News Update Place

WASHINGTON - Facing angry criticism and challenges to his authority in Congress, President Bush on Saturday unapologetically defended his administration’s right to conduct secret post-Sept. 11 spying in the United States as “critical to saving American lives.”

NEW YORK (Billboard) - The year is ending nearly two weeks too soon to catch the biggest radio news of the day: the debut of Howard Stern on Sirius Satellite Radio.

In the year-plus since Stern announced his upcoming departure from terrestrial radio, the battle lines have been drawn. He has lambasted traditional radio, Clear Channel, the Federal Communications Commission and even his bosses at Viacom-owned Infinity.

In October, Infinity CEO Joel Hollander unveiled his post-Stern strategy, announcing a new talk-based format — “Free FM” — for Stern flagship WXRK New York and stations in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Philadelphia, San Diego and Baltimore. As for the morning vacancy, Van Halen veteran David Lee Roth will cover Eastern stations, “Loveline” co-host Adam Carolla will take the shift on the West Coast and Ohio DJ Rover will pick up stations in the Midwest.

The Stern publicity machine cranked into high gear this month, with the man in high profile on CBS (”60 Minutes”), NBC (”Today”), Newsweek and the cover of New York magazine.

His move is arguably the make-or-break moment for Sirius. The company predicts it will have 3 million subscribers by the time Stern hits the air on January 9. Rival XM expects to have twice that.

If January holds satellite’s D-Day, then terrestrial radio took the covers off its beach-head armaments on December 6. That is when eight major broadcasters came together to announce their strategy to turn high-definition radio (terrestrial’s digital initiative) from a neat idea to a practical reality.

These companies seek to challenge satellite on the digital sound and programing variety fronts. Variety will be achieved by splitting up the digital signal on a frequency to allow multicasting. The mandate is for those “side channels” to contain programing not already found at mainstream radio.

Speaking December 7 at the UBS Warburg Global Media Conference in New York, Emmis Broadcasting president/CEO Jeff Smulyan admitted that radio has “been very stale . . . we’ve over-researched ourselves.”

But satellite is not the only competition for terrestrial radio. The success of Apple Computer’s iPod and the podcasting phenomenon that followed have worked to make everyone a radio programer and inspired the likes of NPR and Infinity to release podcasts of their own. The latter also took a San Francisco AM and crowned it the first all-podcast radio station.

The shuffle function of the iPod was equally inspiring to radio. Stations that had switched to the format du jour, Jack, touted it as the radio version of an iPod on shuffle. Jack became the new format by not having a format. The listener never knew who the next act would be (K.C. & the Sunshine Band into Nirvana was fair game) but would surely like it.

According to Billboard Radio Monitor research, 12 out of 18 top 60 market stations that flipped to Jack between summer 2004 and summer 2005 have improved their 25-49 ratings.

Almost as surprising as the Jack uptake is the amount of money that stations are investing in marketing the format. Infinity had Jack advertising on nearly every bus in New York.

Latin formats were another big format-flip target. By the time the summer ratings came out, a baker’s dozen of stations in the top 25 markets had flipped to Spanish-language programing. Ten had ratings increases.

Still gathering clouds over radio is the investigation by New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, whose office this year struck multimillion-dollar settlements with Sony BMG and Warner Music Group over pay-for-play tactics. The other players in these transactions have been radio stations, and the FCC is taking notice. Democratic commissioner Jonathan Adelstein released a statement late last month that said his agency has concerns regarding Spitzer’s findings.

With all of these pressures, the business of radio is no longer a stock market favorite. To combat that, traditional radio is aggressively investing in itself.

This newfound desire of the medium to put its money where its mouth is best-summarized by Greater Media president/CEO Peter Smyth, who told Billboard early this fall: “We (had) pulled away all of those marketing dollars and thrown them to Wall Street . . . Then Wall Street turns around, kicks us in the teeth and says, ‘Radio’s not cool.’ It’s not cool because we’re not investing in making it cool.”

Reuters/Billboard

At least 114 people have been killed by a massive car bomb in the worst single such incident since the US-led invasion nearly two years ago.
At least 130 others were wounded in the blast in Hilla, 100km (60 miles) south of the capital, Baghdad.

The car, reportedly driven by a suicide bomber, exploded near a queue of people applying for government jobs.

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan condemned the attack “in the strongest possible terms”.

He said the only purpose of such “repeated acts of senseless violence” was to “undermine the prospects for a democratic and prosperous Iraq”.

He urged all sides to “put aside their differences and work together in a spirit of national reconciliation”.

Iraqi insurgents are waging a violent campaign against US-backed authorities, targeting anyone associated with the government.

Death toll ‘to rise’

Local police said a suicide car bomb “hit a gathering of people who were applying for work in the security services”.

Several people were arrested in connection with the blast, the police said.

Torn limbs, feet and other body parts littered the street after the blast.

Footage showed pools of blood at the scene, with dozens of people helping to put body parts into blankets. Shoes and tattered clothes were piled up in a corner.

“I was lined up near the medical centre, waiting for my turn for the medical exam in order to apply for work in the police,” Abdullah Salih, 22, told the Associated Press.

“Suddenly I heard a very big explosion. I was thrown several metres away and I had burns in my legs and hands, then I was taken to the hospital,” he said.

Muhsin Hadi, 29, broke his leg in the blast. “I was lucky because I was the last person in line when the explosion took place,” he told AP.

The director of the Hilla teaching hospital, Mohammed Dia, told the BBC the explosion was far worse than anything the town had experienced before.

He said the number of dead was likely to rise, partly because some of the injured were in a serious condition, and partly because some of the victims had been blown to pieces.

“All the hospital’s rooms, even those used for cardiology, are filled with the wounded,” he said.

Security

A medical official told the Reuters news agency that local people had been called on to donate blood and that expert assistance had been requested from further afield.

A spokesman for Iraq’s Red Crescent Society said the agency was also sending emergency medicine and doctors to the town.

The attack comes as Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said Iraq’s security forces were still unable to take on the insurgency without the help of US troops.

“Iraqis should be able to start taking over more and more security responsibilities very soon,” he wrote in the Wall Street Journal.

“But we will continue to need and to seek assistance for some time to come.”

Iraqi groups are holding talks over forming a new, Shia-dominated government following last month’s general elections.

Hilla is a mainly Shia town, and Sunni militants have been openly striking at Shia targets in an attempt to stir up sectarian strife, says the BBC’s Jim Muir in Baghdad.

In another incident, a US soldier was shot and killed in Baghdad on Sunday while manning a traffic checkpoint, the US military says.

BOSTON (Reuters) - Are diamonds really forever?

An anonymous gift-giver left a $15,000 diamond engagement ring to the owner of an unlocked car in western Massachusetts with a typed note hinting at a broken heart.

“Merry Christmas. Thank you for leaving your car door unlocked. Instead of stealing your car I gave you a present. Hopefully this will land in the hands of someone you love, for my love is gone now. Merry Christmas to you,” the note said.

The three-diamond ring with a white-gold band appeared on the seat of the man’s car at a train station in Westborough, about 30 miles west of Boston, on December 7, police said. Four days later, the man reported it to police.

“This appears to be random,” said Westborough Police Lt. Paul Donnelly. “I think there was a search for a car that was unlocked.”

The 37-year-old man decided to keep the ring after a jeweler appraised its value at $15,000, police said.

WELLINGTON, New Zealand - A group of 40 people dressed in Santa Claus costumes, many of them drunk, rampaged through New Zealand’s largest city, robbing stores and assaulting security guards, police said Sunday.

The rampage, dubbed “Santarchy” by local newspapers, began early Saturday afternoon when the men, wearing ill-fitting Santa costumes, threw beer bottles and urinated on cars from an Auckland overpass, said Auckland Central Police spokeswoman Noreen Hegarty.

She said the men then rushed through a central city park, overturning garbage containers, throwing bottles at passing cars and spraying graffiti on buildings.

One man climbed the mooring line of a cruise ship before being ordered down by the captain. Other Santas, objecting when the man was arrested, attacked security staff, Hegarty said.

The remaining Santas entered a downtown convenience store and carried off beer and soft drinks.

“They came in, said ‘Merry Christmas’ and then helped themselves,” store owner Changa Manakynda said.

Alex Dyer, a spokesman for the group, said Santarchy was a worldwide movement designed to protest the commercialization of Christmas.

Three people were arrested and charged with drunkenness and disorderly behavior.

LONDON (Reuters) - British police hunted for three men on Saturday who stole a huge bronze Henry Moore sculpture worth up to 3 million pounds ($5.30 million) and a spokesman said they feared the piece would be destroyed for scrap.

Police said the 3.5 meter long (11 ft 5.8 in) sculpture, “A Reclining Figure,” was stolen from the Henry Moore Foundation in Hertfordshire, north of London, on Thursday night by three men who drove it away.

“This is a very valuable statue and we are working closely with the Henry Moore Foundation to ensure its safe return,” Detective Sergeant Graeme Smith said, adding that the Foundation was offering “a substantial reward.”

“We’re keeping an open mind at the moment,” he told Reuters. “It could be anything from an organized theft for persons in the art world, down to an opportunist theft for the scrap value of the bronze.

“It would be extremely difficult to sell it on as it is … (and) that is what the people at the foundation fear.”

British sculptor Moore, who died in 1986, is renowned for his large-scale, abstract work.

Moore made the sculpture in 1969/70. It was acquired by the Foundation in 1987.

NEW YORK - Architect James Ingo Freed, a longtime partner of I.M. Pei and the lead designer of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, has died at the age of 75.

His death Thursday at his Manhattan home was announced by his firm, Pei Cobb Freed & Partners.

Born in 1930 in Essen, Germany, Freed came to the United States at age 9 as the Nazi terror gathered momentum in Europe.

He went to work with the internationally renowned Pei in 1956, and was often overshadowed by him, even as Freed built an independent reputation with apartment houses, public buildings and office towers around the country.

Freed’s designs include the giant glass caverns of the Jacob K. Javitz Convention Center in Manhattan, the half-modernist, half-Beaux-Arts main public library in San Francisco, and the country’s second largest federal building, The Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center in Washington.

His crowning project, though, was the Holocaust Memorial Museum, heralded by critics for its ability to evoke the death camps and ghettos described in its exhibits.

“This is an architecture that sears the memory and invades the dreams,” wrote Blair Kamin of the Chicago Tribune. In The New York Times, Herbert Muschamp called it “a work of such enormous power that it defies language.”

Freed, an unobservant Jew who had lost touch with his heritage until he was hired for the project, told an interviewer from The Art Institute of Chicago in 1997 that never knew quite how to react when people told him how much they liked the building.

“You can’t have a normal response,” said Freed, noting that it seemed inappropriate to express enjoyment in a structure that memorializes the slaughter of millions.

“So I say, “Oh, yes, you did see it? Too bad for you, it was such an awful experience,” Freed said.

At the time of his death, Freed was awaiting completion of the United States Air Force Memorial in Arlington, Va., of which he was the principal designer.

The memorial, near the Pentagon, is comprised of three asymmetrical stainless steel spires — each over 200 feet tall — meant to resemble contrails of Air Force jets peeling back in a “bomb burst” maneuver.

Freed is survived by a daughter, Dara Freed, and a grandson. His wife, Hermine, died in 1998

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - The howling has stopped. An animal-rights group is dropping the “howl-ins” it conducted as part of a nationwide campaign to stop the killing of wolves in Alaska, but members will continue their call for a tourism boycott of the state.

Over the past two years, Friends of Animals helped stage hundreds of demonstrations in cities across the country to protest Alaska’s predator-control program, intended to allow moose and caribou to increase in numbers. Some activists dressed in wolf outfits at the gatherings, and some howled in imitation of wolves to protest the hunts.

But the campaign failed to convince Alaska Gov. Frank Murkowski that killing wolves is wrong, said Priscilla Feral, president of Friends of Animals, based in Darien, Conn.

“If the boycott was designed to get Murkowski to sacrifice an attitude, it didn’t happen,” Feral said.

The animal-rights group had better success about a decade ago, when then-Gov. Wally Hickel stopped a wolf-hunting program after 53 howl-ins in 51 cities.

State biologists estimate that Alaska has 7,000 to 11,000 wolves. They say that’s enough carnivores to drive down the number of moose and caribou that many residents rely on for food.

Murkowski remains a strong supporter of the program, said his spokesman, Mike Chambers.

“This has always been a responsible predator-control program that is intended to manage our game populations and it is working,” he said. “We are happy that Friends of Animals realizes that feeding people is more important than protecting animals that are not threatened in the first place.”

The wolf-control program started in 2003. More than 400 wolves have been killed under the program so far, and the state has set a goal of 400 more this winter, when snow makes the animals stand out. The state issued more than 100 new permits this month to hunt wolves on the ground and from the air.

From December 2003 through April of this year, Friends of Animals held 233 howl-ins across the nation.

But the campaign had little impact on Alaska tourism, according to Dave Worrell, spokesman for the Alaska Travel Industry Association, a trade organization of about 1,000 Alaska businesses. In fact, the number of summer tourists rose from 1.3 million in 2002 to an estimated 1.5 million this past summer, he said.

Friends of Animals will continue its call for a tourism boycott with ads on television and in print, Feral said. Ads have already appeared in publications including The New York Times, Good Housekeeping, National Geographic, and Oprah Winfrey and Martha Stewart magazines.

Feral said Friends of Animal also is fighting the wolf program in court. This past week, the group asked a judge to expedite a ruling on its latest challenge, which questions the state’s scientific evidence to support the program.

Matt Robus, director of the state Division of Wildlife Conservation, said state laws require management strategies when crucial moose and caribou herds decline below certain levels.

“We are not casually going out and deciding to do this,” he said. “One of the important uses under Alaska history is taking animals for feeding families, for the meat, for the food.”

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - You’ve got mail — and possibly gonorrhea, HIV or another sexually transmitted disease.

E-mail sent through Web sites launched in Los Angeles and San Francisco is providing people with a free, sometimes anonymous, way to tell their casual sex partners they might have picked up more than they bargained for.

Los Angeles County health officials launched www.inspotla.org this week in a bid to reduce the rapidly rising spread of STDs by encouraging sexually active men and women to get tested.

“This is another opportunity for people to disclose STD exposure to partners because sometimes people don’t always have that face-to-face opportunity, or that level of relationship,” Karen Mall, director of prevention and testing at the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, said on Thursday.

“Partner disclosure is where we really have the opportunity to break the chain of HIV infection,” Mall said.

The site allows users to choose one of six free e-cards to send to their sexual contacts either unsigned or with a personal message that avoids awkward face-to-face disclosure.

“It’s not what you brought to the party, it’s what you left with,” says one e-card featuring a picture of a bare-chested man. “I left with an STD. You might have one too. Get checked out soon.”

“You’re too hot to be out of action,” says another.

The Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center, which runs its own counseling services for partner disclosure, welcomed the Web site program.

“Many of the people we are seeing are listing the Internet as the place where they are meeting partners, so the Web site is a really helpful tool for prevention and contacting them,” said Tiffany Horton, manager of the center’s sexual health program.

The site is modeled on one launched in San Francisco last year (www.inspot.org) which is generating about 500 e-cards a month. Both are targeted at gay men but can be used by anyone.

Health officials call the e-cards a “fast, free and flexible partner notification system” that also gives information and links to local testing sites.

Some 2,400 new AIDS cases were reported in Los Angeles County in 2003, along with more than 8,000 new gonorrhea cases and 830 new syphilis cases — most of them among gay men.

The Web sites urge users to show respect and not to misuse the system. Mall said only half of 1 percent of the e-cards sent through the San Francisco site had been malicious or fraudulent.

“The sites do not give anybody the ability to do anything they can do already if they had somebody’s e-mail,” Mall said.

“It is something we can monitor. People can get hold of the Web master if they have concerns or want to complain.

“But I give the (gay) community more credit than that. I think the community really wants to get ahead of HIV and STDs and they realize that notification is really important,” she said.