The Week’s Business News in Pictures

Reflecting diminishing fears over mad cow disease, Japan eased its decade-old restriction on imports of American beef on Monday. Ranchers cheered the news, but the beef industry still faces challenges, including high feed prices and drought. Here, cattle are herded through the Torrington Livestock Markets in Torrington, Wyo.

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Hagel hearing reopens Senate wounds

WASHINGTON — Chuck Hagel, who was twice wounded as an enlisted soldier in Vietnam, came under withering attack Thursday as he battled former Republican colleagues in the Senate who sharply questioned whether he should be secretary of Defense.

In a daylong confirmation hearing notable for its raw emotion, Hagel was challenged to explain — and often to retract — earlier comments critical of Israel, his onetime skepticism of the nuclear threat from Iran, and perhaps most memorably, whether he could name a single "dumb" action the Senate had taken under pressure from the pro-Israel lobby.

Hagel, who appeared beleaguered at times, said he could not.

The spectacle often seemed more about Republicans publicly settling scores with the 66-year-old Nebraskan, who spent two terms in the Senate and retired in 2009. He grew increasingly estranged from his GOP colleagues after he began to criticize the war in Iraq, expressed doubts about use of force against Iran and lent support to Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential election.

Hagel sometimes stumbled answering the rapid-fire questions, at one point misstating — later correcting himself — the White House policy on preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.

He still appears likely to win confirmation by the full Senate, which has a Democratic majority.

If confirmed, Hagel would be the first Vietnam combat veteran to lead the Pentagon. The former Army sergeant, who spent 1967-68 fighting in the Mekong Delta, would inherit a Defense Department facing potentially drastic budget cuts, the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the war in Afghanistan, a growing debate over targeted killings by drone aircraft, an emerging conflict with insurgent groups in North Africa, the integration of women into direct ground combat roles, and other tasks.

But on Thursday, the battle over his nomination reopened contentious national security debates from years past. At times the session seemed more an inquisition than a typical confirmation hearing.

In the most striking example, Sen. John McCain, the Arizona Republican who lost to Obama in 2008, ripped into Hagel for his critique of the Iraq war, displaying how the bond forged between the former colleagues by their military service in Vietnam had been torn apart by another war.

"The question is, were you right or were you wrong?" McCain demanded, pressing Hagel on why he opposed President George W. Bush's decision to send 20,000 additional troops to Iraq in the so-called surge.

"I'm not going to give you a yes-or-no answer. I think its far more complicated than that," Hagel responded calmly. He said he would await the "judgment of history."

Glaring at Hagel, McCain ended the exchange with a bitter rejoinder: "I think history has already made a judgment about the surge, sir, and you are on the wrong side of it."

Hagel faced tough questioning even from Democrats on the Senate Armed Services Committee who have announced they intend to vote for him.

Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), the committee chairman, took issue with what he called Hagel's "troubling" statements about Israel, his calls for direct talks with the militant group Hamas and his advocating against isolating Iran.

"While there is value in communicating with our adversaries, the formulation used by Sen. Hagel seemed to imply a willingness to talk to Iran on some issues that

I believe most would view

as nonnegotiable," Levin said.

When the hearing began, Hagel said he stood by his record in public service even as he urged lawmakers to look beyond his now-controversial votes and statements. He noted that he had cast thousands of votes during his Senate career and given hundreds of interviews and speeches.

"As you all know, I am on the record on many issues," he said. "But no one individual vote, no one individual quote, no one individual statement defines me, my beliefs, or my record."

Since his nomination last month, Hagel has clarified or apologized for several controversial statements. He also sought to rebut critics who warned he may not push hard enough to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.

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Online bingo shows its worth at Rank

LONDON (Reuters) – It may lack the noisy camaraderie of a trip to the bingo hall, but the online version of the numbers game has proved more profitable for Britain‘s Rank Group than the original.

The merits of the online business were further emphasized when Rank said a snowy January had cost it 3 million pounds ($ 4.7 million) in revenue as Britons opted not to venture out to its bingo halls and casinos.

Operating profit from online bingo was 11.4 million pounds, just beating the 11.1 million earned from the venues themselves.

The company, majority owned by Malaysia’s Guoco, reported a 4 percent decline in pretax profit to 31.3 million pounds in the six months to December, with its loss-making Blue Square betting business proving a drag.

Many parts of Britain have seen heavy snow over the last two weeks and there are fears that the bad weather will hit economic activity and push the country back into recession.

Pub groups Enterprise Inns and Mitchell & Butlers both said the recent cold snap had hit sales.

“Allowing for the slow start to the second half we remain confident in our prospects for the remainder of the year and in our longer-term growth strategy,” Rank Chief Executive Ian Burke said.

Rank’s main activities are in Britain where it runs 35 Grosvenor Casinos and more than 100 Mecca bingo clubs.

Profits growth in its online bingo business mirrors that in the gambling industry as a whole where online betting is the fastest growing part of the market, helped by the popularity of smart phones and tablets.

However, Rank has said it is reviewing the future of its own struggling online betting business Blue Square, a relative minnow in a crowded sector.

“We felt the losses were not losses we could continue to sustain,” said Burke.

Blue Square reported an operating loss of 4.8 million pounds in the six months and Rank has now cut its spending on marketing the business.

“There were 11 or 12 competitors advertising and that spending just wasn’t cutting through,” said Burke.

He declined to comment further on the future of the business pending completion of the review.

Rank is awaiting regulatory clearance for a planned 205 million pound deal to buy the casino business of Gala Coral.

A preliminary report by the Competition Commission said Rank could have to sell six casinos to get the deal approved.

($ 1 = 0.6332 British pounds)

(Editing by Louise Ireland and Brenda Goh)

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“Gomer Pyle” actor Jim Nabors weds longtime male partner

SEATTLE (Reuters) – American actor Jim Nabors, the star of 1960s television comedy “Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.,” married his longtime male partner at a Seattle hotel this month.

Nabors, 82, also a singer, wed 64-year-old Stan Cadwallader, his partner of some 38 years, in a ceremony before a judge on January 15 at the Fairmont Olympic Hotel, where the couple traveled after same sex marriage became legal in Washington state last month.

“I was just trying to solidify all of our years together,” Nabors told Reuters on Wednesday from Hawaii, where the two live. “When you find a good friend in this life, you hang on to him.”

Nabors said the ceremony in his hotel room was “very touching” but laughed off any suggestion of feeling different afterward.

“Oh please, nothing’s changed,” Nabors said. “Most of the things you promise, we got through that 38 years ago.”

Nabors, an Alabama native, played goofy gas-station attendant Gomer Pyle on “The Andy Griffith Show” and in the spin-off “Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.,” among many other television and musical appearances.

Nabors said he met Cadwallader, a former firefighter in Honolulu, in 1975, and Cadwallader eventually went to work for him.

Nabors said he was open with his colleagues and friends about his sexuality, but that his marriage was a private affair not intended as a public statement in the national debate over gay marriage.

“I am not an activist, particularly. But I think every single human being has the right to choose the person they want to spend their life with,” Nabors said. “That’s not even an argument, it’s just a God-given right.”

Nine of the 50 U.S. states plus the District of Columbia have legalized gay marriage. Another 31 states have passed constitutional amendments restricting marriage to heterosexual couples.

Nabors’ marriage application and marriage certificate are on file with the Thurston County Auditor in Olympia, according to a clerk in the King County Archives.

(Reporting by Eric M. Johnson and Laura Myers in Seattle; Editing by Leslie Gevirtz, Cynthia Johnston and Jim Loney)

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Hip Implant’s Risks Inadequately Assessed, DePuy Report Found in 2010

A review conducted internally by Johnson & Johnson soon after it recalled a troubled hip implant found that the company had not adequately assessed the device’s potential risks before it was used in more than 90,000 patients, court testimony on Thursday showed.

The engineering report, which was done in 2010, also found that Johnson & Johnson’s orthopedic unit had used inadequate or incorrect standards in trying to assess some of those risks before first selling the implant in 2003. The device at issue — the Articular Surface Replacement, or A.S.R. — proved to be among the most flawed orthopedic devices sold in recent decades.

The report was introduced on Thursday in Los Angeles Superior Court, in the first A.S.R.-related lawsuit to go to trial against the DePuy Orthopaedics division of Johnson & Johnson. More than 10,000 similar lawsuits have been filed in the United States.

In videotaped testimony shown in court, Jimmy Smith, a compliance manager at DePuy, was asked about the report, and he said it indicated that company officials had not used appropriate engineering controls to try to anticipate the device’s problems.

“They did their job, but they could have done it better,” Mr. Smith said.

Separately, a DePuy engineer, Graham Isaac, testified on Thursday that before selling the A.S.R., the company only tested its performance on laboratory equipment at one angle of implantation.

Depending on the surgical technique and a patient’s build, orthopedic surgeons can implant the cup component of an artificial hip at a variety of angles. And because the A.S.R. had a design flaw, normal variance from the single angle at which DePuy had tested it made it more likely for the joint’s cup and ball components to strike each other, releasing metallic debris inside a patient.

DePuy conducted the post-mortem review of the A.S.R. in November 2010, just three months after it recalled the all-metal implant, but it never released the analysis. It also, apparently, did not conduct a similar review in response to the mounting number of complaints about the device that it received from doctors and others in 2008 and 2009.

Lorie Gawreluk, a spokeswoman for DePuy, said that she could not comment on any details of the lawsuit, but that the company believed that the evidence would show it acted appropriately. The trial’s proceedings were monitored over the Courtroom View Network.

The A.S.R. is projected to fail within five years in about 40 percent of patients who received the implant. That early failure rate, which is expected to grow over time, is many times higher than the failure rate for most hip replacements.

In the post-recall review in 2010, DePuy engineers examined the criteria and “controls,” or standards, that were used nearly a decade earlier when company officials tried to anticipate how the A.S.R. might perform. Because the version of the device that was sold in the United States was never clinically tested in patients, officials used the controls to assess the implant.

Among other things, DePuy officials failed to anticipate that the A.S.R. would have a high rate of wear as a patient moved, even though the control referenced in the device’s records demonstrated “that the product is more likely to experience contact between the head and rim” than competing implants.

In previously recorded testimony presented in court on Wednesday, DePuy’s president, Andrew Ekdahl, was shown an e-mail in which he was warned about the A.S.R.’s problems nearly three years before it was recalled.

Mr. Ekdahl and other DePuy executives have asserted that they acted properly and in a timely fashion to the device’s problems. The company spokeswoman, Ms. Gawreluk, said Mr. Ekdahl would not be made available for an interview.

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Hip Implant’s Risks Inadequately Assessed, DePuy Report Found in 2010

A review conducted internally by Johnson & Johnson soon after it recalled a troubled hip implant found that the company had not adequately assessed the device’s potential risks before it was used in more than 90,000 patients, court testimony on Thursday showed.

The engineering report, which was done in 2010, also found that Johnson & Johnson’s orthopedic unit had used inadequate or incorrect standards in trying to assess some of those risks before first selling the implant in 2003. The device at issue — the Articular Surface Replacement, or A.S.R. — proved to be among the most flawed orthopedic devices sold in recent decades.

The report was introduced on Thursday in Los Angeles Superior Court, in the first A.S.R.-related lawsuit to go to trial against the DePuy Orthopaedics division of Johnson & Johnson. More than 10,000 similar lawsuits have been filed in the United States.

In videotaped testimony shown in court, Jimmy Smith, a compliance manager at DePuy, was asked about the report, and he said it indicated that company officials had not used appropriate engineering controls to try to anticipate the device’s problems.

“They did their job, but they could have done it better,” Mr. Smith said.

Separately, a DePuy engineer, Graham Isaac, testified on Thursday that before selling the A.S.R., the company only tested its performance on laboratory equipment at one angle of implantation.

Depending on the surgical technique and a patient’s build, orthopedic surgeons can implant the cup component of an artificial hip at a variety of angles. And because the A.S.R. had a design flaw, normal variance from the single angle at which DePuy had tested it made it more likely for the joint’s cup and ball components to strike each other, releasing metallic debris inside a patient.

DePuy conducted the post-mortem review of the A.S.R. in November 2010, just three months after it recalled the all-metal implant, but it never released the analysis. It also, apparently, did not conduct a similar review in response to the mounting number of complaints about the device that it received from doctors and others in 2008 and 2009.

Lorie Gawreluk, a spokeswoman for DePuy, said that she could not comment on any details of the lawsuit, but that the company believed that the evidence would show it acted appropriately. The trial’s proceedings were monitored over the Courtroom View Network.

The A.S.R. is projected to fail within five years in about 40 percent of patients who received the implant. That early failure rate, which is expected to grow over time, is many times higher than the failure rate for most hip replacements.

In the post-recall review in 2010, DePuy engineers examined the criteria and “controls,” or standards, that were used nearly a decade earlier when company officials tried to anticipate how the A.S.R. might perform. Because the version of the device that was sold in the United States was never clinically tested in patients, officials used the controls to assess the implant.

Among other things, DePuy officials failed to anticipate that the A.S.R. would have a high rate of wear as a patient moved, even though the control referenced in the device’s records demonstrated “that the product is more likely to experience contact between the head and rim” than competing implants.

In previously recorded testimony presented in court on Wednesday, DePuy’s president, Andrew Ekdahl, was shown an e-mail in which he was warned about the A.S.R.’s problems nearly three years before it was recalled.

Mr. Ekdahl and other DePuy executives have asserted that they acted properly and in a timely fashion to the device’s problems. The company spokeswoman, Ms. Gawreluk, said Mr. Ekdahl would not be made available for an interview.

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Giffords testifies at heated Senate hearing on gun control

WASHINGTON — "Speaking is difficult, but I need to say something important," former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords told her onetime colleagues. "Violence is a big problem. Too many children are dying. Too many children. We must do something.

"It would be hard, but the time is now. You must act."

Her words, read from a single, handwritten page, were among the camera-ready scenes as the Senate began hearings on gun control Wednesday, in a charged atmosphere with each side reaching for emotional force.

The former congresswoman, still severely disabled after being shot in the head two years ago at an outdoor appearance in her Tucson district, spoke for barely a minute, breaking the traditional protocol that calls for senators to make opening statements before witnesses give testimony.

Then she made her way from the room, leaving behind her husband, retired Navy Capt. Mark E. Kelly, a former space shuttle astronaut. In a reminder of the pervasiveness of gun violence in this country, Kelly informed senators that three people had just been wounded by a gunman at an office building in Phoenix. (At least one of the victims later died.)

At the opposite end of a long, polished table sat the lead witness for the opposing side, National Rifle Assn. Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre. He and Kelly barely interacted save for a brief handshake at the hearing's close.

The space between the two could have served as a metaphor for much of the hearing, where the formal politeness of the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing room did little to mask the continued wide division over gun legislation.

Democrats called for stronger laws to limit the sale of guns; Republicans insisted that existing laws were being under-enforced and questioned the need for new ones.

The shootings in Tucson and Newtown, Conn., where 20 first-graders were killed last month, "are terrible tragedies," said the senior Republican on the panel, Iowa Sen. Charles E. Grassley, but they "should not be used to put forward every gun control measure that has been floating around for years."

Off stage, some senators have begun to move toward agreement on at least one part of the gun package pushed by President Obama — a measure to tighten the system of background checks for gun purchases.

Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), who is crafting a background checks bill, announced at the hearing that he was "having productive conversations with colleagues on both sides of the aisle, including a good number with high NRA ratings."

That agreement does not extend to the NRA itself, as LaPierre made clear.

"Law-abiding gun owners will not accept blame for the acts of violent or deranged criminals," he said.

Later, he specifically rejected the idea of universal background checks for gun purchases. "My problem with background checks is you're never going to get criminals to go through universal background checks," he said, prompting a heated exchange with Illinois Sen. Richard J. Durbin.

"Mr. LaPierre, that's the point," Durbin interjected. "The criminals won't go to purchase the guns, because there will be a background check. We'll stop them from the original purchase."

LaPierre was more amenable to prosecution of straw purchasers — people who buy guns for others, often those prohibited from buying firearms themselves. Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) and Durbin introduced a bill last week to combat gun trafficking. Sens. Mark Steven Kirk (R-Ill.) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) unveiled another gun trafficking proposal Wednesday.

While prospects for expanded background checks and tougher trafficking laws have grown, the prospects for an assault weapons ban, eagerly sought by some gun control advocates, seem dim.

Leahy notably did not endorse the ban in his comments during the hearing. Nor did Kelly, who instead called for a "careful and civil conversation about the lethality of firearms we permit to be legally bought and sold in this country" while reminding senators of the toll that mass shootings have taken.

"Gabby's gift for speech is a distant memory," Kelly said, referring to his wife by her nickname. "She struggles to walk, and she is partially blind." But, he added, "we aren't here as victims. We're speaking to you today as Americans."

He and Giffords "have our firearms for the same reasons that millions of others have guns, for hunting and target shooting," he said. "But rights demand responsibility." After the hearing, Giffords and Kelly met with Obama at the White House.

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Rape trial of teenaged football players to be open to public: Ohio judge

(Reuters) – The controversial trial of two high school football players accused of raping a classmate will remain open to the public and will not be relocated to another town, an Ohio judge ruled on Wednesday.

Prosecutors and an attorney representing the accuser had sought a closed trial, arguing that public access to the juvenile trial would subject the accuser to unwanted publicity and make potential witnesses reluctant to testify.

Visiting Hamilton County Judge Tom Lipps said the presence of the media would prevent inaccurate reporting and enhance public confidence in the juvenile justice system, according to his written ruling, a copy of which was seen by Reuters.

“An open hearing is especially valuable where rumors, mischaracterizations and opinions unsupported by facts have reportedly been repeated in social media postings and other published outlets,” Lipps wrote. “An open hearing will diminish the influence of such postings and publications.”

Prosecutors have accused Ma’Lik Richmond and Trent Mays, both 16, of raping a classmate at a party attended by many teammates last August in Steubenville, a close-knit city of 19,000 near the Pennsylvania border.

The case attracted national attention after the hacker activist group Anonymous publicized a picture of two young men carrying a girl by her wrists and ankles and released a video showing other young men joking about the alleged assault.

Richmond’s lawyer, Walter Madison, said previously on CNN that his client was one of the young men in the photograph – which he said was taken out of context – but does not appear in the video. A lawyer for Mays has not publicly commented on the postings.

Community leaders have accused authorities of protecting the school’s popular football program by not charging more players who could have prevented the alleged attack.

Lipps also ruled on Wednesday that the trial will remain in Steubenville. He set a trial date for March 13.

Reuters generally does not identify people who say they have been victims of sex crimes.

(Editing by Paul Thomasch, Bernard Orr)

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Final cut: The gems and stars left off the Oscars list

(Reuters) – If I could remove any word from Oscar conversations, it would be “snubbed.” It’s catchy and makes good headline fodder, but it implies that a cabal of Academy members sat in a room and consciously decided to ostracize this actor or that moviemaker. These ballots are filled out by 6,000 to 7,000 voters, ranging from visual effects experts to screenwriters to studio chiefs. I can’t envision secret meetings to decide the fate of each candidate.

Jamie Foxx (“Django Unchained”) and veteran French star Jean-Louis Trintignant were both considered serious contenders for a Best Actor nomination; neither made the final cut, even though Trintignant’s co-star in “Amour,” Emmanuelle Riva, was nominated for Best Actress. At one point, the gifted John Hawkes was touted as a shoo-in for his brilliant performance in “The Sessions.” But I’ve learned never to use the word “shoo-in” where the Oscars are concerned.

There were fewer surprises in the Best Actress category, although some pundits had predicted Helen Mirren for “Hitchcock,” Marion Cotillard for the French import “Rust and Bone” and Rachel Weisz, who won the New York Film Critics’ award, for “The Deep Blue Sea.” As it happens, they took a collective backseat to the youngest female ever nominated in this category, 9-year-old Quvenzhané Wallis (“Beasts of the Southern Wild”) and the oldest, 82-year-old Riva.

The always-crowded Supporting Actor and Actress rosters excluded such prominent figures as Nicole Kidman, Leonardo DiCaprio, Samuel L. Jackson and Maggie Smith, while admitting Philip Seymour Hoffman for what is clearly a leading role in “The Master.”

But the biggest buzz concerns this year’s Best Director lineup. Experienced Oscar watchers could see this brewing, as the current Oscar setup has a built-in dilemma. To understand it, one need only do the math: With the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences now enabling nine films to compete for Best Picture — in fact, they allow as many as 10 — but retaining only five slots for Best Director, at least four world-class filmmakers are guaranteed to be left out in the cold. How those four happened to be Kathryn Bigelow, Ben Affleck, Tom Hooper and Quentin Tarantino this year is anybody’s guess.

Only members of the director’s branch get to nominate directors; that’s an elite group of fewer than 400 people. The same constituency didn’t cite Affleck for his terrific movie “The Town” a few years ago but did support Bigelow and Hooper, who went on to win for “The Hurt Locker” and “The King’s Speech,” respectively. They were early boosters of Tarantino, who won an Oscar for Best Screenplay for “Pulp Fiction” in 1994 and was nominated for Best Director for his last film, “Inglorious Basterds.” It may be true that they’ve undervalued Ben Affleck, but there is no logic to the omission of the three other Best Picture directors.

What’s more, the Academy’s director lineup doesn’t coincide with that of the Directors Guild of America, which historically, and almost invariably, has forecast the Oscar winner. But that was before the Academy opened up the Best Picture category beyond its traditional five slots, so now all bets are off. (For the record, this year’s DGA nominees are Affleck, Bigelow, Hooper, Ang Lee and Steven Spielberg.)

WHAT ABOUT ‘TED’?

Every round of Oscar nominations brings its share of surprises and disappointments. Many people I know were counting on Judi Dench to be up for Best Supporting Actress, which would have made her the first person to be singled out for a performance in a James Bond movie in that series’ 50-year history. There was also great enthusiasm for Javier Bardem‘s performance as the movie’s colorfully sinister villain. Both Dench and Bardem are former winners, so the Academy actors’ branch clearly appreciates them … just not enough to make this year’s finals. Even so, “Skyfall” earned a record five nominations, including one for Thomas Newman’s rousing music score and one for cinematographer Roger Deakins, who has been nominated 10 times and never taken home one of those gold statuettes. (It’s the first time around for Adele, who sang and co-wrote the movie’s theme song.)

Over the course of the year, a handful of other films elicited critical notice that might have led to Oscar recognition: Richard Linklater’s “Bernie” offered Jack Black an unusually juicy part as a real-life Texas character who may or may not have murdered his older female companion. Novelist Stephen Chbosky’s adaptation of his best-selling book “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” earned warm reviews for its deeply felt look at high school outcasts. Co-star Ezra Miller has been singled out in particular amid a talented young cast. Two of the best performances of the year were given by Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Peña in David Ayer’s vibrant L.A. cop drama “End of Watch,” but their work has been largely overlooked. Fortunately, Peña is in the running for an Independent Spirit Award as Best Supporting Actor.

Christopher Nolan loyalists are still miffed that the filmmaker has been nominated for two of his screenplays (“Memento” and “Inception”) but never recognized as Best Director — and that the finale in his Batman trilogy, “The Dark Knight Rises,” did not earn a Best Picture nod this year.

Omissions don’t come only in the boldface categories that attract the lion’s share of attention. It’s understandable that “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey,” “Life of Pi,” Marvel’s “The Avengers,” “Prometheus” and “Snow White and the Huntsman” are competing for Best Achievement in Visual Effects. But if you stop and think about it, was there a more convincing or persuasive use of “movie magic” this year than a teddy bear come to life sharing the screen with Mark Wahlberg in Seth MacFarlane’s “Ted”? To me, that’s the most amazing kind of trickery, because you’re forced to believe what your brain tells you can’t be true. Yet “Ted” didn’t even make the Academy’s short list before the final five contenders were chosen.

For my money, there is one 2012 release that has truly been robbed. It happens to be a box-office blockbuster, which offers its creators (and backers) some consolation, I’m sure. Still, “The Avengers” is the best comic book superhero movie of this, or possibly, any year, in large part because of Joss Whedon’s sensationally smart, funny screenplay. There is none of the self-seriousness that mars “The Dark Knight Rises” or the hollowness of earlier Marvel efforts like “Thor.” It doesn’t run out of steam like “Captain America” or simply repeat itself like “Iron Man 2.”

Whedon pulls off the formidable feat of assembling an all-star cast of characters and giving each a purpose. He takes a two-dimensional villain from “Thor” and makes him truly menacing. He breathes new life into the lumbering Hulk. He makes us care about all these characters and gives them a cause worth fighting (and rooting) for. On top of that, he infuses his screenplay with a welcome dose of humor, including some of the funniest moments ever found in an ostensibly serious superhero saga. (Here’s a sample exchange. Bruce Banner: I don’t think we should be focusing on Loki. That guy’s brain is a bag full of cats. You can smell crazy on him. Thor: Have a care how you speak! Loki is beyond reason, but he is of Asgard and he is my brother! Natasha Romanoff: He killed 80 people in two days. Thor: He’s adopted.)

Moviegoers around the world loved the result, and even critics sang its praises. But aside from a nomination for its excellent visual effects, the movie was shut out. Normally, this wouldn’t be shocking, as the Academy tends to shun popcorn movies except in the technical categories, but “The Avengers” is no ordinary popcorn movie.

Then again, if the Oscars followed a predictable path — mine or anyone else’s — they wouldn’t be the Oscars. The final surprises will be unveiled on February 24.

Film critic and historian Leonard Maltin is perhaps best known for his annual paperback reference book, “Leonard Maltin’s Movie Guide.” He hosts “Maltin on Movies” for Reelz, introduces films on Comcast and teaches as the University of Southern California School for Cinematic Arts. He has written many books on film and holds court at www.leonardmaltin.com.

(Editing by Kathy Jones, Arlene Getz and Douglas Royalty)

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During Trial, New Details Emerge on DuPuy Hip

When Johnson & Johnson announced the appointment in 2011 of an executive to head the troubled orthopedics division whose badly flawed artificial hip had been recalled, the company billed the move as a fresh start.

But that same executive, it turns out, had supervised the implant’s introduction in the United States and had been told by a top company consultant three years before the device was recalled that it was faulty.

In addition, the executive also held a senior marketing position at a time when Johnson & Johnson decided not to tell officials outside the United States that American regulators had refused to allow sale of a version of the artificial hip in this country.

The details about the involvement of the executive, Andrew Ekdahl, with the all-metal hip implant emerged Wednesday in Los Angeles Superior Court during the trial of a patient lawsuit against the DePuy Orthopaedics division of Johnson & Johnson. More than 10,000 lawsuits have been filed against DePuy in connection with the device — the Articular Surface Replacement, or A.S.R. — and the Los Angeles case is the first to go to trial.

The information about the depth of Mr. Ekdahl’s involvement with the implant may raise questions about DePuy’s ability to put the A.S.R. episode behind it.

Asked in an e-mail why the company had promoted Mr. Ekdahl, a DePuy spokeswoman, Lorie Gawreluk, said the company “seeks the most accomplished and competent people for the job.”

On Wednesday, portions of Mr. Ekdahl’s videotaped testimony were shown to jurors in the Los Angeles case. Other top DePuy marketing executives who played roles in the A.S.R. development are expected to testify in coming days. Mr. Ekdahl, when pressed in the taped questioning on whether DePuy had recalled the A.S.R. because it was unsafe, repeatedly responded that the company had recalled it “because it did not meet the clinical standards we wanted in the marketplace.”

Before the device’s recall in mid-2010, Mr. Ekdahl and those executives all publicly asserted that the device was performing extremely well. But internal documents that have become public as a result of litigation conflict with such statements.

In late 2008, for example, a surgeon who served as one of DePuy’s top consultants told Mr. Ekdahl and two other DePuy marketing officials that he was concerned about the cup component of the A.S.R. and believed it should be “redesigned.” At the time, DePuy was aggressively promoting the device in the United States as a breakthrough and it was being implanted into thousands of patients.

“My thoughts would be that DePuy should at least de-emphasize the A.S.R. cup while the clinical results are studied,” that consultant, Dr. William Griffin, wrote.

A spokesman for Dr. Griffin said he was not available for comment.

The A.S.R., whose cup and ball components were both made of metal, was first sold by DePuy in 2003 outside the United States for use in an alternative hip replacement procedure called resurfacing. Two years later, DePuy started selling another version of the A.S.R. for use here in standard hip replacement that used the same cup component as the resurfacing device. Only the standard A.S.R. was sold in the United States; both versions were sold outside the country.

Before the device recall in mid-2010, about 93,000 patients worldwide received an A.S.R., about a third of them in this country. Internal DePuy projections estimate that it will fail in 40 percent of those patients within five years; a rate eight times higher than for many other hip devices.

Mr. Ekdahl testified via tape Wednesday that he had been placed in charge of the 2005 introduction of the standard version of the A.S.R. in this country. Within three years, he and other DePuy executives were receiving reports that the device was failing prematurely at higher than expected rates, apparently because of problems related to the cup’s design, documents disclosed during the trial indicate.

Along with other DePuy executives, he also participated in a meeting that resulted in a proposal to redesign the A.S.R. cup. But that plan was dropped, apparently because sales of the implant had not justified the expense, DePuy documents indicate.

In the face of growing complaints from surgeons about the A.S.R., DePuy officials maintained that the problems were related to how surgeons were implanting the cup, not from any design flaw. But in early 2009, a DePuy executive wrote to Mr. Ekdahl and other marketing officials that the early failures of the A.S.R. resurfacing device and the A.S.R. traditional implant, known as the XL, were most likely design-related.

“The issue seen with A.S.R. and XL today, over five years post-launch, are most likely linked to the inherent design of the product and that is something we should recognize,” that executive, Raphael Pascaud wrote in March 2009.

Last year, The New York Times reported that DePuy executives decided in 2009 to phase out the A.S.R. and sell existing inventories weeks after the Food and Drug Administration asked the company for more safety data about the implant.

The F.D.A. also told the company at that time that it was rejecting its efforts to sell the resurfacing version of the device in the United States because of concerns about “high concentration of metal ions” in the blood of patients who received it.

DePuy never disclosed the F.D.A. ruling to regulators in other countries where it was still marketing the resurfacing version of the implant.

During a part of that period, Mr. Ekdahl was overseeing sales in Europe and other regions for DePuy. When The Times article appeared last year, he issued a statement, saying that any implication that the F.D.A. had determined there were safety issues with the A.S.R. was “simply untrue.” “This was purely a business decision,” Mr. Ekdahl stated at that time.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 30, 2013

An earlier version of this article, in the summary, described the start of the DePuy trial incorrectly. It began last week, not this week.

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