual response times. Some council members said they might not have voted for the budget cuts had they been aware that projections were used.
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Just in time for Black Friday, eBay is offering New Yorkers a new way to sit out the madness. Instead of waiting in line, shoppers can use the eBay Now same-day delivery app to send eBay couriers to major chain stores to buy for them.
After being beta-tested in San Francisco in recent months, eBay Now is launching today for anyone with an iPhone south of 125th Street in Manhattan or in Brooklyn’s western reaches. Unlike similar offerings being tested by Walmart and Amazon, which rely on their own inventory, eBay Now works more like a peer-to-peer network, connecting shoppers with participating stores nearby while eBay acts as a go-between. And the stores aren’t obscure. Macy’s, Toys”R”Us, Target, and Best Buy are among what eBay says are hundreds of retailers taking part.
Also, unlike Walmart’s and Amazon’s offerings, eBay doesn’t require placing an order before a certain cutoff time. Its network of couriers, which it calls “valets,” are stationed throughout the city, with more personnel clustered around areas with higher concentrations of customers and stores. When a shopper places an order through the location-aware app, it goes out to the valet in the best place to fulfill the order the most quickly. The company promises to make most deliveries in an hour or so, though for now eBay valets have to wait in line at the checkout counter like everyone else. The minimum order is $25, shoppers can only order from one store per delivery, and there’s a $5 delivery fee.
The service fits eBay’s effort to re-brand itself as more than an auction site. The company wants people to think of eBay as a place to get anything and everything. And as the distinctions between offline and online retail fall away, eBay also wants shoppers to feel like they can get their stuff whenever, wherever, and however they want.
Short of opening their own stores, the network of retailers participating in eBay Now give eBay a surrogate physical footprint, and a way to approximate the immediacy of walking into an actual store. In a way, eBay Now doesn’t stray that far from the company’s roots: Just think of the stores as typical eBay sellers, except with more inventory.
Launching eBay Now in New York also invites the inevitable comparisons to famous dotcom-bubble failure Kozmo.com, which used bike messengers to bring New Yorkers just about anything in about an hour. Unlike Kozmo, however, same-day delivery isn’t eBay’s core business. Kozmo also didn’t charge a delivery fee or require a minimum order amount. (Also, eBay’s couriers use their own cars.)
As a company that survived the first dotcom bust and sees tens of billions of dollars in transactions move across its network each year, eBay has no doubt done the math to figure out how same-day fits into their business plans. EBay Now isn’t so much a reinvention as a small-scale investment in new infrastructure — infrastructure eBay needs to have in place as the anytime, anywhere, any way model of retail catalyzed by smartphones evolves from novelty to norm.
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The American Music Awards rings in its 40th year on Sunday, with top nominees like Rihanna and Nicki Minaj battling for the top trophies and Stevie Wonder leading a tribute to the show’s late founder, Dick Clark.
Variety is the key to this year’s three-hour ceremony from Los Angeles, with performers including Canadian pop star Justin Bieber, 1990s ska-punk band No Doubt, alt-rockers Linkin Park, country-pop darling Taylor Swift, Korean Internet sensation Psy and British-Irish boyband The Wanted.
“The AMAs reflects pop culture, which is all forms of music, all genres, pop, rock, country, hip hop, alternative … all these things that normally don’t together. It’s our job to make it flow,” producer Larry Klein told Reuters.
R&B star Rihanna, 24, and Minaj, 29, tied for the most nominations this year, with four apiece, and will battle each other in the hotly contested female pop-rock category.
Rihanna will also face stiff competition for the top award of the night, the artist of the year accolade, where she will compete with Bieber, Katy Perry, Maroon 5 and Drake.
The new artist category is expected to be a tight race between rapper J. Cole, indie-pop band fun., Australian singer Gotye, British boyband One Direction and Canadian popstar Carly Rae Jepsen, who will also be performing on Sunday. The ceremony will be shown live on ABC Television.
Unlike the Grammy Awards, which are decided on by music producers, songwriters and others working in the industry, the American Music Awards are determined by fans.
“It’s the public who watches, who decides, who votes. This is an awards show where the public decides the nominees and winners, so our shows are more about pop culture,” Klein said.
This year sees a new category for the growing electronic dance music market, which Klein said he couldn’t ignore. DJs David Guetta, Skrillex and Calvin Harris will compete for the trophy.
REMEMBERING DICK CLARK
This is the first time Klein will be running the show without the input of influential music and TV producer Dick Clark, who died in April at the age of 82. Clark created the American Music Awards in 1973 as an alternative to the Grammys, and Klein said his absence felt bizarre.
“Last year, he loved the show, he was very happy. He loved LMFAO when they closed the show, it was all a fun party of music, dance music, Dick loved it,” Klein said.
Clark, who also hosted “American Bandstand” and “New Year’s Rockin’ Eve,” will be remembered on Sunday in a tribute led by Wonder and “American Idol” host Ryan Seacrest.
“I wanted to make it classy, elegant and meaningful, with something that truly summoned the relationship that Dick had with so many people,” said Klein, who has been involved in the show since its inception.
Klein said the show will look back on its 40-year history, showcasing some of its most memorable moments. Klein’s personal picks included performances from late singer Michael Jackson, funk-pop star Prince, and Jay-Z and Alicia Keys’ rendition in 2009 of “Empire State of Mind.”
“I was very close to Michael Jackson, so every time Michael was on the show, it always made me happy. The Prince number we did was outrageous, Jay-Z and Alicia Keys…it really was epic, it was just extraordinary,” Klein said.
With more than fifteen individual performances, or “mini-shows” scheduled for Sunday, Klein said audiences can expect surprises.
“Live TV is the best, it’s unpredictable. Without a doubt there will be some unpredictable moments, I promise you,” the producer said.
(Reporting By Piya Sinha-Roy, editing by Jill Serjeant)
