Kuang-hsun Ting dies at 97; bishop led Protestant church in China

Bishop Kuang-hsun Ting, who was one of the most influential Christian figures in China as the longtime leader of the country's government-sanctioned Protestant church, has died. He was 97.

Ting died Nov. 22 at his home in Nanjing, according to statements from religious organizations he led. A cause of death was not given.

For many years, Ting headed the Three-Self Patriotic Movement and the China Christian Council, the two government-sanctioned Protestant organizations that together form the official Protestant church in China. He was also the longtime president of the Nanjing Union Theological Seminary and helped launch the Amity Foundation, serving as board president of that social service organization until his death.

Ting's close cooperation with China's Communist Party and central government earned him both praise and criticism throughout his long career. Supporters said he had helped protect and promote the interests of Protestants in China, while critics accused him of being too close to the government and at times even joining in the persecution of unregistered or "house" churches.

"He has a positive legacy in many people's eyes because he pushed forward Protestant Christianity and its interests in China, albeit under the scope of the government," said Carsten T. Vala, an expert on Chinese Protestant Christianity who teaches at Loyola University in Maryland. "But he was also a lightning rod, seen by those in the house churches as having compromised by leading the Communist Party-controlled church."

As head of the official church, Ting was often in a tough position as he balanced religious and political demands, said Fenggang Yang, director of Purdue University's Center on Religion and Chinese Society.

"He had to make compromises, otherwise the Protestants could suffer even more," Yang said. "Did he personally totally agree with the government or government policy? Maybe not. I think he also tried to help the government-sanctioned churches and some house churches. But many house churches don't see it that way."

Born Sept. 20, 1915, in Shanghai, Ting studied at St. John's University in that city and was ordained an Anglican priest in 1942. He served as mission secretary for the Student Christian Movement in Canada and later studied at Columbia University and Union Theological Seminary in New York.

In the early 1950s, he was on the staff of the World Student Christian Federation in Geneva, then returned to China. In 1955, he was ordained an Anglican bishop, a title he retained for the rest of his life.

Richard J. Mouw, president of Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena and a friend, said Ting had helped create an indigenous Christianity in China.

"He tried to find a way in which the church could remain true to itself but be a partner to government and other cultural forces in China," Mouw said. He was "a deeply Christian person coping as best he could with the demands of government, while keeping alive the essentials of Christianity in China."

Ting's survivors include two sons.

rebecca.trounson@latimes.com

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Family learns of student’s death on Facebook

ATLANTA (AP) — The parents of a south Georgia college student first learned from Facebook that their daughter had been found dead in a dormitory study room shortly before Thanksgiving. Now, they hope that Facebook and other social media sites can help solve the death of 17-year-old Jasmine Benjamin, which police are investigating as a homicide.

The Valdosta State University freshman was found unresponsive on a study room couch on Nov. 18.

A family friend forwarded the Facebook post about the teen’s death to her parents before they were officially notified by authorities, said A. Thomas Stubbs, an attorney for the victim’s mother, Judith Brogdon, and her stepfather, James Jackson. But many questions remain unanswered about how she died.

The family has hired a private investigator, and a new Facebook site has been set up in hopes that students and others might share tips.

While some Facebook comments have already been turned over to law enforcement officers, the family hopes friends, classmates or others who noticed suspicious comments will also alert authorities.

“Anything that reveals a little more information than what’s publicly known about her death, those are the kind of comments police are looking for as someone who might warrant a closer examination,” Stubbs said.

Also of interest are “unusual comments or unusually timed comments about her death,” he said.

Police detectives have canvassed dormitories and interviewed several students on the campus, located about 250 miles south of the family’s home in Gwinnett County, outside Atlanta.

Benjamin wanted to follow the career path of her mother and become a nurse.

Police say they’re treating the case as a homicide, though autopsy results are not complete and they can’t say for certain whether she was killed. There were no obvious signs of a crime when her body was found, but an autopsy raised questions, authorities have said.

“We’re providing what resources are necessary to assist Valdosta State University police in solving this crime,” Georgia Bureau of Investigation spokesman John Bankhead said. “The crime lab is expediting evidence from this incident.”

Shortly after Benjamin’s parents learned of her death from Facebook, Lawrenceville police officers knocked on the doors of the family home to inform them officially that their daughter was dead, Stubbs said.

“As frustrating as that may be for the family to learn that way, they understand it’s a different world,” Stubbs said.

The family has yet to learn the possible timeframe of when their daughter died, and police have not shared any theories about how she was killed, Stubbs said.

“We know that they have looked at the phone records, video records that they can find in the school,” he said. Beyond that, they’ve been going through legal procedures that are required to obtain records from Facebook Inc.

The family hired Martinelli Investigations Inc. of Lawrenceville to assist in the investigation.

Private investigator Robin Martinelli said Wednesday that any video near the scene, even if may seem insignificant, could prove helpful in the investigation.

“It wouldn’t matter if it was two weeks before, two hours before or 20 minutes before,” she said.

Martinelli said she’s confident that police are working diligently to follow up on leads, but private investigators can often provide valuable assistance, she said.

“On any homicide, they’re going to work around the clock aggressively every minute, and they’re doing that,” she said.

She said Jasmine Benjamin was a strong student who showed great potential. “Her favorite color was purple, her nickname was Jazzy,” she said.

“She wanted to help people, plain and simple,” her stepfather, James Jackson, told WSB-TV. “That was her goal in life. That’s all she talked about since she was young — ‘I want to be able to help people.’”

Valdosta State campus police, city police and the GBI were working together to conduct interviews and collect evidence, the university said in a statement Tuesday. University officials said they couldn’t release any further information.

Martinelli hopes students away at college keep in touch with their parents — and give them the passwords to social networking sites and their cell phones in case anything happens.

“If you have passcodes to your computer, your phone, please tell your parents,” she said. “Don’t tell everybody in the world, but tell your parents your passcodes.”

She said some of the best advice parents can give students is this: “They should listen to their gut,” she said. “If they walk into a situation and it’s not feeling right, leave.”

Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Oh, Yoko! Ono's fashion line gropes for Lennon

NEW YORK (AP) — You remember that Beatles classic "I Wanna Hold Your Hand"? Turns out Yoko Ono had other things in mind.

Ono's new menswear collection inspired by John Lennon includes pants with large handprints on the crotch, tank tops with nipple cutouts and even a flashing LED bra.

The collection of menswear for Opening Ceremony is based on a series of drawings she sketched as a gift for Lennon for their wedding day in 1969. Ono said she the illustrations were designs for clothing and accessories to celebrate Lennon's "hot bod."

Also in the collection are a "butt hoodie" with an outline suggesting its name, pants with cutouts at the behind, a jock strap with an LED light, open-toed boots and a transparent chest plaque with bells and a leather neck strap.

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Well: Weight Loss Surgery May Not Combat Diabetes Long-Term

Weight loss surgery, which in recent years has been seen as an increasingly attractive option for treating Type 2 diabetes, may not be as effective against the disease as it was initially thought to be, according to a new report. The study found that many obese Type 2 diabetics who undergo gastric bypass surgery do not experience a remission of their disease, and of those that do, about a third redevelop diabetes within five years of their operation.

The findings contrast with the growing perception that surgery is essentially a cure for Type II diabetes. Earlier this year, two widely publicized studies reported that surgery worked better than drugs, diet and exercise in causing a remission of Type 2 diabetes in overweight people whose blood sugar was out of control, leading some experts to call for greater use of surgery in treating the disease. But the studies were small and relatively short, lasting under two years.

The latest study, published in the journal Obesity Surgery, tracked thousands of diabetics who had gastric bypass surgery for more than a decade. It found that many people whose diabetes at first went away were likely to have it return. While weight regain is a common problem among those who undergo bariatric surgery, regaining lost weight did not appear to be the cause of diabetes relapse. Instead, the study found that people whose diabetes was most severe or in its later stages when they had surgery were more likely to have a relapse, regardless of whether they regained weight.

“Some people are under the impression that you have surgery and you’re cured,” said Dr. Vivian Fonseca, the president for medicine and science for the American Diabetes Association, who was not involved in the study. “There have been a lot of claims about how wonderful surgery is for diabetes, and I think this offers a more realistic picture.”

The findings suggest that weight loss surgery may be most effective for treating diabetes in those whose disease is not very advanced. “What we’re learning is that not all diabetic patients do as well as others,” said Dr. David E. Arterburn, the lead author of the study and an associate investigator at the Group Health Research Institute in Seattle. “Those who are early in diabetes seem to do the best, which makes a case for potentially earlier intervention.”

One of the strengths of the new study was that it involved thousands of patients enrolled in three large health plans in California and Minnesota, allowing detailed tracking over many years. All told, 4,434 adult diabetics were followed between 1995 and 2008. All were obese, and all underwent Roux-en-Y operations, the most popular type of gastric bypass procedure.

After surgery, about 68 percent of patients experienced a complete remission of their diabetes. But within five years, 35 percent of those patients had it return. Taken together, that means that most of the subjects in the study, about 56 percent — a figure that includes those whose disease never remitted — had no long-lasting remission of diabetes after surgery.

The researchers found that three factors were particularly good predictors of who was likely to have a relapse of diabetes. If patients, before surgery, had a relatively long duration of diabetes, had poor control of their blood sugar, or were taking insulin, then they were least likely to benefit from gastric bypass. A patient’s weight, either before or after surgery, was not correlated with their likelihood of remission or relapse.

In Type 2 diabetes, the beta cells that produce insulin in the pancreas tend to wear out as the disease progresses, which may explain why some people benefit less from surgery. “If someone is too far advanced in their diabetes, where their pancreas is frankly toward the latter stages of being able to produce insulin, then even after losing a bunch of weight their body may not be able to produce enough insulin to control their blood sugar,” Dr. Arterburn said.

Nonetheless, he said it might be the case that obese diabetics, even those whose disease is advanced, can still benefit from gastric surgery, at least as far as their quality of life and their risk factors for heart disease and other complications are concerned.

“It’s not a surefire cure for everyone,” he said. “But almost universally, patients lose weight after weight loss surgery, and that in and of itself may have so many health benefits.”

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AMC to open dine-in theater in Marina del Rey

AMC, the nation's second-largest cinema chain, is opening its first Southern California dine-in movie theater, taking the concept of dinner and a movie to a new level.

Set to open Monday, the remodeled AMC Dine-In Theatres Marina 6 is the 11th dine-in theater that the Kansas City, Mo., chain has opened around the country since its first location debuted in 2008 in an affluent Atlanta district.

The refurbished location, on the second floor of a shopping center at Maxella and Glencoe avenues in Marina del Rey, features six auditoriums for adults only. Patrons can order food and drinks, including beer and wine, while sitting in reclining leather seats.

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"It's dinner and a movie, and it's done right — what could be better than that?" AMC Chief Executive Gerry Lopez said in a statement. "Based on the feedback at these locations around the country, our guests in the Los Angeles area are going to love this experience."

AMC — recently acquired by China's Dalian Wanda Group — is not the first chain in L.A. to offer dine-in services, but its Marina del Rey theater, which has 427 seats, is the largest of its kind to hit the local market and the first offered by a major U.S. chain.

The opening underscores the fact that the dine-in-theater concept, a niche business once viewed skeptically by the exhibition industry, is becoming more widespread and attractive to theater operators because it enables them to take a bite out of a lucrative business they currently lose to restaurants and bars.

Offering premium food and beverage services also is another way for theaters to lure patrons to the multiplex and away from watching a movie in the comfort of their homes — and to spend more money once they get to the theater.

REPORT: Reel China - Coverage of movies and entertainment in China

AMC Marina 6 includes a lobby bar and lounge serving gourmet burgers, artisan flatbreads, roasted chicken and brisket quesadillas, and Thai Bang shrimp tacos, with prices ranging from $6.99 to $15.99.

As with other dine-in theaters, the luxury service comes at a price. The cost of a ticket at AMC Marina 6 will be as much as $17.50 (excluding food and 3-D surcharges) depending on the day of week and showtime — about $5 more than the price at a regular AMC theater.

AMC invested about $5 million to remodel the theater, gutting the auditorium to install new sound systems, screens and seating. The new complex has about 50% fewer seats than the old one to make room for larger La-Z-Boy-like recliners and more than 4 feet of aisle space.

"We're trying to bring the comfort of the living room to a movie theater," said AMC Theatres spokesman Ryan Noonan, during a tour of the new venue. "There are lots of entertainment options out there and we want to make sure that we continue to stay in the game."

Each seat has its own swing table, food and drinks menu, and buttons that patrons can push to place orders at any time during the movie. Servers dressed in black, to minimize disruption, use electronic tablets to quietly punch in food and drink orders.

Some other theater chains limit food and beverage service to the first 15 minutes of the film, but AMC executives are predicting their customers will want service throughout the film.

"If you're watching 'The Hobbit' and after two hours you need a second beer, we should be able to provide that," said Dan Glennon, AMC's director of dine-in training and best practices.

The theater, which will offer reserved seating, will cater to couples and older patrons who want a more "adult atmosphere" when watching movies, Noonan said.

He would not say how much revenue privately owned AMC generates from its dine-in theaters, but said that they are highly profitable and popular with customers wherever they operate. He said AMC is looking to add more dine-in theaters nationwide, including in the Los Angeles area.

AMC will face some competition. Several other theater chains have been offering so-called premium food and beverage services, some with dine-in options.

Australian luxury theater operator Gold Class Cinemas brought its high-end brand to Pasadena three years ago. (It was sold and now operates as IPic Theaters.)

And Cinepolis Luxury Cinemas, the Mexico City theater circuit, has opened three luxury theaters in Southern California, including a new location in Westlake Village, where patrons can order gourmet food and drinks from their seats.

ArcLight Cinemas opened a premium cinema in El Segundo in 2010, allowing patrons to bring alcoholic drinks into a theater reserved for those age 21 and older. Customers, however, can't order food and drinks from their seats.

Noonan said he isn't concerned about the competition.

"We really think this is a good concept for L.A.," he said.

richard.verrier@latimes.com

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Top Democrat urges progressives to deal on 'fiscal cliff'

WASHINGTON – A top Democrat pressured fellow progressives Tuesday to support – rather than fight – a far-reaching budget deal that includes cuts to entitlement programs after resolving  the upcoming fiscal cliff.

“We can't be so naive to believe that just taxing the rich will solve our problems,” said Sen. Richard Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate. “Put everything on the table. Repeat. Everything on the table.”

The assistant majority leader’s speech at the influential Center for American Progress comes at a pivotal moment in budget talks between the White House and Congress. Progressive and labor groups have warned President Obama against cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and other government programs and to instead focus on raising tax revenue in the administration’s negotiations with congressional Republicans.

The White House and Capitol Hill are working to prevent the combination of automatic tax hikes and deep spending cuts coming at year’s end – what economists have warned would be a $500-billion hit to the economy that could spark another recession.

QUIZ: How much do you know about the 'fiscal cliff'?

Durbin, a top progressive, has long angled for a broad deficit-reduction deal after having served on the White House’s nonpartisan fiscal commission that devised $4 trillion in new taxes and spending cuts to curb the nation’s debt load. Experts say such a large package is needed to stop record deficits and improve the nation’s fiscal outlook.

In remarks that strayed from his prepared comments, Durbin told the story of a labor leader who questioned his interest in serving on that 2010 panel, asking, “What is a nice progressive like you doing in a place like that?”

Durbin responded by saying it was better to have a seat at the table, a position he reiterated as he tried to prevent a schism among Democrats’ traditional allies while talks continue toward the year-end deadline.

“Progressives cannot afford to stand on the sidelines in this fiscal debate and deny the obvious,” Durbin said.

Already, a coalition of liberal groups is running ads warning Obama against striking a deal with Republicans that would slash social safety net programs while allowing tax breaks for wealthier households to continue.

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said Tuesday that negotiations over Social Security should occur separately from deficit negotiations.

"We should address the drivers of the deficit," he told reporters, "and Social Security is not currently a driver of the deficit."

[For the Record, 6:02 p.m. PST  Nov. 27: This post has been updated to include the latest reaction from the White House. In addition, the lead has been corrected to make clear that Durbin wants the entitlement negotiations separate from a deal on the fiscal cliff.]

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lisa.mascaro@latimes.com

Twitter: @LisaMascaroinDC

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Play Your Wii U Anywhere — Even on a Train

Wii U on a Train

No need for a TV set. If you plug the Wii U in, you can interact entirely with the GamePad. This is on a Japanese Shinkansen, a high-speed train.

Click here to view this gallery.

[More from Mashable: Nintendo Unveils Wii Mini for the Canucks]

Nintendo’s new Wii U console may have one real advantage over the competition: portability. Since you don’t need a television to play a good portion of the Wii U titles, gaming on the road is as easy as locating a power outlet.

Rocket News 24 tested the console’s mobility by taking a Wii U on a Japanese bullet train, which has power outlets at every seat. Thanks to that — and a little iPhone tethering magic — their staff was able to play New Super Mario Brothers U and Call of Duty Black Ops 2 while riding comfortably.

[More from Mashable: Wii U Sells 400,000 Units in First Week]

Check out Rocket News 24 to see more pictures and a full recount of their experience.

This story originally published on Mashable here.

Gaming News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Football leads NBC to ratings win

NEW YORK (AP) — Two football games that showed the widely divergent paths of New York's pro football teams boosted NBC to its first ratings win of the new season.

NBC aired the Jets' embarrassing loss to the New England Patriots on Thanksgiving night, and followed it on Sunday with the Giants' easy victory over the Green Bay Packers.

Those two big prime-time audiences on a holiday week enabled NBC to win its first week in the Nielsen company's ratings since it televised the Super Bowl last winter.

Lifetime's debut of the movie "Liz & Dick" starring Lindsay Lohan reached 3.5 million viewers on Sunday, Nielsen said.

NBC averaged 9.5 million viewers in prime-time for the win (5.6 rating, 9 share). CBS was second with an 8.3 million average (5.2, 9), ABC had 8.2 million (5.0, 8), Fox had 6.2 million (3.6, 6) and the CW and ION Television both had 1.2 million (both 0.8, 1).

Among the Spanish-language networks, Univision led with a 3.4 million viewer average (1.7, 3). Telemundo had 1.2 million (0.6, 1), TeleFutura had 800,000 (0.4, 1), Estrella had 240,000 and Azteca 110,000 (both 0.1, 0).

NBC's "Nightly News" topped the evening newscasts with an average of 10.2 million viewers (6.8, 12). ABC's "World News" was second with 8.3 million (5.5, 11), and the "CBS Evening News" had 7.1 million viewers (4.8, 8).

A ratings point represents 1,147,000 households, or 1 percent of the nation's estimated 114.7 million TV homes. The share is the percentage of in-use televisions tuned to a given show.

For the week of Nov. 19-25, the top 10 shows, their networks and viewerships were: NFL Football: Green Bay at N.Y. Giants, NBC, 20.85 million; NFL Football: New England at N.Y. Jets, NBC, 19.21 million; "NCIS," CBS, 16.48 million; College Football: Notre Dame at USC, ABC, 16.06 million; "NCIS: Los Angeles," CBS, 15.13 million; "Dancing With the Stars," ABC, 14.28 million; "The OT," Fox, 13.5 million; "Dancing With the Stars Results," ABC, 13.01 million; "Football Night in America," NBC, 12.8 million; "Criminal Minds," CBS, 11.53 million.

___

ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Co. CBS is owned by CBS Corp. CW is a joint venture of Warner Bros. Entertainment and CBS Corp. Fox is a unit of News Corp. NBC and Telemundo are owned by Comcast Corp. ION Television is owned by ION Media Networks. TeleFutura is a division of Univision. Azteca America is a wholly owned subsidiary of TV Azteca S.A. de C.V.

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Online:

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Amid Hurricane Sandy, a Race to Get a Liver Transplant

It was the best possible news, at the worst possible time.

The phone call from the hospital brought the message that Dolores and Vin Dreeland had long hoped for, ever since their daughter Natalia, 4, had been put on the waiting list for a liver transplant. The time had come.

They bundled her into the car for the 50-mile trip from their home in Long Valley, N.J., to NewYork-Presbyterian Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital in Manhattan. But it soon seemed that this chance to save Natalia’s life might be just out of reach.

The date was Sunday, Oct. 28, and Hurricane Sandy, the worst storm to hit the East Coast in decades, was bearing down on New York. Airports and bridges would soon close, but the donated organ was in Nevada, five hours away. The time window in which a plane carrying the liver would be able to land in the region was rapidly closing.

In a hospital room, Natalia watched cartoons. Her parents watched the clock, and the weather. “Our anxiety was through the roof,” Mrs. Dreeland said. “It just made your stomach into knots.”

The Dreelands, who are in their 60s, became Natalia’s foster parents in 2008 when she was 7 months old, and adopted her just before she turned 2. They have another adopted daughter, Dorothy Jane, who is 17.

Natalia is a “smart little cookie” who loves school and dressing up Alice, her favorite doll, her mother said. At age 3, Natalia used the word “discombobulated” correctly, Mr. Dreeland said.

Natalia’s health problems date back several years. Her gallbladder was taken out in 2010, and about half her liver was removed in 2011. The underlying problem was a rare disease, Langerhans cell histiocytosis. It causes a tremendous overgrowth of a type of cell in the immune system and can damage organs. Drugs can sometimes keep it in check, but they did not work for Natalia.

In her case, the disease struck the bile ducts, which led to progressive liver damage. “She would have eventually gone into liver failure,” said Dr. Nadia Ovchinsky, a pediatric liver transplant specialist at NewYork-Presbyterian. “And she demonstrated some signs of early liver failure.”

The only hope was a transplant.

Dr. Tomoaki Kato, Natalia’s surgeon, knew that the liver in Nevada was a perfect match for Natalia in the two criteria that matter most: blood type and size. The deceased donor was 2 years old, and though Natalia is nearly 5, she is small for her age. Scar tissue from her previous operations would have made it very difficult to fit a larger organ into her abdomen.

Though Dr. Kato had considered transplanting part of an adult liver into Natalia, a complete organ from a child would be far better for her. But healthy organs from small children do not often become available, Dr. Kato said. This was a rare opportunity, and he was determined to seize it.

But as the day wore on, the odds for Natalia grew slimmer. The operation in Nevada to remove the liver was delayed several times.

At many hospitals, surgery to remove donor organs is done at the end of the day, after all regularly scheduled operations. The Nevada hospital had a busy surgical schedule that day, made worse by a trauma case that took priority.

At the hospital in New York, Tod Brown, an organ procurement coordinator, had alerted a charter air carrier that a flight from Nevada might be needed. That company in turn contacted West Coast carriers to pick up the donated liver and fly it to New York.

Initially, two carriers agreed, but then backed out. Several other charter companies also declined.

Mr. Brown told Dr. Kato that they might have to decline the organ. Dr. Kato, soft-spoken but relentless, said, “Find somebody who can fly.”

Dr. Kato used to work in Miami, where pilots found ways to bypass hurricanes to deliver organs. Even during Hurricane Katrina, his hospital performed transplants.

“I asked the transplant coordinators to just keep pushing,” he said.

Mr. Brown said, “Dr. Kato knew he was going to get that organ, one way or another.”

As the trajectory of the storm became clearer, one of the West Coast charter companies agreed to attempt the flight. The plan was to land at the airport in Teterboro, N.J. The backup was Newark airport, and the second backup was Albany, from where an ambulance would finish the trip.

The timing was critical: organs deteriorate outside the body, and ideally a liver should be transplanted within 12 hours of being removed.

Early Monday, as the storm whirled offshore, the plane landed at Teterboro. Soon a nurse rushed to tell the Dreelands that she had just seen an ambulance with lights and sirens screech up to the hospital. Someone had jumped out carrying a container.

At about 5 a.m., the couple kissed Natalia and saw her wheeled off to the operating room.

Three weeks later, she is back home, on the mend. The complicated regimen of drugs that transplant patients need is tough on a child, but she is getting through it, her father said.

Recently, Mr. Dreeland said, he found himself weeping uncontrollably during a church service for the family of the child who had died. “Their child gave my child life,” he said.

Though only time will tell, because the histiocytosis appeared limited to Natalia’s bile ducts and had not affected other organs, her doctors say there is a good chance that the transplant has cured her.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: November 28, 2012

Because of an editing error, a picture caption with an article on Tuesday about a girl who received a liver transplant during Hurricane Sandy misspelled the surname of the girl’s family. As the article correctly noted, it is Dreeland, not Vreeland.

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Judge orders tobacco companies to say they lied about smoking risk

WASHINGTON — A federal judge ordered tobacco companies to publish corrective statements that say they lied about the dangers of smoking and that disclose smoking's health effects, including the death on average of 1,200 people a day.

U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler previously had said she wanted the industry to pay for corrective statements in various types of advertisements. But Tuesday's ruling was the first time she had specified what the statements will say.

Each corrective ad is to be prefaced by a statement that a federal court has concluded that the defendant tobacco companies "deliberately deceived the American public about the health effects of smoking." Among the required statements are that smoking kills more people than murder, AIDS, suicide, drugs, car crashes and alcohol combined, and that "secondhand smoke kills over 3,000 Americans a year."

The corrective statements are part of a case the government brought in 1999 under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. Kessler ruled in that case in 2006 that the nation's largest cigarette makers concealed the dangers of smoking for decades, and said she wanted the industry to pay for "corrective statements" in various types of ads, both broadcast and print. The Justice Department proposed corrective statements, which Kessler used as the basis for some of the ones she ordered Tuesday.

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