Chinese cinema firm is seeking to buy all or part of AMC
By Richard Verrier, Los Angeles Times, May 9, 2012
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China’s biggest theater company is trying to get a foothold in the U.S. by picking up some or all of AMC Entertainment Inc., an arrangement that could further pry open the market for Hollywood films in the world’s most populous country.
AMC, the second-largest movie theater chain in the U.S., is negotiating a deal to sell all or part of itself to Wanda Group, two people familiar with the talks said.
The deal, if concluded, would make Wanda the first Chinese company to establish a major presence in the North American movie theater business.
AMC, which has 5,048 screens in 347 theaters in the U.S. and Canada, would gain access to China’s burgeoning market. China, in the midst of a multiplex building boom, was second to Japan at the international box office last year with $2 billion in ticket sales, according to the Motion Picture Assn. of America.
The talks between AMC and Wanda have intensified in recent weeks after AMC pulled the plug on a planned stock offering to raise as much as $450 million to pay down debt, according to sources who asked not to be identified because the negotiations were confidential.
Wanda Cinema Lines Corp. is the largest cinema chain in China, with 86 theaters and 730 screens. The parent company, Wanda Group, is a major real estate developer, with interests in department stores and hotels. READ…..
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For Craftsmen, Fragile Lifeline From Craigslist
By MOTOKO RICH, May 3, 2012, New York Times
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With few places to turn, construction workers have colonized Craigslist as the cyberspace equivalent of the street corner or the Home Depot parking lot.
Some are getting more than they bargained for as they search for ad hoc jobs. One Palm Beach man who previously worked on crews renovating Walmart stores agreed to clean out an apartment after a tenant committed suicide. But he drew the line at hanging up a sex swing.
Still the plaintive pleas for work keep coming online. That is because carpenters, bricklayers, roofers, painters, electricians, plumbers and carpet installers have largely been left out of the economic recovery. Builders are not hiring, homeowners are deferring renovations and governments are postponing highway and bridge projects. Economists are forecasting that the Labor Department will announce on Friday that the nation’s employers added about 165,000 net jobs last month — few of them in the construction industry.
When work was easy to find in 2005 and 2006, Mr. Patterson, 43, struck out on his own. He would place an ad in the Sunday newspaper and get 30 calls, yielding at least three or four jobs. Now, he said, he puts an ad on Craigslist two or three times a day and is lucky to get two calls a week. READ…..
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Debt Collector Is Faulted for Tough Tactics in Hospitals
By JESSICA SILVER-GREENBERG, April 24, 2012, New York Times
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Hospital patients waiting in the emergency room or convalescing after surgery could find themselves confronted by an unexpected visitor: a debt collector at bedside.
One of the nation’s largest medical debt-collection companies is under fire in Minnesota for having placed its employees in emergency rooms and other departments at two hospitals and demanding that patients pay before receiving treatment, according to documents released Tuesday by the Minnesota attorney general. The documents say the company also used patient health records to wrangle for more money on overdue bills.
The company, Accretive Health, has contracts not only with the two hospitals cited in Minnesota but also with some of the largest hospital systems in the country, including Henry Ford Health System in Michigan and Intermountain Healthcare in Utah. Since January, it has faced a civil lawsuit filed by Attorney General Lori Swanson of Minnesota alleging that it violated state and federal debt-collection laws and patient privacy protections.
As a growing number of hospitals struggle under a glut of unpaid bills, they are turning to companies like Accretive. To win promised savings, all hospitals have to do is turn over the management of their front-line staffing — ranging from patient registration to scheduling and billing — and their back-office collection activities. Accretive says it has such arrangements with some of the country’s largest hospital systems to help reduce their costs. READ….
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Dick Clark dies at 82; he introduced America to rock ‘n’ roll
By Geoff Boucher, Los Angeles Times, April 19, 2012
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Dick Clark, the youthful-looking television personality who literally introduced rock ‘n’ roll to much of the nation on “American Bandstand” and for four decades was the first and last voice many Americans heard each year with his New Year’s Eve countdowns, died Wednesday. He was 82.
Clark died after suffering a heart attack following an outpatient procedure at St. John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, according to a statement by his longtime publicist, Paul Shefrin. Clark’s health had been in question since a 2004 stroke affected his speech and mobility, but that year’s Dec. 31 countdown was the only one he missed since he started the annual rite during the Nixon years.
With the exception of Elvis Presley, Clark was considered by many to be the person most responsible for the bonfire spread of rock ‘n’ roll across the country in the late 1950s. “Bandstand” gave fans a way to hear and see rock’s emerging idols in a way that radio and magazines could not. It made Clark a household name and gave him the foundation for a shrewdly pursued broadcasting career that made him wealthy, powerful and present in American television for half a century.
He helped transform rock ‘n’ roll into a cultural force, and in the beginning he did it by introducing artists such as Chuck Berry, Bill Haley and the Comets, James Brown, Buddy Holly and the Everly Brothers for the first time. All made their national television debuts on “Bandstand.” READ….
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In Agent Scandal, Inquiry Leads to a Colombian Bordello
By WILLIAM NEUMAN and MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT, April 17, 2012, New York Times
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CARTAGENA, Colombia — At the Ligueros Club, one of many busy bordellos in this seaside tourist city, prostitutes dressed in lingerie wait for a bell to ring, signaling the arrival of men on the prowl. But the next group of American visitors to walk in the door may not be customers at all.
American investigators seeking to get to the bottom of the reported late-night activities of a group of Secret Service agents and military personnel assigned to President Obama’s recent visit to Colombia have begun searching for as many as 21 women who are believed to include prostitutes and to have spent the night with the security officers, American security officials say.
After uncovering evidence of misconduct, investigators for the Secret Service are seeking to interview women who are said to have accompanied 11 agents—including snipers and explosives experts — to their hotel rooms after a night of heavy drinking, said Representative Peter T. King, the chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security.
Prostitution is legal in Colombia in “tolerance zones.” A number of brothels in Cartagena are in these zones. READ….
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Dalai Lama promotes Hawaiian culture during visit
By Robert Shikina, April 14, 2012, Star Advertiser
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The Dalai Lama called Native Hawaiians “special brothers and sisters” to the Tibetan people and stressed the importance of indigenous people preserving their language and culture during a trip to the Bishop Museum on the second day of his Hawaii visit.
“I’m hearing your own stories,” he said. “From that level, we are truly special brothers and sisters.”
“In order to keep your culture alive, language is very essential,” he said.
He also urged people to protect nature despite improvements in technology that make some believe they can control nature.
“Our survival depends on it, so respect nature,” he said.
A chant and preschoolers singing a song in the Hawaiian language greeted the Dalai Lama when he arrived at the museum at about 9:10 a.m.
Allison Gendreau, chairwoman of the Bishop Museum board, presented His Holiness with a lei made from the orange blossoms of the kou trees on the Bishop Museum grounds. READ….
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Suicide flourishes in the Nevada desert
By Ashley Powers, Los Angeles Times, April 12, 2012
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After it happened, Megan Beza was consumed with figuring out why. Did her husband’s struggle with painkillers play a role? His months of fruitless job-hunting?
But with suicide, there are rarely tidy answers. What is known is that southern Nevada’s unusually high suicide rate spiked with the recession, and Megan thinks that must explain, at least in part, what happened the morning of Oct. 25, 2010.
John Beza had just returned from dropping off their 4-year-old son, Jacob, at preschool. Megan was taking a bath.
“I’m going to the doctor,” John told her.
“Why?”
“I don’t feel good.”
“What hurts?”
John, usually easygoing, snapped.
“I just don’t feel good!”
The couple bickered, and John knocked Megan’s cellphone into their large Roman tub. He stormed out. Megan wrapped herself in a towel and rushed after him. In their bedroom she heard something rustle.
“John?”
She tried to open the walk-in closet. Locked. John slid his cellphone to her under the door. She heard a click. Then a loud bang.
“JOHN!”
Megan somehow kicked through the bottom of the door. John was sprawled on his back, the .357 Magnum they’d bought for protection still in his hand. The bullet had passed through his head and punched a hole in the ceiling. Megan called 911, and a dispatcher tried to tell her how to clear his airways of blood.
John’s chest rose and fell, rose and fell, then stopped.
He was 39. READ MORE….
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