Beyonce brings electricity at Super Bowl halftime

Lights out? Blame Beyonce's electrifying performance.

If naysayers still doubted Beyonce's singing's talents — even after her national anthem performance this week at a press conference — the singer proved she is an exceptional performer at the Super Bowl halftime show.

Beyonce opened and closed the performance belting songs, and in between she danced hard and heavy — and better than most contemporary pop stars.

She set a serious tone as she emerged onstage in all black, singing lines from her R&B hit "Love on Top." The stage was dark as fire and lights burst from the sides. Then she went into her hit "Crazy In Love," bringing some feminine spirit to the Super Dome as she and her background dancers did the singer's signature booty-shaking dance. Beyonce ripped off part of her shirt and skirt. She even blew a kiss. She was ready to rock, and she did so like a pro.

Her confidence — and voice — grew as she worked the stage with and without her Destiny's Child band mates during her 13-minute set, which comes days after she admitted she sang to a pre-recorded track at President Barack Obama's inauguration less than two weeks ago.

Beyonce proved not only that she can sing, but that she can also entertain on a stage as big as the Super Bowl's. She was far better than Madonna, who sang to a backing track last year, and miles ahead of the Black Eyed Peas' disastrous set in 2011.

Beyonce was best when she finished her set with "Halo." She asked the crowd to put their hands toward her as she sang the slow groove on bended knee — and that's when she the performance hit its high note.

"Thank you for this moment," she told the crowd. "God bless y'all."

Her background singers helped out as Beyonce danced around the stage throughout most of her performance. There was a backing track to help fill in when Beyonce wasn't singing — and there were long stretches when she let it play as she performed elaborate dance moves.

She had a swarm of background dancers and band members spread throughout the stage, along with videotaped images of herself dancing that may have unintentionally played on the live-or-taped question. And the crowd got bigger when she was joined by her Destiny's Child band mates.

Kelly Rowland and Michelle Williams popped up from below the stage to sing "Bootylicious." They were in similar outfits, singing and dancing closely as they harmonized. But Rowland and Williams were barely heard when the group sang "Independent Woman," as their voices faded into the background.

They also joined in for some of "Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It)," where Beyonce's voice grew stronger. That song featured Beyonce's skilled choreography, as did "End of Time" and "Baby Boy," which featured Beyonce's all-female band, balancing out the testosterone levels on the football field.

Before the game, Alicia Keys performed a lounge-y, piano-tinged version of the national anthem that her publicist assured was live. The Grammy-winning singer played the piano as she sang "The Star Spangled Banner" in a long red dress with her eyes shut.

She followed Jennifer Hudson, who sang "America the Beautiful" with the 26-member Sandy Hook Elementary School chorus, an emotional performance that had some players on the sideline on the verge of tears.

The students wore green ribbons on their shirts in honor of the 20 first-graders and six adults who were killed in a Dec. 14 shooting rampage at the school in Newton, Conn.

The students began the song softly before Hudson, whose mother, brother and 7-year-old nephew were shot to death five years ago, jumped in with her gospel-flavored vocals. She stood still in black and white as the students moved to the left and right, singing background.

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Follow Mesfin Fekadu on Twitter at http://twitter.com/MusicMesfi n

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Phys Ed: Helmets for Ski and Snowboard Safety

Phys Ed

Gretchen Reynolds on the science of fitness.

Recently, researchers from the department of sport science at the University of Innsbruck in Austria stood on the slopes at a local ski resort and trained a radar gun on a group of about 500 skiers and snowboarders, each of whom had completed a lengthy personality questionnaire about whether he or she tended to be cautious or a risk taker.

The researchers had asked their volunteers to wear their normal ski gear and schuss or ride down the slopes at their preferred speed. Although they hadn’t informed the volunteers, their primary aim was to determine whether wearing a helmet increased people’s willingness to take risks, in which case helmets could actually decrease safety on the slopes.

What they found was reassuring.

To many of us who hit the slopes with, in my case, literal regularity — I’m an ungainly novice snowboarder — the value of wearing a helmet can seem self-evident. It protects your head from severe injury. During the Big Air finals at the Winter X Games in Aspen, Colo., this past weekend, for instance, Halldor Helgason, a 23-year-old Icelandic snowboarder, over-rotated on a triple back flip, landed headfirst on the snow and was briefly knocked unconscious. But like the other competitors he was wearing a helmet, and didn’t fracture his skull.

Indeed, studies have concluded that helmets reduce the risk of a serious head injury by as much as 60 percent. But a surprising number of safety experts and snowsport enthusiasts remain unconvinced that helmets reduce overall injury risk.

Why? A telling 2009 survey of ski patrollers from across the country found that 77 percent did not wear helmets because they worried that the headgear could reduce their peripheral vision, hearing and response times, making them slower and clumsier. In addition, many worried that if they wore helmets, less-adept skiers and snowboarders might do likewise, feel invulnerable and engage in riskier behavior on the slopes.

In the past several years, a number of researchers have tried to resolve these concerns, for or against helmets. And in almost all instances, helmets have proved their value.

In the Innsbruck speed experiment, the researchers found that people whom the questionnaires showed to be risk takers skied and rode faster than those who were by nature cautious. No surprise.

But wearing a helmet did not increase people’s speed, as would be expected if the headgear encouraged risk taking. Cautious people were slower than risk-takers, whether they wore helmets or not; and risk-takers were fast, whether their heads were protected or bare.

Interestingly, the skiers and riders who were the most likely, in general, to wear a helmet were the most expert, the men and women with the most talent and hours on the slopes. Experience seemed to have taught them the value of a helmet.

Off the slopes, other new studies have brought skiers and snowboarders into the lab to test their reaction times and vision with and without helmets. Peripheral vision and response times are a serious safety concern in a sport where skiers and riders rapidly converge from multiple directions.

But when researchers asked snowboarders and skiers to wear caps, helmets, goggles or various combinations of each for a 2011 study and then had them sit before a computer screen and press a button when certain images popped up, they found that volunteers’ peripheral vision and reaction times were virtually unchanged when they wore a helmet, compared with wearing a hat. Goggles slightly reduced peripheral vision and increased response times. But helmets had no significant effect.

Even when researchers added music, testing snowboarders and skiers wearing Bluetooth-audio equipped helmets, response times did not increase significantly from when they wore wool caps.

So why do up to 40 percent of skiers and snowboarders still avoid helmets?

“The biggest reason, I think, is that many people never expect to fall,” said Dr. Adil H. Haider, a trauma surgeon and associate professor of surgery at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and co-author of a major new review of studies related to winter helmet use. “That attitude is especially common in people, like me, who are comfortable on blue runs but maybe not on blacks, and even more so in beginners.”

But a study published last spring detailing snowboarding injuries over the course of 18 seasons at a Vermont ski resort found that the riders at greatest risk of hurting themselves were female beginners. I sympathize.

The take-away from the growing body of science about ski helmets is in fact unequivocal, Dr. Haider said. “Helmets are safe. They don’t seem to increase risk taking. And they protect against serious, even fatal head injuries.”

The Eastern Association for the Surgery of Trauma, of which Dr. Haider is a member, has issued a recommendation that “all recreational skiers and snowboarders should wear safety helmets,” making them the first medical group to go on record advocating universal helmet use.

Perhaps even more persuasive, Dr. Haider has given helmets to all of his family members and colleagues who ski or ride. “As a trauma surgeon, I know how difficult it is to fix a brain,” he said. “So everyone I care about wears a helmet.”

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Canadian firm to build three apartment towers in downtown L.A.

A Canadian developer has started work on a $100-million luxury apartment building in downtown Los Angeles, the first of three high-rise residential complexes it plans to build in the booming neighborhood.

Onni Group of Vancouver is erecting a 32-story tower on a former parking lot at the northeast corner of Olive and 9th streets. The site is next door to a well-known 12-story office building that opened in 1926 as the headquarters of Pacific National Bank.

Onni's building, to be known as 888 Olive, will have 283 units — each with a private balcony — over street-level shops and restaurants. It will have a swimming pool and fitness center, Onni said. Completion is set for early 2015.

The wave of commercial development spreading across downtown appears similar to the transformation of urban Vancouver that took place over the last 15 years, said Apriano Meola, vice president of U.S. operations for Onni.

The company also plans to develop a second residential tower on Olive Street next door to 888 Olive and a third at 12th and Flower streets just west of Staples Center. Onni also bought the Union Lofts, a 10-story office tower turned apartment building at 8th and Hill streets that opened in 1928 as the headquarters of Union Bank.

Onni is one of Canada's largest private developers, having built more than 5,000 residences in the last decade with an additional 4,000 under construction, the company said.

$105-million Westchester complex underway

A big empty lot north of Los Angeles International Airport in Westchester is getting an upgrade: $105 million worth of apartments and shops.

Work has begun on a 260-unit complex near the southwest corner of Manchester Avenue and Rayford Drive called Playa del Oro West, Los Angeles developer Decron Properties Corp. said.

The development is the second phase of a project Decron began in 2002 with the purchase of 13 acres at Manchester and Lincoln Boulevard that included a 12-story hotel previously known as the Furama and before that as the Airport Marina Hotel.

Decron sold the hotel, now known as Custom Hotel, while developing the rest of the parcel. The first phase, completed in 2009, put 405 apartments over shops in five-story buildings with underground parking.

Decron recently secured a $67-million construction loan for the final phase of Playa del Oro, President David J. Nagel said.

"The construction of these additional 260 units completes our vision of replacing an old, tired hotel that no longer served this bedroom community with a dynamic, true mixed-use project," he said.

Upon completion in about 21 months, the total Playa del Oro complex will have 665 apartments and 110,000 square feet of shops. Retail tenants include Ralph's Fresh Fare, LA Fitness and Kinecta Federal Credit Union.

Medical provider to move headquarters

Nonprofit medical provider MemorialCare Health System will move its headquarters from Fountain Valley to Costa Mesa because it has acquired a 15-acre corporate campus near the 405 Freeway.

MemorialCare will consolidate several teams now in other Southern California offices in 180,000 square feet at 1588 South Coast Drive, real estate brokerage Newmark Grubb Knight Frank said.

Terms of the sale by a limited liability corporation were not disclosed, but real estate experts familiar with the Orange County market valued the deal at about $34 million.

The property was previously occupied by Abraxis Bioscience, which was purchased by Celgene Corp. in October 2010, broker Tim Helgeson of Newmark Grubb said. It has been mostly vacant since.

The campus, expected to be occupied in late 2013, will bring together teams from MemorialCare's corporate office, physician support locations and medical groups, including MemorialCare Medical Group, Greater Newport Physicians and Nautilus Healthcare Management Group.

The transaction was the largest headquarters purchase over the last year by an Orange County company, Helgeson said.

roger.vincent@latimes.com

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Son of Nick Van Exel sentenced to 60 years on murder conviction

Nick Van Exel was taken 37th overall by the Lakers in the 1993 draft. (Vince Compagnone / Los Angeles Times / February 2, 2013)

By Eric Pincus

February 2, 2013, 7:06 a.m.

Sad news for a former Lakers All-Star. Nickey Maxwell Van Exel, the son of Nick Van Exel, was sentenced to 60 years in prison for murder in Texas on Friday.

The 22-year-old was found guilty Thursday of shooting Bradley Bassey Eyo in 2010.

Nick Van Exel was selected by the Lakers with the 37th overall pick in the 1993 NBA draft.

Before the arrival of Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant in 1996, Van Exel was the team's leader and go-to player.

Van Exel played with the Lakers until 1998, then was traded after an All-Star season for Tony Battie and the draft rights to Tyronn Lue.

He is currently on staff with the Atlanta Hawks in player development.

ALSO:

Lakers top Minnesota for first road win of 2013

Dwight Howard flying home for nonsurgical PRP procedure

Short list of players who fit within Lakers disabled player exception

Email Eric Pincus at eric.pincus@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter @EricPincus.

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Nebraska Lieutenant Governor Sheehy resigns over phone scandal

(Reuters) – Nebraska Lieutenant Governor Rick Sheehy, the leading candidate to replace the current governor in the next election, resigned on Saturday after a newspaper investigation raised questions about improper cell phone calls made to women.

The Omaha World-Herald investigation found that the 53-year-old Republican made about 2,000 late-night calls to four women, other than his wife, on his state-issued cell phone over four years. The newspaper plans to publish results of the investigation on Sunday.

Colleen Sheehy, his wife of 28 years, filed for divorce in July 2012, according to the newspaper.

Governor Dave Heineman announced the resignation of Sheehy, a rising star in state politics, at a news conference. The governor said he was “deeply disappointed” and that Sheehy had done good work, but “trust was broken.”

“Public officials are rightly held to a higher standard,” Heineman said at the news conference, provided on the Omaha World-Herald website.

Heineman will leave office in 2015 and Sheehy had announced that he would run for governor. He was considered a leading candidate. Heineman selected Sheehy as lieutenant governor in 2005 after moving into the governor’s office to replace Mike Johanns, who was tapped as U.S. agriculture secretary.

Heineman and Sheehy were elected to their first full term in 2006 and re-elected to a second term in 2010.

(Reporting by Mary Wisniewski; editing by Gunna Dickson)

Wireless News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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CeeLo, Kyle Bush, others party for Super Bowl

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — CeeLo was looking for a little New Orleans action. David Gregory was taking the weekend off from "Meet the Press." And Paul McCartney was hanging out at a party that included Pitbull and Flo Rida.

It was a rich and eclectic mix of stars of all wattages on Friday night, as partying got under way in earnest before Sunday's big game.

CeeLo was the featured performer at ESPN Magazine's "Next" party, which had a guest list that included Michael Phelps, NASCAR driver Kyle Bush, Kelly Rowland, Anthony Mackie, Jeremy Piven, Josh Hutcherson, and current and former football players like Emmitt Smith, Cris Carter, DeSean Jackson.

CeeLo performed with his old rap clique Goodie Mobb: The group, which was an offshoot of OutKast before CeeLo became a solo hit, is coming out with a new album later this year. Though the ESPN party was the main event of his night, he made it clear it would not be his only one: "New Orleans has got a lot to offer, I may get into a little trouble."

The stars were spread out across New Orleans: McCartney gave a rock royalty air to the Rolling Stone party, which featured performances by Flo Rida and Pitbull and guests that included Chace Crawford and Sofia Vergara.

At Audi's Super Bowl lounge, Will Ferrell, Jeremy Renner and Olivia Munn mingled, and Playboy attracted Neil Patrick Harris, David Arquette and others. Back at the ESPN party, Gregory, a Redskins fan, admitted to playing hooky from his weekly political show for the big game.

"To get a chance to come to New Orleans on top of it all, it doesn't get much better than this. I love sports, I love the Super Bowl, so this is a great opportunity," said Gregory, who was rooting for the Ravens.

Mackie, an actor and New Orleans native, was excited to have the Super Bowl in his hometown once again, though he's still smarting that the Saints aren't in it; the team fared poorly this season after being hit with significant sanctions by NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell over allegations of bounty hits on opposing players.

When asked what he would say to Goodell if he saw him, Mackie said: "I'd tell him congratulations. What he wanted to happen happened, so now the saints are going to come back twice as hard next season."

___

Follow Nekesa Mumbi Moody on at http://www.twitter.com/nekesamumbi

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Concerns About A.D.H.D. Practices and Amphetamine Addiction

Before his addiction, Richard Fee was a popular college class president and aspiring medical student. "You keep giving Adderall to my son, you're going to kill him," said Rick Fee, Richard's father, to one of his son's doctors.

VIRGINIA BEACH — Every morning on her way to work, Kathy Fee holds her breath as she drives past the squat brick building that houses Dominion Psychiatric Associates.

Andrea Mohin/The New York Times

MENTAL HEALTH CLINIC Dominion Psychiatric Associates in Virginia Beach, where Richard Fee was treated by Dr. Waldo M. Ellison. After observing Richard and hearing his complaints about concentration, Dr. Ellison diagnosed attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and prescribed the stimulant Adderall.

It was there that her son, Richard, visited a doctor and received prescriptions for Adderall, an amphetamine-based medication for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. It was in the parking lot that she insisted to Richard that he did not have A.D.H.D., not as a child and not now as a 24-year-old college graduate, and that he was getting dangerously addicted to the medication. It was inside the building that her husband, Rick, implored Richard’s doctor to stop prescribing him Adderall, warning, “You’re going to kill him.”

It was where, after becoming violently delusional and spending a week in a psychiatric hospital in 2011, Richard met with his doctor and received prescriptions for 90 more days of Adderall. He hanged himself in his bedroom closet two weeks after they expired.

The story of Richard Fee, an athletic, personable college class president and aspiring medical student, highlights widespread failings in the system through which five million Americans take medication for A.D.H.D., doctors and other experts said.

Medications like Adderall can markedly improve the lives of children and others with the disorder. But the tunnel-like focus the medicines provide has led growing numbers of teenagers and young adults to fake symptoms to obtain steady prescriptions for highly addictive medications that carry serious psychological dangers. These efforts are facilitated by a segment of doctors who skip established diagnostic procedures, renew prescriptions reflexively and spend too little time with patients to accurately monitor side effects.

Richard Fee’s experience included it all. Conversations with friends and family members and a review of detailed medical records depict an intelligent and articulate young man lying to doctor after doctor, physicians issuing hasty diagnoses, and psychiatrists continuing to prescribe medication — even increasing dosages — despite evidence of his growing addiction and psychiatric breakdown.

Very few people who misuse stimulants devolve into psychotic or suicidal addicts. But even one of Richard’s own physicians, Dr. Charles Parker, characterized his case as a virtual textbook for ways that A.D.H.D. practices can fail patients, particularly young adults. “We have a significant travesty being done in this country with how the diagnosis is being made and the meds are being administered,” said Dr. Parker, a psychiatrist in Virginia Beach. “I think it’s an abnegation of trust. The public needs to say this is totally unacceptable and walk out.”

Young adults are by far the fastest-growing segment of people taking A.D.H.D medications. Nearly 14 million monthly prescriptions for the condition were written for Americans ages 20 to 39 in 2011, two and a half times the 5.6 million just four years before, according to the data company I.M.S. Health. While this rise is generally attributed to the maturing of adolescents who have A.D.H.D. into young adults — combined with a greater recognition of adult A.D.H.D. in general — many experts caution that savvy college graduates, freed of parental oversight, can legally and easily obtain stimulant prescriptions from obliging doctors.

“Any step along the way, someone could have helped him — they were just handing out drugs,” said Richard’s father. Emphasizing that he had no intention of bringing legal action against any of the doctors involved, Mr. Fee said: “People have to know that kids are out there getting these drugs and getting addicted to them. And doctors are helping them do it.”

“...when he was in elementary school he fidgeted, daydreamed and got A’s. he has been an A-B student until mid college when he became scattered and he wandered while reading He never had to study. Presently without medication, his mind thinks most of the time, he procrastinated, he multitasks not finishing in a timely manner.”

Dr. Waldo M. Ellison

Richard Fee initial evaluation

Feb. 5, 2010

Richard began acting strangely soon after moving back home in late 2009, his parents said. He stayed up for days at a time, went from gregarious to grumpy and back, and scrawled compulsively in notebooks. His father, while trying to add Richard to his health insurance policy, learned that he was taking Vyvanse for A.D.H.D.

Richard explained to him that he had been having trouble concentrating while studying for medical school entrance exams the previous year and that he had seen a doctor and received a diagnosis. His father reacted with surprise. Richard had never shown any A.D.H.D. symptoms his entire life, from nursery school through high school, when he was awarded a full academic scholarship to Greensboro College in North Carolina. Mr. Fee also expressed concerns about the safety of his son’s taking daily amphetamines for a condition he might not have.

“The doctor wouldn’t give me anything that’s bad for me,” Mr. Fee recalled his son saying that day. “I’m not buying it on the street corner.”

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Deering Banjo in a groove

It all started with the Kingston Trio.

One day in 1963, a San Diego kid and his friends got their hands on an album by the popular folk group. Greg Deering, 12 at the time, recalls studying the musicians on the cover and thinking, "I've got to get a banjo" — not out of love for the twangy instrument but mainly because his pal already had a guitar.

Fifty years later, Greg, his wife, Janet, and daughter Jamie preside over the bestselling banjo-making business in the U.S.

From a small Spring Valley factory, the Deering Banjo Co. is having its best year ever, defying the U.S. skills gap and California's manufacturing doldrums. It has expanded and trained its own workforce and expects to top $4 million in sales for the year ending June 30.

Greg Deering, 62, is the creative force behind the banjo design and the machinery used to build them. Janet Deering, 58, handles operations. Daughter Jamie Deering, 34, might have the most fun job: liaison with the company's big-name roster of professional musician customers.

Over the company's 38-year history, it has developed a loyal following from the likes of Taylor Swift, Keith Urban, the Dixie Chicks, Steve Martin and Mumford & Sons. Artists who play Deering banjos rolled up 13 Grammy nominations this year.

Two of Deering's fans illustrate how the company has managed to ride the banjo's renaissance as an instrument that crosses several musical genres as varied as country, reggae and indie rock.

"It's great working with a family company, an American company that really cares about the artist and making top-quality banjos," said Jeff DaRosa, singer, bassist and banjo player for the Dropkick Murphys, the Boston-based Celtic punk band.

Scotty Morris, lead vocalist of the contemporary swing revival band Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, called Deering Banjo "the quintessential American instrument builder."

"When I call Deering, I talk to a Deering, and I like that almost as much as I love the instruments they build," Morris said.

That kind of reputation combined with specially crafted manufacturing tools and a skilled, veteran workforce has helped the company weather the recession and cheap competition from China. Deering has been able to expand its workforce in a way that other companies have not, growing to 42 workers from 30 a year ago.

Although the nation as a whole has been adding manufacturing jobs, all California has done is reduce the rate of decline, said John Husing, principal of Redlands-based Economics and Politics Inc.

The most recent statistics available show that California ended 2012 with 1.23 million manufacturing jobs, down sharply from nearly 1.9 million in 2000 and marginally below the nearly 1.24 million in December 2011.

If you ask the Deerings what their greatest challenge has been, the answer has been running the business in California, particularly during a run-up in workers' compensation insurance premiums that began under Gov. Gray Davis.

"That nearly put us out of business. We're still paying off some of those debts," Greg Deering said, adding that the company has remained in California mostly because the family considers it home.

"And because we are stubborn. We are so stubborn," Janet Deering said.

Greg Deering credits his father, who worked in the Southern California aerospace industry, for developing his eye for design.

"He started me out on model airplanes when I was 2," Deering said. "He turned me loose on my own, making models when I was 5. At age 7, he bought me my first set of drafting tools."

But it wasn't until he was a student at San Diego State that he realized just what his father had done for him. There was an assignment to cut a board of certain dimensions from a rough block of wood. He was done with the assignment quickly and began working on a banjo. Weeks later, he realized the other students were still working on the block of wood.

"That was when it clicked for me," he said, later adding, "my father was a very intense mentor for me. He was teaching me how to be a craftsman."

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Edward Koch dies at 88; outspoken mayor led New York City comeback

In the late 1970s when Edward I. Koch won his first term as mayor of New York, the city was in shambles, its coffers and confidence sapped by financial crises and a paralyzing blackout. It needed a fighter and found one in Koch, a well-practiced pol with the determination — and bite — of a bulldog.

He steered the city out of bankruptcy and restored its swagger, a one-man cheerleading squad who personified the witty and feisty New Yorker.

The three-term mayor of New York and perennial civic combatant, who rallied and riled the city in and out of office with his tenacious style and irrepressible opinions, died Friday of congestive heart failure at New York-Presbyterian/Columbia Hospital, said his friend and spokesman George Arzt. He was 88.

Koch had been hospitalized Monday, a day before a documentary about him, "Koch," premiered in New York City. He had been hospitalized several times in recent months for breathing problems and other ailments.

For most of his adult life, Koch had lived alone in an apartment off Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village. It was where he departed the morning in 1978 when he rode a public bus to City Hall to be sworn in as the city's 105th mayor and where he returned 12 years later, after a disastrous fourth run to keep the job he clearly relished and worked hard at. He spent the rest of his life out of public office but rarely out of public view.

He juggled almost a dozen jobs — including law partner, columnist, author, radio show host, playwright, movie reviewer and lecturer — and appeared relentlessly in the media, a shtick-artist with one of the most recognizable New York accents in the world. When he wasn't bellowing at opponents on political round tables, he was hawking such products as diet aids and soft drinks in advertisements and popping up in screen cameos as himself, the quintessential New Yorker, alongside Carrie and the girls in television episodes of "Sex and the City" or with Big Bird in the 1984 film "The Muppets Take Manhattan."

His support was pivotal in Republican Bob Turner's victory in the September 2011 special election in the heavily Democratic congressional district that had been represented by Rep. Anthony Weiner, who was forced to resign in a "sexting" scandal. "Ed Koch was enough to turn this around," Democratic strategist Hank Sheinkopf said after Turner's win.

For his 86th birthday in 2010, New York's current mayor, Michael Bloomberg, renamed the bridge linking Manhattan to Koch's home borough of Queens the Ed Koch Queensboro Bridge, saying it was, like Koch, "a resilient, hard-working New York City icon."

"He was a great mayor, a great man, and a great friend," Bloomberg said Friday in a statement. "In elected office and as a private citizen, he was our most tireless, fearless and guileless civic crusader. Through his tough, determined leadership and responsible fiscal stewardship, Ed helped lift the city out of its darkest days and set it on course for an incredible comeback."

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo echoed the sentiment: "No New Yorker has — or likely ever will — voice their love for New York City in such a passionate and outspoken manner than Ed Koch."

"He was the epitome of New York — loud, funny, opinionated, smart," said Arzt, who was Koch's City Hall spokesman and part of an administration alumni group that lunched with him every Saturday after he left office. "Ed was very much a straight-shooter, a champion of the middle class, a moderate Democrat akin to a Harry Truman. He defied categories."

In fact, Koch loved to enrage liberals by doing and saying the unthinkable — endorsing Republican politicians such Rudolph Giuliani and George W. Bush. But Koch also held fast to many liberal values. One of his first executive orders as mayor was adding sexual preference to a citywide ban on job discrimination.

He invited controversy and enjoyed confrontation. He once wrestled an egg-throwing heckler to the floor before the police could move in.

Altogether, Koch wrote or co-authored 17 books, including eight autobiographies, two children's books and multiple mystery novels starring himself as the detective.

Koch opined freely, never mincing words: Movie tickets were too expensive; the United Nations, after an anti-Israel vote, was "made up of gangsters, cutthroats and piranhas"; a Puerto Rican mayoral rival was a "poverty pimp"; Sarah Palin was likable but "scares the hell out of me." He never lost interest in his favorite subject — himself. "How'm I doin'?" was his trademark question.

The only topics that remained off limits were his heroic service as an infantryman in World War II — he was awarded two battle stars — and his sexuality. A lifelong bachelor, he was dogged by questions about his sexuality, which he largely ignored, although he did on two occasions describe himself as heterosexual. "I ran in a total of 24 elections and won 21," he once told the New York Times. "I will not be a coward and say I am straight or I'm gay, because it's no one's business. I got where I am today not because of sexuality or gender but because people thought I was the best at what I did...."

In recent years, Koch appeared to mellow, seeking reconciliation with former rivals, but he refused to yield when it came to standards for public service. As recently as the summer of 2010, the octogenarian ginned up a campaign called "New York Uprising" to reform state government. Despite a history of heart disease that left him with two pacemakers and a degenerative spinal disorder that caused the once-strapping 6-foot-1 former mayor to be stooped in old age, he embarked in a Jeep on a campaign-style press tour around upstate New York to shame reluctant legislators in their home districts into signing a pledge to "clean up Albany."

This was shortly after Koch, ever the showman, revealed he had finalized plans for his funeral and penned his epitaph. His gravestone will declare his pride in his religion — "My father is Jewish, my mother is Jewish, I am Jewish" — and his "fierce" love of his city and country.

Edward Irving Koch was born Dec. 12, 1924, in the Bronx and spent his early years in Newark, N.J., where his family moved after his furrier father went broke during the Great Depression. Koch attended the City College of New York before being drafted into the Army; he eventually graduated from New York University's law school and joined a liberal political reform group in Greenwich Village, the Village Independent Democrats. He served as a district leader, city councilman and for 10 years represented the East Side and lower Manhattan in Congress.

The second of three children, Koch is survived by his sister, Pat Koch Thaler. A brother, Harold, died in 1995.

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BlackBerry chooses more traditional route to drum up buzz over Super Bowl ad

TORONTO – After a week of massive hype for its new smartphones, BlackBerry has decided to remain secretive about its Super Bowl commercial in an effort to squeeze every bit of juice out of the pricey advertising campaign.

The Waterloo, Ont.-based company, formerly known as Research In Motion (TSX:RIM), released a single frame of the 30-second TV spot on Friday, without any explanation of what it was, or what it meant.

The move goes against the trend of unleashing Super Bowl ads on the Internet ahead of the big game in an effort to generate extra hype.

This year, smartphone competitor Samsung chose to release its commercial starring comedians Seth Rogan and Paul Rudd on Thursday. Other major companies like Mercedes and Coke have also put their ads online.

Recent statistics have shown that advertisers gain more traction from their Super Bowl TV spots if they’re released online before the event, which takes place on Sunday.

Last year, the Super Bowl ads uploaded to YouTube before the game were viewed 600 per cent more times, an average of 9.1 million views, compared to the ones that were put online after the game, according to the streaming video service owned by Google.

Going against the trend, the BlackBerry maker will keep smartphone users guessing about what their advertisement is about and who it might feature. Certainly the company’s publicity team carefully chose which frame to release as its sneak preview.

The frame shows an early 1980s Honda Accord is parked alongside a meter. Behind it, there’s a colourful explosion of powder in front of stairs leading up to apartment No. 437.

The clues would suggest harkening back to the birth of the IBM personal computer, introduced to the market in 1981 using the coding 437 as its original character set, or more simply, the appearance of its font on screen.

It may be a clue because BlackBerry chief executive Thorsten Heins has touted the launch of the new smartphones this week as a new era in mobile computing because the devices have nearly the same amount of processing power as a personal computer.

All of that won’t be proven true or false until the game on Sunday evening where the BlackBerry ad will air sometime after the third quarter, the company said.

The Super Bowl is the most-watched television event of the year, drawing 111.3 million U.S. viewers in 2012.

In Canada, last year’s broadcast drew a record 8.1 million viewers.

The event is also the most expensive event for advertisers, costing an average of $ 3.4 million for a 30-second spot on NBC last year, according to ratings firm Nielsen.

This year, estimates for how much CBS is charging for a 30-second spot vary wildly from between $ 3.6 million to $ 4 million. CTV declined to say how much it charges for Canadian airtime.

Also slated in the Super Bowl commercial lineup are advertisements from the Bank of Montreal (TSX:BMO), with different versions airing on both sides of the border.

In the U.S., the company has purchased airtime in the midwest where its banks have a strong presence under the BMO Harris Bank brand. In the commercial, dubbed “Dream Home,” a young couple ponders the possibilities of buying a home, before they’re surprised when a real estate agent throws up a “For Sale” sign right in front of them.

BMO has also bought airtime in Canada, though it will be showing a commercial that has already aired during prime time.

Last year, a Harris-Decima Canadian Press poll found that more Canadians planned to watch the Super Bowl ads than the football game itself.

Gadgets News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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