Music, roses at singer Jenni Rivera’s memorial

UNIVERSAL CITY, Calif. (AP) — Jenni Rivera‘s “celestial graduation” was marked by festive music, heartfelt speeches in Spanish and English and passionate chants of “Jen-ni! Jen-ni!”

Rivera’s children and famed singers Olga Tanon and Joan Sebastian performed during the nearly 2 ½-hour memorial service Wednesday at the Gibson Amphitheatre, where thousands of fans gathered to salute the “Diva de la Banda” who died in a plane crash Dec. 9.

One fan, Veronika Flores, drove nearly eight hours from her home in Woodland, Calif., near Sacramento, to be united with other fans at the service.

“I just came to say goodbye to a Latina woman, La Gran Senora,” she said, invoking the name of one of Rivera’s most beloved songs.

Famed Mexican singers Marco Antonio Solis and Ana Gabriel and actors Lou Diamond Phillips and Kate del Castillo were also among the guests at Wednesday’s service.

A red casket sat onstage amid a sea of white roses as images of Rivera played on three big screens. Family members embraced and kissed the casket at the conclusion of the service, laying more white roses atop it.

While most of the speeches and songs were delivered in Spanish, Rivera’s children spoke in English, often directly to their late mother.

“We’re not here to mourn the death,” said son Michael, 21. “We’re here to celebrate the life and graduation of a singer, an entertainer, a diva, a fighter, an entrepreneur, a philanthropist, and more than anything, a mother — the best mother.”

He then called for 27 seconds of silence for the victims of the massacre in Newtown, Conn.

Rivera’s youngest child, 11-year-old Johnny, was heartbreakingly poised as he said, “The person that everyone’s talking about is my mom.”

“Mama, I’ve been crying so much these last few days. I miss you so much,” said the little boy, wearing a red bow tie like many of his family members. “I hope you’re taking care of my dad and I hope he’s taking care of you, too.”

Rivera’s second husband, Juan Lopez, died in 2009. The couple divorced in 2003.

Rivera’s brothers and sisters spoke lovingly of the singer, calling her “the queen of queens,” ”perfectly imperfect” and an “eternal diva.” Her father said Rivera’s “happiness, smile and care for the public will never be forgotten.” He then performed a song he wrote about his daughter, a woman who rose from humble roots to become “la Diva de la Banda.”

One of Rivera’s brothers said his sister “made it OK for women to be who they are. Jenni also made it OK to be from nothing with the hopes of being something.”

The family asked that Latin radio stations play Rivera’s song “La Gran Senora” at noon Thursday in her honor.

The service was closed to most media, although a broadcast of the proceedings was made available.

The burial will be private.

Rivera’s last album before her death, “La Misma Gran Senora,” topped the Latin albums chart this week, selling 27,000 copies — the best sales week for any Latin album this year. Rivera also holds three spots on the Billboard 200 albums chart.

Rivera and six other people died Dec. 9 in a northern Mexico plane crash that remains under investigation. Rivera, a mother of five children and grandmother of two, was 43.

Rivera sold more than 15 million copies of her 12 major-label albums. Her soulful singing style and honesty about her tumultuous personal life won her fans on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border. She was also an actress and reality TV star.

Born in Los Angeles, Rivera launched her career by selling cassette tapes at flea markets. By the end of the 90s, she won a major-label contract and built a loyal following.

Many of her songs deal with themes of dignity in the face of heartbreak, which Rivera spoke of openly with her fans.

She had recently filed for divorce from her third husband, was once detained at a Mexico City airport with tens of thousands of dollars in cash, and publicly apologized after her brother assaulted a drunken fan who verbally attacked her in 2011.

“She was a fighter, a woman who can push boundaries,” said Flores. “That’s why I liked her, because I’m just like her.”

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F.D.A. and States Meet About Regulation of Drug Compounders

Mary Calvert/Reuters

Margaret Hamburg, the F.D.A. commissioner, testified on the meningitis outbreak before Congress in November. She addressed the need for greater federal oversight of large compounding pharmacies, which mix batches of drugs on their own, often for much lower prices than major manufacturers charge.

SILVER SPRING, Md. – The Food and Drug Administration conferred with public health officials from 50 states on Wednesday about how best to strengthen rules governing compounding pharmacies in the wake of a national meningitis outbreak caused by a tainted pain medication produced by a Massachusetts pharmacy.

It was the first public discussion of what should be done about the practice of compounding, or tailor-making medicine for individual patients, since the F.D.A. commissioner, Dr. Margaret Hamburg, testified in Congress last month about the need for greater federal oversight of large compounding pharmacies. So far, 620 people in 19 states have been sickened in the outbreak, and 39 of them have died.

Pharmacies fall primarily under state law, and the F.D.A. convened the meeting to get specifics from states on gaps in the regulatory net and how the states see the federal role. Some states said they would prefer to see the F.D.A. handle large-scale compounders like the New England Compounding Center, or N.E.C.C., the Massachusetts pharmacy that was the source of the outbreak.

“The consensus in our group was that there is a role for the F.D.A. to be involved in facilities like N.E.C.C.,” said Cody Wiberg, the executive director of the Minnesota Board of Pharmacy. “If you’re talking about compounding, most states have the authority and resources to handle that. If you’re talking about nontraditional compounding,” he said, referring to large-scale enterprises like N.E.C.C., “fewer states may have the resources to do that.”

Large-scale compounding has expanded drastically since the early 1990s, driven by changes in the health care system, including the rise of hospital outsourcing.

“It is very clear that the health care system has evolved and the role of the compounding pharmacies has really shifted,” Dr. Hamburg said in a telephone interview on Tuesday. She said the laws had not kept pace.

“We need legislation that reflects the current environment and the known gaps in our state and federal oversight systems,” Dr. Hamburg said.

Under current law, compounders are not required to give the F.D.A. access to their books, and about half of all the court orders the agency obtained over the past decade were for pharmacy compounders, although compounders are only a small part of the agency’s regulatory responsibilities.

The F.D.A.'s critics argue that the agency already has all the legal authority it needs to police compounders. They say that many compounders have been operating as major manufacturers, shipping to states across the country, and that the F.D.A. should be using its jurisdiction over manufacturers to regulate those companies’ activities.

“There should be one uniform federal standard that is enforced by one agency – the F.D.A.,” said Michael Carome, deputy director of Public Citizen’s Health Research Group, a nonprofit consumer organization, who has been a critic of the agency’s approach. “They have been lax in enforcing that standard.”

But Dr. Hamburg contends that the distinction is not so simple. Lumping large compounders in with manufacturers would mean they would have to file new drug applications for every product they make, a costly and time-consuming process that is not always necessary for the products they make, like IV feeding tube bags, for example. Dr. Hamburg has proposed creating a new federal oversight category for large-scale compounders, separate from manufacturers.

“What concerns me is the idea that we could assert full authority over some of these facilities as though they were manufacturers, as though there were an on-off, black-white option,” Dr. Hamburg said. “That is a heavy-handed way to regulate a set of activities that can make a huge positive difference in providing necessary health care to people.”

The central problem, state representatives said, is how to define large-scale compounding. Should companies be measured by how much they produce, whether they ship across state lines, the types of products they produce, or some combination of those factors?

“It’s easy to stand at a distance and ask why can’t there be a bright line?” said Jay Campbell, executive director of the North Carolina Board of Pharmacy. “Let’s not let the perfect get in the way of the good. We won’t be able to make a distinction that is razor sharp.”

Large-scale compounders play an important role in the health care supply chain when they produce high-quality products, F.D.A. officials say. They fill gaps during shortages and supply hospitals with products that can be made more safely and cost-effectively in bulk than in individual hospitals.

Officials said they wanted to make sure the products made by such suppliers were safe, but were also concerned about disrupting that supply.

Carmen Catizone, head of the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy, said that states were not equipped to regulate the large-scale compounders and that the F.D.A. needed to find a middle path for regulating them.

“Either hospitals are not going to like the solution, or the manufacturers aren’t going to like the fact that these guys get a shorter path,” he said. “But something’s got to give.”

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State of the Art: Android Cameras From Nikon and Samsung Go Beyond Cellphones - Review

60 Seconds With Pogue: Android Cameras:
David Pogue reviews the Nikon Coolpix S800C and the Samsung Galaxy Camera.

“Android camera.” Wow, that has a weird ring, doesn’t it? You just don’t think of a camera as having an operating system. It’s like saying “Windows toaster” or “Unix jump rope.”

But yes, that’s what it has come to. Ever since cellphone cameras got good enough for everyday snapshots, camera sales have been dropping. For millions of people, the ability to share a fresh photo wirelessly — Facebook, Twitter, e-mail, text message — is so tempting, they’re willing to sacrifice a lot of real-camera goodness.

That’s an awfully big convenience/photo-quality swap. A real camera teems with compelling features that most phones lack: optical zoom, big sensor, image stabilization, removable memory cards, removable batteries and decent ergonomics. (A four-inch, featureless glass slab is not exactly optimally shaped for a hand-held photographic instrument.)

But the camera makers aren’t taking the cellphone invasion lying down. New models from Nikon and Samsung are obvious graduates of the “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” school. The Nikon Coolpix S800C ($300) and Samsung’s Galaxy Camera ($500 from AT&T, $550 from Verizon) are fascinating hybrids. They merge elements of the cellphone and the camera into something entirely new and — if these flawed 1.0 versions are any indication — very promising.

From the back, you could mistake both of these cameras for Android phones. The big black multitouch screen is filled with app icons. Yes, app icons. These cameras can run Angry Birds, Flipboard, Instapaper, Pandora, Firefox, The New York Times, GPS navigation programs and so on. You download and run them exactly the same way. (That’s right, a GPS function. “What’s the address, honey? I’ll plug it into my camera.”)

But the real reason you’d want an Android camera is wirelessness. Now you can take a real photo with a real camera — and post it or send it online instantly. You eliminate the whole “get home and transfer it to the computer” step.

And as long as your camera can get online, why stop there? These cameras also do a fine job of handling Web surfing, e-mail, YouTube videos, Facebook feeds and other online tasks. Well, as fine a job as a phone could do, anyway.

You can even make Skype video calls, although you won’t be able to see your conversation partner; the lens has to be pointing toward you.

Both cameras get online using Wi-Fi hot spots. The Samsung model can also get online over the cellular networks, just like a phone, so you can upload almost anywhere.

Of course, there’s a price for that luxury. Verizon charges at least $30 a month if you don’t have a Verizon plan, or $5 if you have a Verizon Share Everything plan. AT&T charges $50 a month or more for the camera alone, or $10 more if you already have a Mobile Share plan.

If you have a choice, Verizon is the way to go. Not only is $5 a month much more realistic than $10 a month, but Verizon’s 4G LTE network is far faster than AT&T’s 4G network. That’s an important consideration, since what you’ll mostly be doing with your 4G cellular camera is uploading big photo files. (Wow. Did I just write “4G cellular camera?”)

These cameras offer a second big attraction, though: freedom of photo software. The Android store overflows with photography apps. Mix and match. Take a shot with one app, crop, degrade and post it with Instagram.

Just beware that most of them are intended for cellphones, so they don’t recognize these actual cameras’ optical zoom controls. Some of the photo-editing apps can’t handle these cameras’ big 16-megapixel files, either. Unfortunately, you won’t really know until you pay the $1.50 or $4 to download these apps.

E-mail: pogue@nytimes.com

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Two more funerals in Newtown; NRA responds to school massacre

NEWTOWN, Conn. -- Two more of the children killed by a gunman who invaded a Connecticut elementary school were buried on Tuesday as officials released new details of the deadly spree that has reshaped the debate over gun control.

The National Rifle Assn., which has been under pressure to comment on the Newtown shootings, broke its silence and issued a statement saying it was ready to offer its plans at a Friday news conference.

“We were shocked, saddened and heartbroken by the news of the horrific and senseless murders in Newtown,” said the pro-gun rights lobbying group, which has repeatedly fought gun-control legislation on the national, state and local levels. “The NRA is prepared to offer meaningful contributions to help make sure this never happens again.”

PHOTOS: Mourning after the massacre

Both funerals were held at St. Rose of Lima Catholic Church, which has been one of the centers for consoling the bereaved and for memorial services that began Friday evening, hours after Adam Lanza opened fire inside Sandy Hook Elementary School.

Primarily using a Bushmaster AR-15-style rifle, Lanza killed 20 children and six adults in the school before turning a handgun on himself, authorities said. The rampage began Friday morning when Lanza killed his mother, Nancy, in the home they shared.

Dr. H. Wayne Carver, the state’s chief medical examiner, told reporters on Tuesday that Nancy Lanza was shot four times in the head with a .22-caliber rifle. She was most likely asleep when she was killed, Carver said, according to the Hartford Courant.

After shooting his mother, Adam Lanza took her car and several of her guns and went to the school, where he forcibly entered and opened fire. The Bushmaster and two handguns were later recovered from the building and a shotgun was found in the car, officials said.

Sandy Hook Elementary remains closed, most likely for months, as investigators continue their work seeking to understand why Lanza did what he did. The hundreds of students at the school are being relocated to a school in nearby Monroe, Conn.

In the rain and cold Tuesday, other Newtown students returned to their schools where teachers were prepared to help them cope with the massacre. Campuses also had a sizable police presence to reassure parents.

One Newtown school, Head O'Meadow Elementary, was locked down Tuesday due to an unspecified threat. The principal told parents to keep their children home, according to a letter from the principal published by WFSB-TV. Police have said they will deal harshly with hoaxes and threats, including two directed over the weekend at St. Rose.

The first funeral Tuesday morning was for James Mattioli, 6. In what has become an ongoing sight, mourners kept their heads down and walked quickly into the building, and refused to comment. The families have repeatedly asked for privacy for their grief, a position backed by local police.

James' funeral was the first of eight to be held at the church. By noon, flowers for the second service, for Jessica Rekos, also 6, had begun to arrive.

James has been described by family members as a budding “numbers guy.” Jessica was a horse enthusiast who wanted cowgirl boots for Christmas, relatives told reporters.

A wake was scheduled Tuesday night for slain teacher Victoria Soto. Police were to be part of an honor guard for Soto, who died trying to protect her students by getting them into a closet and putting her body between the gunman and her charges.

The shootings have reopened the debate on gun-control laws, specifically whether to renew the expired national ban on assault weapons. President Obama has asked his staff to come up with proposals, though no time frame for action has been given. Even staunch pro-gun rights lawmakers have also called for reopening discussion on some bans.

ALSO:

'Puppies for Rent' business in Utah sparks criticism

L.A. girls pay tribute in visit, but Newtown is a day of hearses

'No, no, no': Harrowing 911 call, then 4 dead near Longmont, Colo.

Susman reported from Newtown, Conn., and Muskal from Los Angeles.

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Army Says This General Sexually Abused an Officer, Then Threatened Her Career

An Army general isn’t just accused of sexually assaulting a female subordinate. According to newly released military documents, the one-star general ”threaten[ed] to use his rank, position, and authority to damage or ruin [the captain's] military career if she ended their sexual relationship.” And he disobeyed a direct order from his superior officer to leave the female officer alone.

Army Brig. Gen. Jeffrey Sinclair, the former deputy commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, “received a lawful command from Major General (O-8) James L. Huggins,” then Sinclair’s superior officer, to cease contact with an unnamed female Army captain that Sinclair stands accused of sodomizing “without [her] consent.” That’s according to Sinclair’s official charge sheet, which Danger Room has acquired. Sinclair “attempt[ed] to willfully disobey the same by calling her cell phone” in March 2012. That attempted contact occurred after Sinclair allegedly sexually abused the captain.

It is unclear from the charge sheet if Huggins knew that Sinclair had forced himself on the captain, who apparently maintained a sexual relationship with Sinclair for years. Huggins recently completed a tour as the 82nd’s commanding officer and commander of U.S. forces in southern Afghanistan. He is slated for a promotion to lieutenant general.

On Tuesday, officials at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, announced that Sinclair will definitely face a court-martial on charges of forcible sodomy, sexual misconduct, conduct unbecoming an officer, and other charges. Sinclair’s arraignment at Fort Bragg is scheduled for Jan. 22.

According to the charge sheet, the married Sinclair displayed “pornographic and sexually explicit photographs and movies” while serving in both Iraq and Afghanistan; used his government charge card for personal uses; and carried “inappropriate relationship[s]” with at least two other female officers, one a major and the other a lieutenant. The charge sheet does not accuse Sinclair of abusing those officers.

Sinclair is also charged with covering up his abuse of the female captain. In March of 2012, while he was serving in Kandahar, the charge sheet alleges Sinclair “wrongfully endeavor[ed]] to impede an investigation in the case of himself, by deleting nude photographs” and the e-mail account that either sent or received them.

As has been previously reported, when criticized for using “derogatory and demeaning words to refer to female staff officers,” Sinclair allegedly responded, “I’m a general, I’ll say whatever the [redacted] I want,” according to the charge sheet, which calls that “conduct unbecoming an officer and gentleman.” The female captain allegedly abused by Sinclair testified at a pre-trial hearing at Fort Bragg in November.

Secrecy has surrounded the Sinclair case since it became public in September that Sinclair faced potential prosecution. It’s unusual for the sheet listing the charges facing an accused servicemember to be delayed for so long. Retired Air Force Col. Morris Davis, a former chief prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay, told Danger Room in November that it smelled of favoritism shown to a general officer that an enlisted soldier wouldn’t enjoy. The Army insists that’s flat wrong.

“We did not initially release the charge sheets because the Article 32 investigating officer needed to decide if the evidence presented was sufficient to bring forward to the General Court Martial Convening authority for his action,” says Col. Kevin Arata, the spokesman for the XVIII Airborne Corps at Fort Bragg. “Now that the GCMCA has made a decision on those charges, and the accused is being arraigned, we know explicitly what charges are being referred against the accused, thus the release of the redacted charge sheets at this time.”

Gary Solis, a military law scholar at Georgetown University, considers that a credible explanation. “There is much to criticize, when it comes to public access to disciplinary matters denied by the military, but this is not such a case,” Solis tells Danger Room. “To have publicly announced un-investigated charges in the case of a general officer, even this one, would have been a miscarriage of justice, had any of the charges been demonstrated at the 32 to be groundless.”

Davis, unconvinced, adds: “I can’t recall a case where there was public interest where the charges were withheld from public disclosure until after the Convening Authority decided to refer the case to trial.”

Sinclair is one of a number of prominent generals whose ethical lapses have prompted Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to launch an inquiry into whether the military needs to review its ethics training. (Dempsey’s initial findings, delivered last Friday, are that general and flag officers could benefit from ethics refreshers.)

But those other generals either misused small amounts of their official salaries for personal benefit, like Army Gen. William “Kip” Ward and Navy Adm. James Stavridis, or may have had “flirtatious” relationships over e-mail, like Marine Gen. John Allen. Sinclair stands accused of sexually assaulting, harassing and humiliating one of the officers under his command. It’s hard to imagine that a general officer needs a refresher course to understand how wrong that is.

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Naomi Watts pulls off “The Impossible” to critical acclaim

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Days after the devastating 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, actress Naomi Watts took part in a fundraising telethon spearheaded by George Clooney to help the region’s hundreds of thousands of people in 14 nations whose lives were shattered.

Little did Watts know that eight years later she would be starring in “The Impossible,” out in the U.S. movie theaters on Friday, about a real family’s experience in Thailand. The tsunami and earthquake killed more than 5,000 people, and resulted in 2,800 missing in that country alone.

Yet when the actress was first approached to star in the film, directed by Spanish filmmaker Juan Antonio Bayona, she hesitated.

“I thought, how do you make a movie about a tsunami without it becoming some sort of spectacular disaster movie?” Watts, 44, told Reuters. “That would be so wrong.”

However once Watts read the script, she said was moved by the story based on the real-life Spanish family of Maria Belon, her husband Enrique Alvarez – played by Ewan McGregor in the movie – and their three sons.

Belon’s family were spending their Christmas holiday in Thailand when the tsunami hit. The film follows their struggle to survive, injured and separated, in the aftermath and their perseverance in finding each other amidst the chaos.

“I felt a huge amount of pressure because of the responsibility to Maria’s story,” said Watts. “And on her back, she carries the stories of everybody else because hers is connected to the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. I felt a sense of responsibility.”

PLAUDITS FOR WATTS’ PERFORMANCE

The British-born, Australian actress delivered, despite her fears. So far, her performance has earned Watts best actress nominations from the Golden Globes, the Screen Actors Guild and the Broadcast Film Critics Association.

The New York Observer wrote in its review that “Watts seems almost spiritually committed to her role” while The Hollywood Reporter said she “packs a huge charge of emotion as the battered, ever-weakening Maria whose tears of pain and fear never appear fake or idealized.”

Watts credits the real Maria Belon for being “an open book” when it came to recalling her personal experience during that harrowing time.

The two met before shooting began, and Belon was on the film set. Belon, a physician in Spain, also wrote detailed letters chronicling her experience, including taking refuge in a tree and the Thai villagers who discovered her weak and injured body.

One of the more challenging aspects of the shoot was recreating the tsunami, a 10-minute sequence in the film that Watts said took six weeks to shoot on location in Spain. Rather than creating the tidal wave digitally, actors were anchored in water tanks with the current pushing at them and “debris being chucked at you.”

Watts said that while the challenge of shooting the sequence was incomparable to the suffering of those who went through the ordeal in 2004, it was “physically the most demanding thing I’ve ever done.”

There was much more dialogue scripted during that sequence but “you were struggling to breathe and we quickly learned that once you open your mouth, water is going in and nothing is coming out.

“Though it was difficult, I’m grateful we got that kind of level of fear and intensity,” she added.

What offset the intensity during the shoot was having her sons Sasha, 5, and Sammy, 4, visiting Watts on the set. “We had them paint stuff on themselves like scars and wounds, then rub them off so they could see it wasn’t real,” recalled Watts.

It’s a far cry from the way she used to approach her work before having kids, such as her Oscar-nominated performance as a grief-stricken mother the 2003 film “21 Grams.”

“I was taking everything home with me, staying up all hours, writing, thinking, researching … just living with torment,” Watts recalled of that time. “I can’t live like that at this point in my life with little ones. I am a mom of two small kids and once I put the key in the door, it’s my duty to be totally present.”

(Editing By Jill Serjeant; Editing by Alden Bentley)

Movies News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Attackers in Pakistan Kill Anti-Polio Workers

Rizwan Tabassum/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

A Pakistani mother mourned her daughter, who was killed on Tuesday in an attack on health workers participating in a drive to eradicate polio from Pakistan.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Gunmen shot dead five female health workers who were immunizing children against polio on Tuesday, causing the Pakistani government to suspend vaccinations in two cities and dealing a fresh setback to an eradication campaign dogged by Taliban resistance in a country that is one of the disease’s last global strongholds.

“It is a blow, no doubt,” said Shahnaz Wazir Ali, an adviser on polio to Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf. “Never before have female health workers been targeted like this in Pakistan. Clearly there will have to be more and better arrangements for security.”

No group claimed responsibility for the attacks, but most suspicion focused on the Pakistani Taliban, which has previously blocked polio vaccinators and complained that the United States is using the program as a cover for espionage.

The killings were a serious reversal for the multibillion-dollar global polio immunization effort, which over the past quarter century has reduced the number of endemic countries from 120 to just three: Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria.

Nonetheless, United Nations officials insisted that the drive would be revived after a period for investigation and regrouping, as it had been after previous attacks on vaccinators here, in Afghanistan and elsewhere.

Pakistan has made solid gains against polio, with 56 new recorded cases of the diseases in 2012, compared with 192 at the same point last year, according to the government. Worldwide, cases of death and paralysis from polio have been reduced to less than 1,000 last year, from 350,000 worldwide in 1988.

But the campaign here has been deeply shaken by Taliban threats and intimidation, though several officials said Tuesday that they had never seen such a focused and deadly attack before.

Insurgents have long been suspicious of polio vaccinators, seeing them as potential spies. But that greatly intensified after the C.I.A. used a vaccination team headed by a local doctor, Shakil Afridi, to visit Osama bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, reportedly in an attempt to obtain DNA proof that the Bin Laden family was there before an American commando raid attacked it in May 2011.

In North Waziristan, one prominent warlord has banned polio vaccinations until the United States ceases drone strikes in the area.

Most new infections in Pakistan occur in the tribal belt and adjoining Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province — some of the most remote areas of the country, and also those with the strongest militant presence. People fleeing fighting in those areas have also spread the disease to Karachi, the country’s largest city, where the disease has been making a worrisome comeback in recent years.

After Tuesday’s attacks, witnesses described violence that was both disciplined and well coordinated. Five attacks occurred within an hour in different Karachi neighborhoods. In several cases, the killers traveled in pairs on motorcycle, opening fire on female health workers as they administered polio drops or moved between houses in crowded neighborhoods.

Of the five victims, three were teenagers, and some had been shot in the head, a senior government official said. Two male health workers were also wounded by gunfire; early reports incorrectly stated that one of them had died, the official said.

In Peshawar, the capital of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province, gunmen opened fire on two sisters participating in the polio vaccination program, killing one of them. It was unclear whether that shooting was directly linked to the Karachi attacks.

In remote parts of the northwest, the Taliban threat is exacerbated by the government’s crumbling writ. In Bannu, on the edge of the tribal belt, one polio worker, Noor Khan, said he quit work on Tuesday once news of the attacks in Karachi and Peshawar filtered in. “We were told to stop immediately,” he said by phone.

Still, the Pakistani government has engaged considerable political and financial capital in fighting polio. President Asif Ali Zardari and his daughter Aseefa have been at the forefront of immunization drives. With the help of international donors, including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, they have mounted a huge vaccination campaign aimed at up to 35 million children younger than 5, usually in three-day bursts that can involve 225,000 health workers.

The plan seeks to have every child in Pakistan immunized at least four times per year, although in the hardest-hit areas one child could be reached as many as 12 times in a year.

Declan Walsh reported from Islamabad, and Donald G. McNeil Jr. from New York. Salman Masood contributed reporting from Islamabad, and Zia ur-Rehman from Karachi, Pakistan.

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Facebook Responds to Anger Over Proposed Instagram Changes

Jeremy Pinnix, a 40-year-old app developer in Spring Hill, Tenn., has been a regular user of the photo-sharing service Instagram since it was introduced in 2010, posting pictures of his family, local scenery and favorite moments.

But when he learned this week about changes to the company’s terms of service that would apparently allow his photos to be used as advertisements, he didn’t hesitate. Mr. Pinnix deleted his account and has not looked back.

“Many of the photos I take are of my wife and kids,” he said. “The idea that those could be used in ads without my consent is disconcerting.”

The anxiety has been a mounting theme on social networks this week as Instagram users react to the coming changes, part of a push by Facebook, which now owns Instagram, to make money from the service.

On Tuesday evening, the complaints, which included angry tweets and images on Instagram protesting the changes, prompted some action. Kevin Systrom, a co-founder of Instagram, wrote a blog post saying the company would change the new terms of service to make clearer what would happen to users’ pictures.

“We’ve heard loud and clear that many users are confused and upset about what the changes mean,” he wrote. “I’m writing this today to let you know we’re listening and to commit to you that we will be doing more to answer your questions, fix any mistakes, and eliminate the confusion.”

Eric Goldman, an associate professor at the Santa Clara University School of Law, said the latest skirmish between Facebook and its users was part of the sometimes uncomfortable dynamic between companies offering free online services and their eventual need to turn a profit from them.

“The interest of the site is never 100 percent aligned with the users, and the divergence inevitably leads to friction,” said Mr. Goldman. “It’s unavoidable.”

When it announced the changes on Monday, Facebook provided few details on how it would integrate ads and photos, other than to say that when the changes went into effect on Jan. 16, they would not affect any photographs uploaded to the service before then.

That did not prevent unhappy users from threatening to take their portfolios of photographs over to rival services, such as EyeEm, another social photo-sharing application. Many, including Mr. Pinnix, eyed a return to Flickr, the former king of photo-sharing services, which is owned by Yahoo. In a stroke of lucky timing, Flickr had just released a new application for the iPhone that has drawn considerable praise from users.

The operators of services like Instaport.me and Instabackup, which let people create copies of their Instagram photos, said they were seeing higher than average volume.

Linus Ekenstam, who helped found a service called Copygram that lets people back up their Instagram accounts and order physical prints of their favorite shots, said demand for the company’s free exporting tool had skyrocketed.

“It’s a thousand percent more activity than we’re used to,” he said. “Today is crazy.”

He estimated that roughly 15 people per minute were using the exporting tool, and around half a million photographs had been backed up.

Of course, that’s a sliver of the still-expanding Instagram universe. The company has said more than 100 million users have contributed upward of five billion photographs to the service to date. But should that momentum slow, it could very well damage the plan for producing advertising revenue on the scale Facebook was counting on after spending $735 million in cash and stock to buy Instagram. The company also risks scaring off skittish brands and advertisers that would not want to anger Facebook or Instagram users who disagree with how their images are used.

The history of the social Web is full of cautionary tales of companies, from Digg to Myspace, whose users eventually got so fed up with how the companies meddled that they fled to greener digital pastures, leaving the companies in ruin.

In Tuesday’s blog post, Mr. Systrom sought to quell the mounting unrest and reassure users that the company would not be peddling photographs of kids playing on the beach or friends partying in nightclubs to the highest bidder. “To be clear, it is not our intention to sell your photos,” he said.

He said that the company also did not intend to put its members in advertisements. “We do not have plans for anything like this and because of that we’re going to remove the language that raised the question,” he said. “Our main goal is to avoid things likes advertising banners you see in other apps that would hurt the Instagram user experience.”

He did concede that the company might do something like promote a brand like Topshop and show Facebook visitors which of their friends already follow Topshop, tiny blurbs that could include their username and avatar.

Mr. Systrom also insisted that Instagram users still “own their content” and that “Instagram does not claim any ownership rights over your photos,” adding, “Nothing about this has changed.”

Of course, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, said nearly the same thing in April: “We need to be mindful about keeping and building on Instagram’s strengths and features rather than just trying to integrate everything into Facebook. That’s why we’re committed to building and growing Instagram independently.” Since then, the company has cut off Facebook’s easy integration with rival Twitter and bound the photo service more tightly into Facebook.

Rebecca Lieb, an analyst with the Altimeter Group, said worries about Facebook changing for the worse has become par for the course almost any time Facebook alters its site, whether in the design or in its privacy policies. It underscores the importance and omnipotence of the service in its users lives as much as it signals a distrust of Facebook itself.

“There’s always a reaction when Facebook does anything because the user base is so unbelievably large,” said Ms. Lieb. “But while what its users say can be very loud and very viral, what they do can be two very disparate things.”

“There are always Facebook users who say ‘This is the last straw,’ ” she said. But in the end, she said, “there’s not a lot of portability. Where would you go?”

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Hawaii's nine-term senator, Daniel Inouye, dies at 88

WASHINGTON – Sen. Daniel Inouye of Hawaii, the second-longest-serving senator in U.S. history and winner of the Medal of Honor for combat heroics in World War II, has died, his office announced in a statement. He was 88.

"His last words were, 'Aloha,'" his office said.

Inouye died at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, with his wife, Irene, and his son, Ken, at his side. Last rites were performed by Senate Chaplain Dr. Barry Black, his office said.

A senator since 1963, Inouye in 2009 became chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, where he continued a long record of helping fund projects in his home state. From 1998 to 2003, he steered $1.4 billion to military projects in Hawaii, according to The Almanac of American Politics.

The son of Japanese immigrants, Inouye grew up in Honolulu, where he was teaching a first aid course at age 17 when Pearl Harbor was attacked.  He enlisted in the Army in 1943, when it dropped its ban on Japanese Americans.

PHOTOS: Notable deaths of 2012

Promoted to sergeant, he fought in Italy and France. On April 21, 1945, while leading an assault in Italy against the Germans, Inouye was shot in the stomach. He nonetheless attacked and destroyed two machine gun nests before being even more severely wounded, losing his right arm.

“By his gallant, aggressive tactics and by his indomitable leadership, Second Lieutenant Inouye enabled his platoon to advance through formidable resistance, and was instrumental in the capture of the ridge,” says his citation for the Medal of Honor, the military’s highest award. “Second Lieutenant Inouye's extraordinary heroism and devotion to duty are in keeping with the highest traditions of military service and reflect great credit on him, his unit, and the United States Army.”

When asked in recent days how he wanted to be remembered, Inouye said, according to his office, "I represented the people of Hawaii and this nation honestly and to the best of my ability. I think I did OK."

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ken.dilanian@latimes.com

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Scarlett Johansson Hacker Gets 10 Years

A Florida man was sentenced Monday to 10 years in prison after pleading guilty to charges in connection to hacking the e-mail accounts of actress Scarlett Johansson and dozens of other celebrities.

Christopher Chaney, 36, of Jacksonville, Florida, had hijacked photos that Johansson took of herself in the nude. They appeared online and showed her looking seductively at a phone camera as she snapped images of her bare breasts while lying on a bed. Another image showed her bare backside, taken as she looked into a mirror.

Chaney told a local Florida news station last year that his hacking began simply as a “curiosity” but soon turned into an addiction for stealing celebrity secrets.

“It just happened and snowballed,” he said. “I didn’t know how to stop doing it myself.”

Some of Chaney’s victims also include Christina Aguilera, Mila Kunis and Renee Olstead. Dozens of other victims are identified by initials only.

U.S. District Judge S. James Otero of Los Angeles sentenced Chaney after reviewing a videotaped statement from a tearful Johansson.

Chaney, who used the online nicknames “trainreqsuckswhat,” “anonygrrl,” and “jaxjaguars911,” was indicted (.pdf) on nine counts of computer hacking, eight counts of aggravated identify theft, and nine counts of illegal wiretapping. His nickname “trainreqsuckswhat” is a reference to another alleged celebrity hacker named Josh Holly who told Threat Level in 2008 that he had hacked Miley Cyrus’ email account and stole suggestive photos of her that were later posted online.

Chaney was able to guess the passwords celebrities used for their email accounts by monitoring their social media accounts for possible clues — such as a pet’s name — that might point to a password.

Once he hacked into a celebrity’s e-mail account, he’d search the celebrity’s contact list for other celebrity e-mail accounts and then target those victims, too. He’d then alter the account settings to automatically forward a copy of any e-mails the celebrity received to an e-mail account Chaney controlled.

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