Why Fringe's Finale Marks the Decline of Sci-Fi on Network TV

When Fringe airs its series finale tonight (8 p.m. EST on Fox), it won’t just mean a conclusion to the five year run of stories about Olivia, Peter and Walter’s Weird Science Adventures; it’ll mark the end of an era for science fiction television on broadcast television — for the foreseeable future, at least.

While the close of the series doesn’t mean an end to openly-genre shows on the Big Five networks (ABC, CBS, the CW, NBC and FOX), the ones that remain either skew more magical/supernatural (Once Upon A Time, Grimm, Supernatural) or pride themselves on a more grounded approach to the theoretically-fantastic (Revolution, Arrow). But in terms of pure sci-fi TV, there isn’t much left to carry the torch after Fringe closes up shop.

It wasn’t always like this, of course; Some of the most well-known and well-loved modern science fiction has come from broadcast television throughout the decades, from The Twilight Zone through the various Star Treks, Babylon 5 to The X-Files and Lost. Indeed, when Fringe launched in 2008, it was just one in a raft of new shows from the genre that year alongside Dollhouse, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles and the remakes of Knight Rider and Eleventh Hour (Also running at the time, the afore-mentioned Lost and the second season of NBC’s Chuck). In following years, science fiction fans were also treated to V, FlashForward, The Event and Terra Nova, as well, as networks tried to fill the gap left behind by the end of Lost in 2010.

Of course, most of those shows faded within a couple of years or less thanks to low ratings and — let’s be honest — less-than-stellar creative choices (FlashForward and The Event, I’m looking at you). Ultimately, what appears to have killed off science fiction on mainstream broadcast television is the fact that mainstream broadcast viewers don’t really want to watch it anymore. Or at least, not as much as they want to watch reality shows, procedurals where a man with black hair and a blonde woman fight crime, or sassy sitcoms, all of which are cheaper for the networks to produce and don’t involve nearly as much explanation to viewers tuning in for the first time.

It also doesn’t help that broadcast television doesn’t have to offer science fiction anymore; there are countless cable channels around to fill that need, even if Syfy does seem to be cutting down on the number of sci-fi shows it originates – although I remain hopeful about the upcoming Defiance.

The unfriendly atmosphere towards the genre makes something like Fringe all the more rare, and all the more important, in its strange way. It’s a show that lasted longer than most believed it could — Fox has, after all, cancelled cheaper shows with higher ratings in the past — and was proudly, almost stubbornly, obscure and given to wonderfully insane plot twists to throw its soap operatic elements in new directions when the viewers least expected it. Few shows, for example, have managed to keep a Will-They-Won’t-They relationship dynamic going by rebooting the timeline or swapping one of the characters for her own parallel world doppleganger, much to my eternal sadness. That has to be something worth appreciating.

Over its five year run, Fringe offered both the best and worst of science fiction television. It was far from perfect by any means, with sudden changes in direction or plot twists that happened so quickly you could get whiplash, with a tendency to purposefully overlook obvious plot holes or make dramatic leaps of logic if there was the possibility for a moment of cheap emotional tension to be mined. What it remained, however, was a show worth all of the disappointments and frustrations it doled out on a regular basis.

Consistently entertaining even in its worst moments, the series was a collection of alternately hilarious and fiendishly inventive stories that balanced easily-identifiable and sympathetic personal drama — a son trying to rebuild his relationship with his absent father, a woman struggling to balance her professional and personal lives –with increasingly spectacular and surreal high stakes that scaled up from an endangered airplane full of passengers to the very survival of the human race.

Although it launched as something akin to a contemporary X-Files – an admitted influence in the show’s creation, alongside the movies of David Cronenberg, The Twilight Zone – Fringe quickly developed its own identity thanks in large part to the presence of Walter Bishop, a character who managed to be both heartbreakingly tragic and endlessly comedic within the same moment, played pitch perfectly by one-time Australian soap opera star John Noble. With his combination of manic energy and deep melancholy, Walter brought a humanity to the show that gave its Weird Science Of The Week formula a heart, and gave viewers who could have been turned off by cross-dimensional shape-shifting assassins and time-traveling environmental terrorists a reason to keep tuning in.

Not that the show hid from its own geekishness, what with its sneaky DC Comics easter-eggs, starring role for Leonard Nimoy and, well… this.

Behold what is essentially a 90-second love letter to Terry Gilliam’s Monty Python animations, which not only made it into a recent episode in the first place, but was one of the most important scenes in the episode in question. This is how weird and wonderful Fringe – and science fiction television as a whole — could be at its best. Despite its frustrating moments, Fringe will be missed after tonight, particularly in the absence of a network sci-fi show ready to thrill, amaze and amuse its viewers even half as much. See you in the next life, Gene.

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Bob Dylan considering Dylan Thomas centenary show in Wales

LONDON (Reuters) – American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan may play a special concert in Wales to mark the centenary of the birth of Dylan Thomas, the Welsh poet after whom he may or may not have named himself.

The member of parliament for West Swansea, Geraint Davies, said he had asked Dylan if he would perform in the city as part of a series of commemorative events next year.

“Bob Dylan named himself after Dylan Thomas. I have asked Bob Dylan whether he would be prepared to give a centenary concert in Swansea, in order that he could blend his music with Dylan Thomas’s poetry,” Davies said in the British parliament on Thursday.

“Sony Music has come back and said that Mr. Dylan is thinking very positively about the idea.”

Dylan, 71, was born Robert Allen Zimmerman and the reason he picked his adopted name while a young folk singer in Minnesota has long been debated by fans.

The most popular theory is that he did indeed name himself after the Welsh poet, though another says it was after Marshal Matt Dillon in the TV Western “Gunsmoke”.

Dylan Thomas, whose works include “Under Milk Wood” and “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night”, was born in Swansea in 1914 and died in New York 1953 after a drinking binge.

Bob Dylan still tours regularly and his latest recording “Tempest”, released last September, was hailed by the critics.

(Reporting by Angus MacSwan; Editing by Paul Casciato)

Music News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Flu Season ‘Worse Than Average,’ Officials Say

This year’s flu season is shaping up to be “worse than average and particularly bad for the elderly,” Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, the nation’s top federal disease-control official, said Friday.

But the season appears to have peaked, added Dr. Frieden, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, with new cases declining over most of the nation except for the far West.

Spot shortages of flu vaccine and flu-fighting medicine are occurring, but that reflects uneven distribution, not a supply crisis, federal officials said. They urged people seeking flu shots to consult flu.gov and doctors to check preventinfluenza.org for suppliers.

Vaccine-makers will ultimately be able to deliver 145 million doses, 10 million more than projected earlier, the officials said. The Food and Drug Administration has allowed the maker of Tamiflu to release 2 million doses it had in storage.

The older Tamiflu is perfectly good, said Dr. Margaret A. Hamburg, the commissioner of the F.D.A., who joined Dr. Frieden on a telephone news conference. “It’s not outdated, it just has older labeling,” she said. “Repackaging it would take weeks,” she added, so her agency told the company not to bother.

Weekly recorded deaths from flu and pneumonia are still rising, and are well above the “epidemic” curve for the first time. But how severe a season ultimately proves depends on how long high weekly death rates persists. Flu deaths often aren’t recorded until March or April, well after new infections taper off.

Dr. Frieden said the season appeared to resemble the “moderately severe” season of 2003-2004, which also had an early start and was dominated by an H3N2 strain. In such seasons, 90 percent of all deaths occur among those over 65. Flu hospitalization rates are “quite high” now, Dr. Frieden said, and most of those hospitalized are elderly.

Last year’s flu season was unusually mild. At the end of the season last year, 34 children had died.

So far this year, the C.D.C.'s count of pediatric flu deaths, which includes premature infants and teenagers up to age 17 — has risen to 29, although this is acknowledged to be an undercount as it is only of lab-confirmed influenza cases reported to the agency.

Henry L. Niman, a flu-watcher who follows state death registries and news reports, counts about 40 pediatric deaths so far and predicted that the total would ultimately be close to the 153 of the 2003-04 season, but much less than in the 2009-2010 “swine flu” pandemic, when 282 children died. That flu was a strain never seen before and many more children caught it. The elderly had surprising resistance to getting it, presumably because similar flus that circulated 40 or more years ago had given them some immunity. But among those elderly who did catch it, the death rates were high.

Dr. Frieden suggested that the elderly avoid contact with sick children. “Having a grandparent baby-sit a sick child may not be a good idea,” he said.

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Media Decoder Blog: John Geddes, Managing Editor, Is Leaving The New York Times

2:37 p.m. | Updated John M. Geddes, a managing editor for The New York Times for the last decade and one of the top three editors at the paper, has decided to leave the company. In a note sent to the newsroom staff on Friday afternoon, Mr. Geddes said he was accepting a buyout package and would depart in several months after helping with transition on the newspaper’s masthead.

In his note, Mr. Geddes reflected on the many things he would miss about The Times, where he has worked for nearly two decades.

“After serving four executive editors, it is time for new horizons,” said Mr. Geddes in his announcement. He said would “ache for the vibrations that the newsroom gives off when a crisis erupts and we scramble” and would miss “hearing about a great story (or new ways to tell one).”

Mr. Geddes joined The Times in 1994 as its business editor and worked his way up the company’s editorial ranks. Before joining The Times, he had spent 13 years at The Wall Street Journal working in both New York and in Europe. He currently serves as one of two managing editors for The Times, along with Dean Baquet.

His departure comes as the paper undertakes a broader restructuring in the newsroom. Like many newspapers facing a troubled advertising market, The Times is trying to cut expenses; in December the paper offered buyout packages to nonunion staff members. It sought 30 volunteers, and said it would resort to layoffs if not enough employees opted for the buyout.

In recent months, The Times has also announced the departures of executives on the business side, including Robert Christie, senior vice president of corporate communications, and Scott Heekin-Canedy, president and general manager of The New York Times. Both of their positions have been eliminated with their departures.

Jill Abramson, the executive editor, said in a statement: “John Geddes is the consummate newsman with superb instincts for stories and people. We’ve been partners in the newsroom for nearly a decade. He has given his all to the Times for far longer than that. Most of all, I’ll miss his company.”

Here is Mr. Geddes’s memo to the staff:

A man walks out of a bar . . .

I’m moving on. I’ve arrived at that magical spot where a buyout offer miraculously appears and presents me with new opportunities. Yes, yes, I know everyone says you have to do this carefully and be armed with a plan, but I don’t have one – not yet.

Frankly, I blame this lack of personal preparedness on this place. I’ve always believed The New York Times works because it is, at heart, a collective of unique individuals bound together in pursuit of great journalism. We’re about the common goal, not about jostling one another for a place in a transitory spotlight. The mission is about us, not about me or you.

We know that our vaunted pedestal is really the achievement of those who came before us, and our chief charge is to build on their legacy. While our readers and our colleagues — you —are the ultimate jury, I’ve tried over the last 15 years on the masthead to do my best to help figure out how we marshal the resources to cover the news, develop one another’s talents and secure as firm a hold as we can on our digital future.

I’ve tried to do it with both brains and heart. You’ve deserved no less, and I’m going to miss you. I’ll ache for the vibrations that the newsroom gives off when a crisis erupts and we scramble. I’ll miss helping shape new sections, launching new apps, hearing about a great story (or new ways to tell one) and seeing you in the elevators, across the floor and at the New Faces parties at my apartment.
I got into this profession partly because I wanted a job without repetition, a chance to deal with something new each day. Geez, Louise, I got what I asked for. I’ve had fun, and even on the bad days couldn’t imagine not coming into work.

But after serving four executive editors, it is time for new horizons. Jill has asked me to delay my departure for a few months to help with the masthead transition. I’m happy to do that because it will give me time to say thanks to so many of you individually.

. . . and on his arm is a wonderful woman he met inside.
Best, John

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Bales defers entering plea in Afghan massacre case

Q13 FOX News

By Michael Muskal

January 17, 2013, 10:01 a.m.

Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, accused of killing 16 villagers in Afghanistan, deferred entering a plea when he appeared Thursday morning for his arraignment at a hearing at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, south of Seattle.

A veteran of four tours in Afghanistan, Bales, 39, faces 16 murder charges, and other counts including attempted murder, assault and drug and alcohol charges. The proceeding is the equivalent of an arraignment and allows the military to move forward on a court-martial.

Attorneys for Bales have said he is not guilty of the charges.

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During a pretrial hearing in November, witnesses testified that Bales had been angered by a bomb blast near his outpost that severed a fellow soldier’s leg. That could open the door to a defense based on mental trauma, post-traumatic stress disorder or some other form of impairment.

The Army is expected to seek to bar Bales from using any sort of mental health defense at the court-martial, according to documents reviewed by the Associated Press. In order to seek the death penalty, the prosecution must establish that Bales is competent and did not act out of mental illness.

Officials have refused to make some documents about the case available to reporters. That has left civilian defense attorneys as the only source for records on the case, the AP noted.

In the documents reviewed by the wire service, military prosecutors argue that Bales should not be allowed to have any expert witnesses testify about what effect his mental health might have had on his guilt. Nor do they want any expert to testify during the penalty phase of the trial, should it get that far, as to whether any history of traumatic brain injury or post-traumatic stress disorder should spare him the death penalty.

The military argues that Bales’ lawyers have refused to allow him to participate in a review by a board to determine his sanity.

“An accused simply cannot be allowed to claim a lack of mental responsibility through the introduction of expert testimony from his own doctors, while at the same time leaving the government with no ability to overcome its burden of proof because its doctors have been precluded from conducting any examination of the very matters in dispute,” Maj. Robert Stelle wrote in a motion Jan. 3.

Alternatively, Stelle wrote, the judge should order Bales to immediately undergo the sanity review.

Bales' attorneys have refused to let him take part in the sanity board because the Army would not let him have a lawyer present for the examination, would not record the examination and would not appoint a neuropsychologist expert in traumatic brain injuries to the board, according to the documents.

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New Metamaterial Camera Has Super-Fast Microwave Vision

A small, microwave-detecting camera that can see through solid materials in real time has been developed. Soon, the device could be adapted and used in law enforcement and security where, among other uses, its inventors envision airport scanners that screen passengers for weapons or explosives as they walk by.

The camera features a one-dimensional aperture made from a copper-based metamaterial. Fashioned from plastics or metals, metamaterials behave in ways that ordinary materials naturally do not. Some can cloak objects. Others can reveal them. Here, scientists used the copper-based metamaterial as an aperture for microwaves, the telecommunications workhorses that populate the longer end of the electromagnetic spectrum. By connecting the aperture to an image-reconstructing computer, the researchers can capture information from a scene in real time, with no moving parts.

“They’ve made a very clever way of gathering the relevant information in the scene,” said physicist Willie Padilla of Boston College, who was not part of the camera-building team. “And to do it in a novel way with electromagnetic metamaterials — that’s a key advance. There are no moving parts.”

Detecting microwaves produces a very different view of the world than looking at it normally.

“You can see through certain materials that you can’t see through with optical light – such as clothing or wood. But at the same time, you can still see plastics, metal, skin,” said graduate student John Hunt of Duke University, co-author of a description of the device published today in Science. “Dust and fog and rain, things that might be in the air are essentially invisible at these frequencies.”

The metamaterial aperture shuttles microwaves reflected from a scene to a computer, which then reconstructs the scene using mathematical algorithms the team developed. The whole process takes just 100 milliseconds and requires no moving parts and no image compression – meaning that the camera could capture moving scenes in near real time, and without losing details.

Traditional cameras rely on lenses that guide light to detectors comprising millions of pixels. Human eyes use a similarly organized system: a light-focusing lens, plus light- and color-detecting rods and cones arranged on the retina. Because optical wavelengths are short, a detector array can fit in the back of an eye or a tiny camera.

Not so for microwaves, which can be one meter long.

These longer wavelengths have traditionally required bigger detectors that are slow, expensive to construct, and require continuous reorientation to capture targets. One of the most familiar examples is the much-maligned airport body scanner, which requires travelers to step inside and strike a pose while a detector-containing bar whizzes around, collecting images that are scrutinized by TSA agents.

The camera Hunt helped design is different. The metamaterial aperature is only 40 centimeters long and it doesn’t move. It’s a circuit-board-like structure consisting of two copper plates separated by a piece of plastic. One of the plates is etched with repeating boxy structures, units about 1.5 centimeters long that permit different lengths of microwaves to pass through. Scanning the scene at various microwave frequencies allows the computer to capture all the information necessary to reproduce a scene.

“With that, and some pretty interesting math, we’re able to make a picture of the scene that’s in front of us,” Hunt said.

In the current study, researchers aimed the camera at a room that had been muffled by microwave-absorbing foams on the walls and ceiling – and then studded with bright metal objects — “Little balls, basically,” Hunt said.

After turning on a nearby microwave transmitter, the team watched as the metamaterial aperture shunted microwaves bounced around by the metallic objects to the computer, which created a two-dimensional reconstruction of the scene.

“To my knowledge, this is probably the first example of metamaterials and compressive imaging in the same paper,” said Kevin Kelly, an electrical engineering professor at Rice University who helped develop the first single-pixel camera.

To recreate a scene in three dimensions the team will need to build a two-dimensional aperture.  That’s not far off, Hunt said. Then, the applications for such technology will be broad, he said, especially because the device is inexpensive to build, light, and portable.

“As a replacement to an airport scanner — you can just walk right past it,” Hunt said. “No more long lines.” And that’s just one idea. Adapting the system to detect X-rays could yield a quicker baggage scanner. Embedding a microwave-detecting camera in the front of self-driving cars could help vehicles navigate scene-obscuring snow, rain, and fog. Embedding one in the wing of an airplane with one would eliminate the need for space-consuming radar imagers. Designing a hand-held, metal-detecting device could produce the ultimate stud-finder.

Lining the front of a police officer’s vest could help the officer detect concealed weapons — guns and knives — and distinguish them from cellphones.

“It will be exceptionally cheap,” Padilla said. “You can indeed simply adhere it to a wall and it can perform imaging.”

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“Diff’rent Strokes” star Conrad Bain dies at 89

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Actor Conrad Bain, best known for his role on the 1970s and ’80s television comedy “Diff’rent Strokes” as a wealthy, white New Yorker who adopts two young black boys from Harlem, has died at age 89, his daughter said on Wednesday.

Bain, who starred opposite the young Gary Coleman on the NBC sitcom as his adoptive father, Philip Drummond, died of natural causes at a comfort-care facility in Livermore, California, east of San Francisco, on Monday. He was three weeks shy of his 90th birthday, according to his daughter, Jennifer.

Born in Alberta, Bain served in the Canadian Army during World War Two, became a U.S. citizen in 1946 and went on to a career as an actor on Broadway and television. He often played erudite, professional characters such as lawyers, executives, politicians or doctors.

Following a recurring role on the daytime vampire drama “Dark Shadows” as an innkeeper, Bain broke into prime-time comedy with a supporting role on Norman Lear‘s “All in the Family” spin-off “Maude,” which starred Bea Arthur in the title role.

On “Maude,” Bain played a conservative physician and next-door neighbor, Dr. Arthur Harmon, who was frequently at political odds with the outspokenly liberal Maude but was best friends with Maude’s husband, Walter.

At the end of that show’s six-year CBS run in 1978, Bain landed his own sitcom, “Diff’rent Strokes,” in which he played Drummond, a rich, widowed industrialist who takes in the two young sons of his housekeeper after she dies, creating a racially mixed family in an era when depictions of such households were rare on TV.

Joining Drummond’s 13-year-old daughter, Kimberly, and a ditzy new housekeeper, Mrs. Garrett, the two boys, precocious 8-year-old Arnold, played by Coleman, and his quieter 12-year-old brother, Willis, find themselves in the lap of luxury as they adjust to a new life on Park Avenue.

The show ran for eight seasons, 1978-1986, on NBC, and went into wide re-run syndication around the world. Coleman’s oft-repeated line to his brother, “What you talkin’ ’bout, Willis?” became a pop culture catch phrase.

Coleman, who grappled with a series of financial, legal and domestic woes later in life, died in May 2010 at age 42 after suffering a brain hemorrhage.

Bain returned periodically to the stage during the show’s network run and reprised the Philip Drummond role on a 1996 episode of “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air,” which starred Will Smith as a young rapper from a tough Philadelphia neighborhood who ends up living with wealthy relatives in California.

Bain also briefly co-starred on prime-time TV in the 1987-88 season in the Fox network political comedy “Mr. President,” as the loyal chief of staff to the title character, played by George C. Scott.

Bain is survived by his daughter and two sons, Mark and Kent.

(Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis; additional reporting and writing by Steve Gorman; Editing by Cynthia Johnston and Dan Grebler)

Celebrity News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Well: Life, Interrupted: Brotherly Love

Life, Interrupted

Suleika Jaouad writes about her experiences as a young adult with cancer.

There are a lot of things about having cancer in your 20s that feel absurd. One of those instances was when I found myself calling my brother Adam on Skype while he was studying abroad in Argentina to tell him that I had just been diagnosed with leukemia and that — no pressure — he was my only hope for a cure.

Today, my brother and I share almost identical DNA, the result of a successful bone marrow transplant I had last April using his healthy stem cells. But Adam and I couldn’t be more different. Like a lot of siblings, we got along swimmingly at one moment and were in each other’s hair the next. My younger brother by two years, he said I was a bossy older sister. I, of course, thought I knew best for my little brother and wanted him to see the world how I did. My brother is quieter, more reflective. I’m a chronic social butterfly who is probably a bit too impulsive and self-serious. I dreamed of dancing in the New York City Ballet, and he imagined himself playing in the N.B.A. While the sounds of the rapper Mos Def blared from Adam’s room growing up, I practiced for concerto competitions. Friends joked that one of us had to be adopted. We even look different, some people say. But really, we’re just siblings like any other.

When I was diagnosed with cancer at age 22, I learned just how much cancer affects families when it affects individuals. My doctors informed me that I had a high-risk form of leukemia and that a bone marrow transplant was my only shot at a cure. ‘Did I have any siblings?’ the doctors asked immediately. That would be my best chance to find a bone marrow match. Suddenly, everyone in our family was leaning on the little brother. He was in his last semester of college, and while his friends were applying to jobs and partying the final weeks of the school year away, he was soon shuttling from upstate New York to New York City for appointments with the transplant doctors.

I’d heard of organ transplants before, but what was a bone marrow transplant? The extent of my knowledge about bone marrow came from French cuisine: the fancy dish occasionally served with a side of toasted baguette.

Jokes aside, I learned that cancer patients become quick studies in the human body and how cancer treatment works. The thought of going through a bone marrow transplant, which in my case called for a life-threatening dose of chemotherapy followed by a total replacement of my body’s bone marrow, was scary enough. But then I learned that finding a donor can be the scariest part of all.

It turns out that not all transplants are created equal. Without a match, the path to a cure becomes much less certain, in many cases even impossible. This is particularly true for minorities and people from mixed ethnic backgrounds, groups that are severely underrepresented in bone marrow registries. As a first generation American, the child of a Swiss mother and Tunisian father, I suddenly found myself in a scary place. My doctors worried that a global, harried search for a bone marrow match would delay critical treatment for my fast-moving leukemia.

That meant that my younger brother was my best hope — but my doctors were careful to measure hope with reality. Siblings are the best chance for a match, but a match only happens about 25 percent of the time.

To our relief, results showed that my brother was a perfect match: a 10-out-of-10 on the donor scale. It was only then that it struck me how lucky I had been. Doctors never said it this way, but without a match, my chances of living through the next year were low. I have met many people since who, after dozens of efforts to encourage potential bone marrow donors to sign up, still have not found a match. Adding your name to the bone marrow registry is quick, easy and painless — you can sign up at marrow.org — and it just takes a swab of a Q-tip to get your DNA. For cancer patients around the world, it could mean a cure.

The bone marrow transplant procedure itself can be dangerous, but it is swift, which makes it feel strangely anti-climactic. On “Day Zero,” my brother’s stem cells dripped into my veins from a hanging I.V. bag, and it was all over in minutes. Doctors tell me that the hardest part of the transplant is recovering from it. I’ve found that to be true, and I’ve also recognized that the same is true for Adam. As I slowly grow stronger, my little brother has assumed a caretaker role in my life. I carry his blood cells — the ones keeping me alive — and he is carrying the responsibility, and often fear and anxiety, of the loving onlooker. He tells me I’m still a bossy older sister. But our relationship is now changed forever. I have to look to him for support and guidance more than I ever have. He’ll always be my little brother, but he’s growing up fast.

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Suleika Jaouad (pronounced su-LAKE-uh ja-WAD) is a 24-year-old writer who lives in New York City. Her column, “Life, Interrupted,” chronicling her experiences as a young adult with cancer, appears regularly on Well. Follow @suleikajaouad on Twitter.

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With Debt to Sell, Troubled Euro Nations Find Willing Buyers

MADRID — January is turning out to be a bumper month for Spain and some of the euro zone economies most in need of debt financing, with governments and companies flooding the market with bonds that have sold at significantly lower interest rates than just a few months ago.

On Thursday, the Spanish Treasury sold €4.5 billion, or $5.9 billion, of debt, including bonds with a maturity of as much as 28 years. The average interest rate paid by Madrid on two-year bonds was 2.71 percent, down from 3.36 percent in December — a level not reached since March of last year.

The interest rate on the benchmark 10-year Spanish bond stood at 5.03 percent Thursday. Last year that rate spiked above 7 percent — a level that many economists believe places an unsustainable burden on governments.

Higher interest rates make it not only more expensive but also more difficult for governments to borrow the money they need. Consistently high borrowing costs helped force Greece, Ireland and Portugal to seek international bailouts.

But the renewed sense of optimism in Spain this week led the government to suggest that the country’s economic recession would not be as deep and prolonged as had been feared. When drafting its 2012 budget, the government had expected the economy to contract 1.5 percent, but officials now expect the final figure for last year to be lower.

“The government is adopting the right measures to overcome the crisis, and these efforts are about to bear fruit,” Foreign Minister José Manuel García-Margallo said at an investment conference here Wednesday. “Foreign investors are coming back.”

But some foreign investors in Mr. García-Margallo’s audience gave a much more cautious reading on the recent market rally, as well as warning that it was too early for talk about an economic turnaround.

“Optimism is the flavor of the day, but perhaps people are overoptimistic,” said Birgitte Olsen, fund manager at Bellevue Asset Management in Zurich. “We’ve now seen some car companies shift their production lines to Spain, but a lot more reforms and work need to be done to return to growth and job creation.”

Still, Ms. Olsen said, “it makes sense for any company that has the opportunity to sell bonds to do it right now.”

Indeed, last year’s trickle of Spanish corporate debt issuance has turned this month into a flow. On Wednesday, Banco Santander sold €1 billion of seven-year bonds at an interest rate of 4 percent. In the first two weeks of January, a handful of other Spanish banks, as well as Telefónica and energy companies including Gas Natural and Red Eléctrica, sold bonds totaling over €7 billion, with most sales heavily oversubscribed.

“The results of some of these Spanish bond issues would have been impossible just three months ago, but it’s unclear to me whether what has now opened is really a long-term window,” said Michael Gierse, a fund manager at Union Investment in Frankfurt, which has €180 billion in assets under management.

The next litmus test for investors, Mr. Gierse said, would come at the end of the month, when the Spanish authorities are expected to lift a ban on the short-selling of all stocks trading on the country’s exchanges. The ban, intended to reduce market volatility, was to be lifted at the end of last October but was then extended by three months to help ailing companies like Banco Popular issue debt. Short-selling lets investors sell borrowed shares in the hope that their price will fall and that they could then be repurchased more cheaply, allowing the investors to pocket the difference.

“Once the short-selling ban gets lifted, we will have a much clearer idea of whether this market rally is for real,” Mr. Gierse said. For now, he added, “I don’t think that investors from outside the euro zone are already back in Spain.”

One reason for such wariness is that investors endured a roller-coaster ride last year.

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Woman held captive in Nordstrom Rack raped 'multiple times'

Prosecutors said one of the five people charged in connection with the take-over robbery at a Nordstrom Rack department store in Westchester raped one of the female hostages.

Prosecutors offered no details. But a district attorney's office spokeswoman said the victim was sexually assaulted "multiple times."

Five charged in Nordstrom Rack take-over robbery

Raymond Sherman Jr., 34, who authorities said was the most violent in the group, was charged with two counts of forcible rape, one count of oral copulation, one count of kidnapping for rape, one count of assault with a deadly weapon and 14 counts of second-degree robbery.

Troy Marsay Hammock, 29, and Everett Oneal Allen, 24, face 14 counts each of second-degree robbery and one count each of assault with a deadly weapon, identified as a knife, according to the Los Angeles County district attorney's office.

Rochelle Monique Sherman, 33; and Paula Roneshia Bradley, 29, were charged with one count each of accessory after the fact.

The complaint also alleges Sherman, who is awaiting extradition from Phoenix, where he was arrested Saturday, used a handgun in the commission of the crimes.

Police have not detailed the roles of the suspects in the robbery and hostage situation. But those in law enforcement familiar with the investigation said there is strong evidence linking the crimes to those charged, including physical evidence and security video.

The incident began about 11 p.m. Thursday at the Promenade at Howard Hughes Center, near the 405 Freeway. Sherman, Hammock and Allen allegedly confronted the employees as they were leaving the store, which had just closed.

As the incident was unfolding, one of the employees called her husband and told him to call 911. The LAPD called a tactical alert and closed off the area around the shopping center. When the police department's SWAT officers arrived, they surrounded the store.

At one point, one of the suspected burglars exited, saw the police and ran back inside. A second suspected burglar walked out with an unidentified woman, saw police and also headed back inside. The officers entered the store at 3:30 a.m. and freed the captives.

At least three of the employees were injured, including at least one woman who was sexually assaulted. Another woman was stabbed in the neck and sustained non-life-threatening injuries, and a third employee was pistol-whipped, police said. LAPD Chief Charlie Beck praised the employees for their bravery and composure.

Beck would not discuss whether the robbers hid in the store or gained entrance after it closed. Nor would he say how long they remained in the store before fleeing in a white SUV, or discuss how much cash was taken in the robbery.

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