Schwarzenegger is back, and Hollywood hopes he’s still a star

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – As he famously droned on-screen in his signature “Terminator” movies, Arnold Schwarzenegger is back.

A year after leaving the California governor’s office and becoming tabloid fodder for fathering a boy with his family’s housekeeper and splitting with his wife, Maria Shriver, the 65-year old former bodybuilder will star in no less than three Hollywood movies over the next 12 months.

None are likely to win Schwarzenegger an Oscar. Indeed, the movies, and Schwarzenegger‘s own fee, are low-budget compared with his global blockbusters of yore. But studio executives are betting that overseas fans especially will once again respond to a personality whose 24 films generated worldwide ticket sales of $ 3.9 billion, according to boxoffice.com.

“He is still a worldwide star who resonates with action audiences around the world,” said Rob Friedman, the co-chairman of the Lionsgate motion picture group, which is scheduled to release his next two films. “The Last Stand” will open on January 18, and “The Tomb” in September.

“Ten,” the third film, is scheduled for release in January 2014 by Open Road Films, a joint venture of the AMC and Regal Theater chains.

“When you have left the movie business for seven years, it’s kind of a scary thing to come back because you don’t know if you’re accepted or not,” Schwarzenegger said at a Saturday press event for “The Last Stand.”

“There could be a whole new generation of action stars that come up in the meantime.”

The actor said he was “very pleasantly surprised” by what he called a “great reaction” to his cameo in the 2010 action film “The Expendables,” which featured fellow action stars Sylvester Stallone and Jason Statham. The film grossed $ 103.1 million in U.S. ticket sales and $ 274.5 million worldwide.

Since then, Schwarzenegger appeared in a second “Expendables” and says he will join a fifth installment of the “Terminator” if it is made.

Comcast’s Universal Pictures wants to “do a bunch” of new films based on the 30-year-old “Conan The Barbarian” movie, said Schwarzenegger, in which he would reprise his role as a barbarian.

He added that Universal, after 10 years of prodding by Schwarzenegger, also wants to do a sequel to the 1988 comedy “Twins,” in which he and Danny DeVito played mismatched twins, to be called “Triplets.”

Schwarzenegger no longer commands the $ 25 million paychecks he cashed in his heyday and will get between $ 8 and $ 10 million for each of his next three films, according to two people with knowledge of his salary but who were not authorized to speak publicly about it. He also gets a percentage of the profits, according to one of the people.

The new Schwarzenegger calculus banks on his films doing outsized business overseas while operating within budgets that are a fraction of the $ 200 million cost of his last action film, the 2003 “Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines.” The budget for “The Last Stand” is estimated at $ 50 million, according to movie resource site IMDB.com.

“He has significant value outside the United States and Canada, where he is still revered by people who have grown up with him throughout the years,” said Jere Hausfater, chief operating officer of film production company Aldamisa International, which hopes to do a film with Schwarzenegger in the future.

What audiences will see is a aging star who isn’t afraid of showing his drooping muscles and widening paunch, or of making fun of being past his prime. In the “The Last Stand,” a less than rock hard Schwarzenegger plays a retired Los Angeles policeman who becomes the sheriff of a small border town and is then called on to stop a violent drug lord from crossing.

In “Ten” he plays an aging drug agent, and in “The Tomb” an older prison inmate.

“We all go through the same dramas, we look at the mirror and say, what happened? You once had muscles and slowly they are deteriorating,” said Schwarzenegger at “The Last Stand” press event.

“The great thing in the movie is that they we’re not trying to play me as the 35-year-old action hero but the one who is about to retire, and all of a sudden there is this challenge where he really needs to get his act together.”

The one-time muscle man compares his career metamorphosis to that of his friend Clint Eastwood, who transitioned from his Dirty Harry days to a wiser person who’s not afraid to make fun of his slipping abilities in recent films like “Trouble with the Curve.”

“That’s called evolution,” said Sylvester Stallone, who stars with Schwarzenegger as aging inmates in “The Tomb.” “There are no more wooly mammoths. Things change, but the one thing you cannot replace is charisma. Certain people have it, and will have it until the day they die.”

Schwarzenegger‘s infamy in fathering a son outside of his high-profile marriage to Shriver initially seemed to hurt his popular appeal. Within weeks of the disclosure, “The Governator,” a comic book that would feature his likeness, was canceled.

Ultimately, though, moviegoers will be less interested in Schwarzenegger‘s political adventures and personal scandals than in what he puts on the screen, says Peter Sealey, founder of The Sausalito Group and a former Columbia Pictures president of marketing and distribution.

“The movie-going audience really don’t care about things like infidelity, DUIs,” added publicist Howard Bragman, vice-chairman of the firm called Reputation. “They overlook a lot. Ultimately, it remains, how are the movies? Is he credible? Is he going to be a joke?”

(Reporting by Ronald Grover and Zorianna Kit; Editing by Jonathan Weber and Cynthia Osterman)

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Tehran Is Choked by Annual Buildup of Air Pollution

TEHRAN — Already battered by international threats against their nation’s nuclear program, sanctions and a broken economy, Iranians living here in the capital are now trying to cope with what has become an annual pollution peril: a yellowish haze that engulfs Tehran this time of year.

For nearly a week, officials here and in other large cities have been calling on residents to remain indoors or avoid downtown areas, saying that with air pollution at such high levels, venturing outside could be tantamount to “suicide,” state radio reported Saturday.

On Sunday, government offices, schools, universities and banks reopened after the government had ordered them to shut down for five days to help ease the chronic pollution. Tehran’s normally bustling streets were largely deserted.

Residents who dare to go outside cover their mouths and noses with scarves or surgical masks, but their eyes tear up and their throats sting from the mist of pollutants, which a report by the municipality of Tehran says is made up of a mixture of particles containing lead, sulfur dioxins and benzene.

“It feels as if even God has turned against us,” Azadeh, a 32-year-old artist, said on a recent day as she looked out a window in her apartment that often offers a clear view of Tehran, a sprawling city that is home to millions. But on this day, Azadeh, who did not want her full name used, saw only the blurred outlines of high-rise buildings and the Milad communications tower in the distance. The setting sun was reduced to a yellowish coin by the thick blanket of smog.

The haze of pollution occurs every year when cold air and windless days trap fumes belched out by millions of cars and hundreds of old factories between the peaks of the majestic Alborz mountain range, which embraces Tehran like a crescent moon.

Iran is prominently represented in the World Health Organization’s 2011 report on air quality and health, with three of its provincial towns among the organization’s list of the world’s 10 most-polluted cities. According to the report, Tehran has roughly four times as many polluting particles per cubic meter as Los Angeles. Many cities known for their poor air quality, like Mexico City, Shanghai and Bangkok, are cleaner than Tehran.

But since 2010, when American sanctions on Iranian imports of refined gasoline began to bite, the situation has grown worse, according to the report by the municipality of Tehran.

Faced with possible fuel shortages, Iran surprised outsiders by quickly making up for the loss of imports by producing its own brew of gasoline. While the emergency fuel kept vehicles running, local experts warned that it was creating much more pollution.

A recently released report by Tehran’s department of air quality control contained blank spaces where there should have been information about levels of benzene and lead — components of gasoline — in the capital’s air. But the report did state that while Tehran experienced more than 300 “healthy days” in 2009, in 2011 there were fewer than 150.

Iran’s Health Ministry has reported a rise in respiratory and heart diseases, as well as an increase in a variety of cancers that it says are related to pollution.

The state newspaper Resalat on Saturday called the pollution a continuing crisis, and it urged the authorities to act. “Why is it that when the winds pick up, this problem is again quickly forgotten?” an editorial asked. Another newspaper, Donya-e-Eqtesad, which is critical of the government, pressed for an improvement in gasoline standards.

The pollution caused by the use of the emergency fuel concoction has been a taboo subject here, as officials try to portray each measure to counter the economic sanctions as a success that should not to be criticized by the local news media.

On state television, several officials have denied that the yellow haze has anything to do with the locally produced gasoline.

In an interview on Saturday, Ali Mohammad Sha’eri, the deputy director of Iran’s Environmental Protection Organization, strongly denied that the pollution was linked to gasoline. However, he said that only 20 percent of the emergency fuel was up to modern standards. “Hopefully in three months that level will be 50 percent,” he said.

Meanwhile, the government has imposed strict traffic regulations in Tehran, Isfahan and other major population centers. An odd-even traffic-control plan based on the last digit of vehicle license plates keeps about half of the approximately three and a half million cars in Tehran off the streets on a daily basis.

Other plans to combat the pollution have been less realistic, analysts say. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has long advocated a plan to move civil servants from Tehran to reduce overpopulation in the capital. In 2010, the governor of Tehran Province ordered crop-dusters to dump water on the smog in an effort to dissipate it. There have also been plans for placing air purifiers in the city, but experts say they will not work in open spaces.

For those living in Tehran and unable to leave town for a vacation home on the Caspian Sea, waiting for the winds to pick up seems to be the only option.

“My head hurts, and I’m constantly dead tired,” said Niloufar Mohammadi, a university student. “I try not to go out, but I can smell the pollution in my room as I am trying to study.”

Azadeh, the artist, said the pollution forced her to stay indoors, adding to her sense of isolation. Step by step her world was being curtailed, she said. The Western sanctions imposed on Iran make her feel like a pariah, she explained. The government’s mismanagement of the economy and the resulting inflation have left her with little purchasing power, she said; she has stopped shopping for everything but essential items. And last week, security officers removed her illegal satellite dish from her roof.

“The pollution is the last straw for me,” she said. “We should wait helpless for winds to pick up and clean the air before we can safely leave our houses. It shows we have lost all power to control our lives.”

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The Media Equation: For Legacy Media Companies, a Lucrative Year

Everyone knows that traditional media companies are dead in the water, overwhelmed by ad skipping, cord cutting and audience flight. We know that because Chicken Littles (like me) have been saying it for years.

Eventually we may be right — the sky will fall and the business will collapse — but for the time being, the sky over traditional media is blue and it’s raining green.

In the last year, the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index was up 13.4 percent, which was a significant advance, but legacy media giants like Comcast, News Corporation and Time Warner absolutely surpassed it in terms of share price.

Viacom, which has had serious ratings trouble with MTV and Nickelodeon, still managed to be up 16.1 percent on the year. We keep hearing how traditional networks are getting clobbered, but Viacom’s sibling, CBS, was up a whopping 40.2 percent.

News Corporation, despite being racked by scandal, was up 43 percent, and fellow global media conglomerates like Disney and Time Warner were up more than 32 percent. And Comcast, which has both the pipes and programming — cable and NBCUniversal — soared 57.6 percent.

(Pure cable and satellite providers like Time Warner Cable, Charter, Dish and DirecTV also did very well overall, with an average improvement in stock price of more than 40 percent.)

What is making these dinosaurs dance? I called some media analysts and a few things quickly became apparent. To begin with, the companies collectively did not make dumb choices — consider the past acquisitions of AOL and The Wall Street Journal — and they made plenty of smart moves, including long-term deals that locked up content and a steady stream of fees.

“The era of the media mogul is over, or at least on a very significant hiatus,” said David Bank, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets, suggesting that companies would no longer get bigger for the sake of scale and nonexistent synergies. He added that most of the big media companies are, in one way or another, cable content companies with lots of leverage in negotiations when it comes to distribution.

Probably more important, instead of spending billions on new properties, they paid out dividends and financed stock buybacks. And in the case of News Corporation, the company was split in a way that quarantined newspapers and pleased investors mightily.

“The big change in the industry is that they are returning capital to shareholders,” said Jessica Reif Cohen, a media analyst at BofA Merrill Lynch Global Research. “Balance sheets are stronger than they have been and the free cash flow is being returned to the investor. But it’s more than that. Disney, Comcast, News Corporation, they have all executed strategically as well.”

And the worries about insurgent threats from tech-oriented players like Netflix, Amazon and Apple turned out to be overstated. Those digital enterprises were supposed to be trouncing media companies; not only is that not happening, but they are writing checks to buy content. New players have opened windows to sell content without cannibalizing the retransmission and affiliate fees that have turned into a gold mine for media companies.

(Writing for Deadline Hollywood, David Lieberman pointed out that cranky old media far outperformed a sexy technology group composed of Amazon, Netflix, Apple, Yahoo, Google and Microsoft. Take that, digital overlords!)

“As it turns out, the traditional television business is far stickier than people thought, and audience behavior is not changing as rapidly as people thought it might,” said Richard Greenfield, an analyst at BTIG Research. “Yes, television viewing went down in 2012 for the first time, but people are still watching five hours a day. YouTube is growing, but people are watching eight minutes a day. They are where cable was in 1980.” But he added that it would not take YouTube and the Internet 30 years to overtake television.

Another thing about those dinosaurs is that they aren’t really old media in the sense of, um, newspapers. When their content is digitized, it is generally monetized, not aggregated. Having learned from what happened in music and print publishing, entertainment companies, built on the still enormous riches of television, have carved their own digital route to consumers. Being big helps, because they can afford to make very large bets, as News Corporation has been recently in securing rights to sports programming all over the globe.

E-mail: carr@nytimes.com;

Twitter: @carr2n

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We Salute the First Baby Senator

We realize there’s only so much time one can spend in a day watching new trailers, viral video clips, and shaky cell phone footage of people arguing on live television. This is why every day The Atlantic Wire highlights the videos that truly earn your five minutes (or less) of attention. Today:

RELATED: Claire McCaskill and How to Attack the Opponent You’re Rooting For

Here’s our suggestion to improve the (already pretty hilarious) swearing-in process for U.S. Senators: Each new member of Congress must bring a cute baby.

RELATED: Rand Paul Doesn’t Want You to Go to Jail for Smoking Pot

RELATED: Larry David’s Two-Minute Guide to Etiquette

Apparently the BBC has decided to market a line of lunch boxes specifically made for hungry polar bears. They are still working out the kinks: 

RELATED: Homer Simpson, Fox News Pundit; Books After Dark

RELATED: Bo Obama Stays On Message; Sarah Palin Can See HBO in Her House

The Golden Globes will be bittersweet this year. Don’t get us wrong — we’re really excited to watch Amy Poehler and Tina Fey entertain us. But we’ll also be also really sad when this thing is over because it means the end of these promos:

And finally, it’s Friday. And it’s time to dance. Enjoy your weekend. 

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HBO’s Liberace film aims to humanize through love story

PASADENA, California (Reuters) – Michael Douglas takes on larger-than-life entertainer Liberace as he plays the singer in an HBO film about a secret love affair in the 1970s that Douglas on Friday called “a great love story.”

Director Steven Soderbergh said he chose to tell Liberace’s story through the lens of his romance with Scott Thorson – a young man who walked into the singer’s Las Vegas dressing room in the summer of 1977 – in part to expand public perception beyond his outsized personality and lavish lifestyle.

“I was very anxious that we not make a caricature of either of their characters or the relationship,” Soderbergh told reporters at a meeting of the Television Critics Association.

“The discussions they’re having are discussions every couple has. We take the relationship very seriously,” he said.

The film called “Beyond the Candelabra” debuts this spring on Time Warner Inc-owned HBO. It is based on Thorson’s book of the same name about their relationship, which ended in a bitter breakup. Matt Damon plays Thorson.

The idea for the film was budding 12 years ago, when Soderbergh and the “Wall Street” actor were working on the 2000 movie “Traffic.” Soderbergh randomly asked Douglas if he had ever thought of playing Liberace.

Douglas said he thought “is this guy messing with me?,” but launched into an impersonation that stuck with Soderbergh years later when he began envisioning the Liberace film.

The movie depicts “a great love story,” Douglas said.

“This is a couple that felt for each other. There’s a lot of joyful moments; there is humor to it,” until their emotional split, he said.

Liberace tried to keep his relationship with Thorson from the public. When Thorson sued Liberace for palimony after their breakup, the entertainer denied that he was gay or that the two had been lovers.

“It’s unfortunate to see the movie through a contemporary lens and know they were not allowed to be as open back then as people are today,” Soderbergh said.

Liberace died in 1987 at age 67.

The filmmakers used locations and props directly from Liberace’s life. Scenes were filmed at the musician’s Los Angeles penthouse and on the stage at the Las Vegas Hilton where Liberace performed. The filmmakers also reunited his trademark, matching “Dueling Pianos.”

The movie’s costume designers worked to recreate his elaborate costumes. In one of the star’s dramatic entrances, the real-life Liberace wore a $ 300,000 white virgin fox coat, lined with $ 100,000 worth of Austrian crystals, that weighed 100 lbs (45 kg). In the film, Douglas wears a replica made of fake fur that weighs much less.

Damon also got to wear his share of flashy outfits. While he said he normally doesn’t pay too much attention to wardrobe fittings, he said he embraced the glamorous costumes in the Liberace film.

“I probably spent more time in wardrobe fittings in this thing than I have in the previous 15 projects,” he said. “I really enjoyed it.”

(Reporting by Lisa Richwine, editing by Jill Serjeant and Lisa Shumaker)

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Despite New Health Law, Some See Sharp Rise in Premiums

Health insurance companies across the country are seeking and winning double-digit increases in premiums for some customers, even though one of the biggest objectives of the Obama administration’s health care law was to stem the rapid rise in insurance costs for consumers.

Bob Chamberlin/Los Angeles Times

Dave Jones, the California insurance commissioner, said some insurance companies could raise rates as much as they did before the law was enacted.

Particularly vulnerable to the high rates are small businesses and people who do not have employer-provided insurance and must buy it on their own.

In California, Aetna is proposing rate increases of as much as 22 percent, Anthem Blue Cross 26 percent and Blue Shield of California 20 percent for some of those policy holders, according to the insurers’ filings with the state for 2013. These rate requests are all the more striking after a 39 percent rise sought by Anthem Blue Cross in 2010 helped give impetus to the law, known as the Affordable Care Act, which was passed the same year and will not be fully in effect until 2014.

 In other states, like Florida and Ohio, insurers have been able to raise rates by at least 20 percent for some policy holders. The rate increases can amount to several hundred dollars a month.

The proposed increases compare with about 4 percent for families with employer-based policies.

Under the health care law, regulators are now required to review any request for a rate increase of 10 percent or more; the requests are posted on a federal Web site, healthcare.gov, along with regulators’ evaluations.

The review process not only reveals the sharp disparity in the rates themselves, it also demonstrates the striking difference between places like New York, one of the 37 states where legislatures have given regulators some authority to deny or roll back rates deemed excessive, and California, which is among the states that do not have that ability.

New York, for example, recently used its sweeping powers to hold rate increases for 2013 in the individual and small group markets to under 10 percent. California can review rate requests for technical errors but cannot deny rate increases.

The double-digit requests in some states are being made despite evidence that overall health care costs appear to have slowed in recent years, increasing in the single digits annually as many people put off treatment because of the weak economy. PricewaterhouseCoopers estimates that costs may increase just 7.5 percent next year, well below the rate increases being sought by some insurers. But the companies counter that medical costs for some policy holders are rising much faster than the average, suggesting they are in a sicker population. Federal regulators contend that premiums would be higher still without the law, which also sets limits on profits and administrative costs and provides for rebates if insurers exceed those limits.

Critics, like Dave Jones, the California insurance commissioner and one of two health plan regulators in that state, said that without a federal provision giving all regulators the ability to deny excessive rate increases, some insurance companies can raise rates as much as they did before the law was enacted.

“This is business as usual,” Mr. Jones said. “It’s a huge loophole in the Affordable Care Act,” he said.

While Mr. Jones has not yet weighed in on the insurers’ most recent requests, he is pushing for a state law that will give him that authority. Without legislative action, the state can only question the basis for the high rates, sometimes resulting in the insurer withdrawing or modifying the proposed rate increase.

The California insurers say they have no choice but to raise premiums if their underlying medical costs have increased. “We need these rates to even come reasonably close to covering the expenses of this population,” said Tom Epstein, a spokesman for Blue Shield of California. The insurer is requesting a range of increases, which average about 12 percent for 2013.

Although rates paid by employers are more closely tracked than rates for individuals and small businesses, policy experts say the law has probably kept at least some rates lower than they otherwise would have been.

“There’s no question that review of rates makes a difference, that it results in lower rates paid by consumers and small businesses,” said Larry Levitt, an executive at the Kaiser Family Foundation, which estimated in an October report that rate review was responsible for lowering premiums for one out of every five filings.

Federal officials say the law has resulted in significant savings. “The health care law includes new tools to hold insurers accountable for premium hikes and give rebates to consumers,” said Brian Cook, a spokesman for Medicare, which is helping to oversee the insurance reforms.

“Insurers have already paid $1.1 billion in rebates, and rate review programs have helped save consumers an additional $1 billion in lower premiums,” he said. If insurers collect premiums and do not spend at least 80 cents out of every dollar on care for their customers, the law requires them to refund the excess.

As a result of the review process, federal officials say, rates were reduced, on average, by nearly three percentage points, according to a report issued last September.

Read More..

Despite New Health Law, Some See Sharp Rise in Premiums

Health insurance companies across the country are seeking and winning double-digit increases in premiums for some customers, even though one of the biggest objectives of the Obama administration’s health care law was to stem the rapid rise in insurance costs for consumers.

Bob Chamberlin/Los Angeles Times

Dave Jones, the California insurance commissioner, said some insurance companies could raise rates as much as they did before the law was enacted.

Particularly vulnerable to the high rates are small businesses and people who do not have employer-provided insurance and must buy it on their own.

In California, Aetna is proposing rate increases of as much as 22 percent, Anthem Blue Cross 26 percent and Blue Shield of California 20 percent for some of those policy holders, according to the insurers’ filings with the state for 2013. These rate requests are all the more striking after a 39 percent rise sought by Anthem Blue Cross in 2010 helped give impetus to the law, known as the Affordable Care Act, which was passed the same year and will not be fully in effect until 2014.

 In other states, like Florida and Ohio, insurers have been able to raise rates by at least 20 percent for some policy holders. The rate increases can amount to several hundred dollars a month.

The proposed increases compare with about 4 percent for families with employer-based policies.

Under the health care law, regulators are now required to review any request for a rate increase of 10 percent or more; the requests are posted on a federal Web site, healthcare.gov, along with regulators’ evaluations.

The review process not only reveals the sharp disparity in the rates themselves, it also demonstrates the striking difference between places like New York, one of the 37 states where legislatures have given regulators some authority to deny or roll back rates deemed excessive, and California, which is among the states that do not have that ability.

New York, for example, recently used its sweeping powers to hold rate increases for 2013 in the individual and small group markets to under 10 percent. California can review rate requests for technical errors but cannot deny rate increases.

The double-digit requests in some states are being made despite evidence that overall health care costs appear to have slowed in recent years, increasing in the single digits annually as many people put off treatment because of the weak economy. PricewaterhouseCoopers estimates that costs may increase just 7.5 percent next year, well below the rate increases being sought by some insurers. But the companies counter that medical costs for some policy holders are rising much faster than the average, suggesting they are in a sicker population. Federal regulators contend that premiums would be higher still without the law, which also sets limits on profits and administrative costs and provides for rebates if insurers exceed those limits.

Critics, like Dave Jones, the California insurance commissioner and one of two health plan regulators in that state, said that without a federal provision giving all regulators the ability to deny excessive rate increases, some insurance companies can raise rates as much as they did before the law was enacted.

“This is business as usual,” Mr. Jones said. “It’s a huge loophole in the Affordable Care Act,” he said.

While Mr. Jones has not yet weighed in on the insurers’ most recent requests, he is pushing for a state law that will give him that authority. Without legislative action, the state can only question the basis for the high rates, sometimes resulting in the insurer withdrawing or modifying the proposed rate increase.

The California insurers say they have no choice but to raise premiums if their underlying medical costs have increased. “We need these rates to even come reasonably close to covering the expenses of this population,” said Tom Epstein, a spokesman for Blue Shield of California. The insurer is requesting a range of increases, which average about 12 percent for 2013.

Although rates paid by employers are more closely tracked than rates for individuals and small businesses, policy experts say the law has probably kept at least some rates lower than they otherwise would have been.

“There’s no question that review of rates makes a difference, that it results in lower rates paid by consumers and small businesses,” said Larry Levitt, an executive at the Kaiser Family Foundation, which estimated in an October report that rate review was responsible for lowering premiums for one out of every five filings.

Federal officials say the law has resulted in significant savings. “The health care law includes new tools to hold insurers accountable for premium hikes and give rebates to consumers,” said Brian Cook, a spokesman for Medicare, which is helping to oversee the insurance reforms.

“Insurers have already paid $1.1 billion in rebates, and rate review programs have helped save consumers an additional $1 billion in lower premiums,” he said. If insurers collect premiums and do not spend at least 80 cents out of every dollar on care for their customers, the law requires them to refund the excess.

As a result of the review process, federal officials say, rates were reduced, on average, by nearly three percentage points, according to a report issued last September.

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Obama likely to nominate Chuck Hagel for Defense secretary

WASHINGTON — President Obama is expected to nominate Chuck Hagel, a former Republican senator and Vietnam veteran, to be Defense secretary, officials said, setting up a confirmation battle with lawmakers and interest groups critical of Hagel's views on Israel and Iran.

White House officials said Friday that the president hadn't formally offered the job to Hagel, but others familiar with the process said that the announcement could come as soon as Monday.

Hagel, who was elected to the Senate from Nebraska in 1996 and retired in 2008, was awarded two Purple Hearts for wounds he received as a soldier in Vietnam. His experience serving in that war made him wary about using force unless other options had been tried, he said in a recent interview with the history magazine Vietnam.

"I'm not a pacifist. I believe in using force but only after a very careful decision-making process. … I will do everything I can to avoid needless, senseless war," he said.

By nominating a Republican to run the Defense Department, Obama would give his second-term national security team a bipartisan cast as the White House is rapidly winding down the war in Afghanistan and planning for even deeper cuts in the defense budget. Hagel's criticism of the Iraq war has made him deeply unpopular with many conservative Republicans, however.

The choice also sets up a possibly contentious confirmation fight with Israel's defenders in Washington, some of whom mounted a public campaign to head off Hagel's nomination. They criticized him for past comments calling on Israel to negotiate with Palestinian groups and for opposing some sanctions aimed at Iran.

Hagel, who would succeed Leon Panetta as Defense secretary, has also been criticized by some liberal Democrats and gay rights organizations for a comment he made during the Clinton presidency, calling an ambassadorial nominee "openly, aggressively gay" — a comment Hagel recently apologized for.

Diving into a fight over nominating Hagel would appear to mark a sharp departure for Obama, who has generally avoided battles over selections for major posts. But a decision to pick another candidate would also have been damaging to Obama because it would have been his second surrender on a top Cabinet choice within a month.

Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, withdrew her name from consideration as a possible secretary of State nominee last month after drawing heavy criticism from Republicans over her statements after the September attack on a U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya.

The selection of Hagel would also leave unresolved the problem of how Obama is going to add more women to the senior ranks of his national security apparatus. Senior Democratic women — including some in the administration — have said that aside from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, foreign policy has been decided by a small group of men in the White House.

Though senators from both parties have voiced reservations about Hagel, few have announced they would vote against him, a sign of caution the White House may be counting on to get him confirmed.

Hagel's record on Israel and Iran are likely to be the main focus of the nomination battle. William Kristol, the editor of the conservative Weekly Standard, published a "special editorial" Friday accusing him of having "dangerous views on Iran" and an "unpleasant distaste for Israel and Jews."

Critics have cited a comment Hagel made in 2008 to author and former State Department Middle East peace negotiator Aaron David Miller about why he sometimes opposed pro-Israel groups in the Senate.

"The Jewish lobby intimidates a lot of people up here," Hagel said, but "I'm a United States senator. I'm not an Israeli senator."

They also have cited his calls for direct negotiations with Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that the U.S. and Israel refuse to deal with directly, and his votes against some Iran sanctions.

But defenders and former aides say Hagel showed his support for Israel by voting repeatedly to provide it with military aid and by calling for a comprehensive peace deal with the Palestinians that should not include any compromise regarding Israel's Jewish identity and that would leave Israel "free to live in peace and security."

They note that he also supported three major Iran sanctions bills: the Iran Missile Proliferation Sanctions Act of 1998, the Iran Nonproliferation Act of 2000 and the Iran Freedom Support Act of 2006.

In the Senate, Hagel initially voted to give the George W. Bush administration authority to go to war in Afghanistan and Iraq, but he later harshly criticized the conduct of both wars, irritating fellow Republicans and making him popular with Democrats critical of those wars.

Obama and Hagel formed a close relationship in the Senate, and their foreign policy views seem closely aligned. Like Obama, Hagel has called for negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program, a position that made some pro-Israel advocates wary about whether Hagel would back using force against Iran if diplomatic efforts to halt the program failed.

Andrew Parasiliti, an aide to Hagel from 2001 to 2005, said Hagel has never ruled out using force against Iran if negotiations fail.

"He is a patriot and war hero, and he has developed a caution, and wisdom, about the use of force that was shaped in part from his experiences on the front lines in that war," Parasiliti said, referring to Vietnam.

Hagel is close to Vice President Joe Biden, the former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. In 2009, Obama appointed him to be chairman of the President's Intelligence Advisory Board, which advises the White House on intelligence issues.

A Hagel nomination appealed to some White House aides after the bitter election campaign because it would show bipartisanship and might help win congressional support for expected cuts to the defense budget. He would be the second Republican to run the Defense Department for Obama, who kept Robert M. Gates at the Pentagon after taking office in 2009.

But Hagel's maverick qualities while in the Senate and his criticism of the Bush administration's foreign policy left him with little support in the conservative Republican Senate caucus. And the pro-Israel and gay rights groups that oppose him have strong influence in the Democratic Party

Obama will need to deal with opposition from a number of pro-Israel senators from both parties who have already raised questions about their support for Hagel. One example is Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), who has distanced himself from Hagel in comments last month. Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has also raised questions about Hagel's past comments.

The presumption is that a president will win approval in the Senate for his nominees for top posts. Only in rare cases, such as Sen. John Tower's nomination for the Defense post in the 1980s, has the Senate blocked such a choice.

david.cloud@latimes.com

brian.bennett@latimes.com

Paul Richter and Christi Parsons in the Washington bureau contributed to this report.

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How BuzzFeed Is Betting on Hollywood, Long-Form Writing to Grow

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Last January, BuzzFeed, then an aggregator of memes and cat videos, secured a $ 15.5 million round of venture capital to beef up a craft that most traditional media was downsizing: journalism.

It hired dozens of reporters and editors, opened bureaus in Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles and became a must-read for political junkies during the 2012 presidential election.

On Thursday, the company took another step.

It added adding a fourth round of capital investment – this time worth $ 19.3 million. And it plans to expand in two major ways: literary, long-form journalism like the kind practiced by New York magazine and the New Yorker, and – with two former Los Angeles Times staffers newly on board – its Hollywood coverage.

BuzzFeed’s been on a roll. According to the privately held company‘s internal traffic numbers, the 8 million unique monthly visitors it drew in 2008 has swelled to 40 million, and revenue for 2012 may triple that of 2011, a spokeswoman for BuzzFeed told TheWrap.

Writing in the Wall Street Journal on Friday, Tom Gara reported that some analysts place the company’s valuation at $ 200 million and say that revenues may reach $ 40 million this year.

Most of BuzzFeed’s traffic currently comes from its odd mix of news and eccentricity on the homepage. Friday morning, spotlighted stories ranged from J.J. Abrams screening his new “Star Trek” for a dying fan and Sen. Tammy Baldwin talking about breaking the glass ceiling to: “How to Murder Your Friend’s Facebook Page” and “Here Are Some Elephants Eating Christmas Trees.”

But there’s no question things are changing.

The first thing CEO Jonah Peretti did with his 2012 investment cash was hire Ben Smith, a Politico veteran, as the site’s first editor-in-chief. Smith then kicked off a hiring spree of reporters and got to work. Already BuzzFeed is beginning to break stories and get quoted by aggregators.

McKay Coppins, the site’s political editor, embedded with Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s campaign. John Stanton, a veteran reporter in Washington, was named BuzzFeed’s first D.C. bureau chief. Michael Hastings, the dogged journalist whose Rolling Stone exposé of Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s private disagreements with President Obama over Afghanistan led to his resignation, joined the team.

Then, less than a year into its political foray, the site hired former Spin magazine chief Steve Kandell to make the push for longform journalism.

It began with an experiment – a 7,118-word post from last October titled “Can You Die From a Nightmare?” that garnered more than 115,000 hits. Another in October titled “Making Mitt: The Myth of George Romney” drew nearly 130,000 views. This convinced Smith and his team that literary journalism had a niche in the viral news market.

Despite the internet school of thought that briefer is better, Kandell said he has no plans to restrict stories’ word counts.

“If someone has a story that has to be 10,000 words, I don’t know why that couldn’t be,” Kandell said.

“I don’t think people necessarily have a certain fatigue level when it gets to a certain length and people start trailing out.”

Kandell says he plans in the coming months to start publishing at least one long-form story a week and may even start packaging and selling the stories as Amazon Kindle singles or as audiobooks.

Kandell assembled a “Best of 2012″ post for his nascent section of the site. The stories ranged from the tale of BuzzFeed’s own political editor Coppins, a Mormon, watching attitudes toward his and Romney’s religion change throughout the campaign to an inside look at the “Dark World of Online Sugar Daddies.”

Plans are to cover more foreign policy and national security issues from a Washington-centered perspective – and to add Hollywood into the mix. The only hands-off topic, apparently, will be international news.

“We’ve played around with ways to make world news more sharable, just like every editor at every publication,” he said, noting that readers liked a roundup of Instagram photos of the civil war in Syria. “It’s really hard, it’s not something we want to jump into without really knowing what we’re doing.”

As for Hollywood, BuzzFeed hired Richard Rushfield, former entertainment editor of LATimes.com, and ex-Times television editor Kate Aurthur, also a former Daily Beast staffer, to jump-start its bureau.

Smith said he plans to forge a presence in Los Angeles second only to its flagship New York bureau. A Hollywood vertical is expected to launch on January 7.

To that end, the site is entering a crowded space – one dominated by publications like Variety, the Hollywood Reporter, TheWrap, Vulture and the Times – but Rushfield said he plans to cover entertainment through BuzzFeed’s social-web lens: If it’s irresistibly share-worthy, it’s publishable.

“We have a unique position, despite how crowded the beat is,” Rushfield told TheWrap, adding that they won’t be competing with trades over stories concerning studio executives and casting deals. “One of our advantages is that we are not going to be going after every single story that the trades are – we have more room to take the things that we think can be interesting. What BuzzFeed is about is writing news that will be of interest to the social web.”

Now the trick is to make all these editorial investments worthwhile financially.

Revenue growth from its advertising model has been climbing, chief operating officer Jon Steinberg told TheWrap.

Forgoing the usual banners and display ads, BuzzFeed offers its clients “branded content.” For example, Scope mouthwash sponsored a “listicle” on the most “courageous” mustaches.

To that end, the advertising team, which is made up of 20 people that report to Steinberg, works with brands from General Electric to Virgin Mobile to devise sharable pieces of content.

The ratio of advertorial to editorial content on the homepage is usually about one to every six or so stories,” he said.

Those branded-content headlines garner 10-20 times the click-through rates of blinking banner and display ads, Steinberg told TheWrap.

“You compare those ads in the 1950s to modern advertising, you realize how broken modern advertising is,” Steinberg said. “Most publishers and media companies say you can’t make money on modern advertising.”

But – though he declined to reveal exact numbers, as BuzzFeed is a private company – the model helped to increase revenue last year and has allowed the publication to focus solely on its advertising stream.

He said the company has no immediate plans to enter the conference business popular with online publications including the Business Insider, AllThingsD and TheWrap.

“This is our Google ad words,” Steinberg said of the innovative advertising tool that Google pioneered in the mid-2000s. “If we were Apple, this would be our manufacturing of great hardware products.”

Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Playboy founder Hugh Hefner marries his “runaway bride”

(Reuters) – Octogenarian Playboy founder Hugh Hefner briefly swapped his iconic silk pajamas for a tuxedo to marry Crystal Harris, the one-time “runaway bride” who followed through this time at a New Year’s Eve wedding.

“Happy New Year from Mr. and Mrs. Hugh Hefner!” the Playboy magazine publisher tweeted early on Tuesday.

The message accompanied a photograph of Hefner, 86, wearing what appeared to be purple silk pajamas under a black bathrobe and snuggling his bride, 26, still wearing her pale pink wedding dress. He also wore his trademark captain’s hat.

An hour earlier, Hefner posted a picture of himself in a tuxedo with his bride under an arch of pink and white flowers at the wedding ceremony in the Playboy Mansion in Beverly Hills, California.

“Crystal & I married on New Year’s Eve in the Mansion with Keith as my Best Man. Love that girl!” Hefner wrote on Twitter with the picture, referring to his brother Keith Hefner, a songwriter.

The couple tied the knot more than a year after their planned 2011 wedding was scuttled when Harris got cold feet.

The blonde Playboy Playmate of the Month for December 2009 jettisoned the adult entertainment mogul in what was called a “change of heart” five days before a lavish June 2011 wedding before 300 guests.

Harris, who appeared on the July 2011 cover of the adult magazine with a “runaway bride” sticker covering her bottom half, tweeted on Monday that she was ready to commit and changed her name to “Crystal Hefner” on the micro-blogging site.

“Today is the day I become Mrs. Hugh Hefner,” Harris, who has a psychology degree, wrote on Twitter after writing “Feeling very happy, lucky, and blessed.”

The San Diego native, whose parents are British, said she asked for Christmas ornaments rather than lingerie at her pre-Christmas bridal shower to help decorate Hefner’s famed mansion.

Hefner, founder of the Playboy adult entertainment empire, has been married twice before. He and his second wife Kimberley Conrad, also a former Playmate, divorced in 2010 after a lengthy separation. His first marriage to Mildred Williams ended in divorce in 1959. He has two children from each marriage.

(Reporting by Eric Kelsey and Barbara Goldberg; Editing by Ellen Wulfhorst and Paul Simao)

Celebrity News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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