DealBook: Nexen Secures U.S. Approval of Its Sale to Cnooc

Nexen said on Tuesday that it had received the last regulatory approval needed for its $15 billion sale to a major Chinese oil company, after the Obama administration declared the deal free from national security concerns.

With all necessary regulatory approvals in place, Nexen is set to become the latest acquisition by the Chinese oil industry, as the country seeks more and more sources of oil and natural gas to fuel its economy.

The deal is expected to close around Feb. 25.

The buyer in this transaction, the China National Offshore Oil Corporation, or Cnooc, has been among the most acquisitive. It has announced six deals in the last two years, according to Standard & Poor’s Capital IQ. Nexen, based in Calgary, is the biggest proposed deal by Cnooc since its failed attempt to buy Unocal for $18.5 billion in 2005.

Though most of its holdings are abroad, Nexen has major operations in the Gulf of Mexico, which fall under the jurisdiction of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or Cfius.

The approval by the Obama administration comes two months after the Canadian government approved the deal. That was regarded as perhaps the biggest hurdle, given spurts of nationalistic concern over foreign buyers claiming big tracts of natural resources in Canada.

A review by Cfius (pronounced SIF-ee-us) is still regarded as potentially tough, however. The organization, which is chaired by the Treasury secretary, makes its decisions behind closed doors, and buyers are not always told why a deal is rejected.

But Cfius has approved several potentially sensitive deals recently, including the sale of the bankrupt car battery maker A123 Systems to the Wanxiang Group.

Lawyers at Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton wrote in a note to clients on Monday that the A123 approval “is evidence that even when politics, protectionism and xenophobia all appear to be significant obstacles, Cfius will not raise objections if it believes no security issues exist.”

“With proper planning and transparency,” Cleary Gottlieb added, “even politically controversial transactions can successfully negotiate the Cfius process.”

Read More..

Grammys 2013: Fun., Mumford, Gotye lead a newer generation

Grammy Awards voters gave their top honor to British roots music band Mumford & Sons for their album "Babel" on Sunday at the 55th awards ceremony. Other top honors were distributed to a broad array of younger acts, including indie trio Fun., electronic pop artist Gotye, rapper-R&B singer Frank Ocean and rock group the Black Keys.

"We figured we weren't going to win because the Black Keys have been sweeping up all day — and deservedly so," Mumford & Sons front man Marcus Mumford said after he and his band members strode to the stage at Staples Center in Los Angeles to collect the award from last year's winner, R&B-soul singer Adele.

Pop culture historians may look back at 2013, however, as the year the Grammy Awards gave up its long fight against new forms of music dissemination, embracing songs and videos that consumers soaked up by way of YouTube and other Internet outlets as opposed to purchasing them.

PHOTOS: 2013 Grammy Award winners

"Somebody That I Used to Know," the wildly popular collaboration between Gotye and New Zealand pop singer Kimbra, took the top award presented for a single recording upon being named record of the year, which recognizes performance and record production.

"Somebody…" not only was one of the biggest-selling singles of 2012 but also has notched nearly 400 million views on YouTube, powerfully demonstrating the increasingly vital role of the "broadcast yourself" video Internet phenomenon. Different YouTube posts of Ocean's "Thinking About You" single have totaled nearly 60 million views.

New York indie rock trio Fun. was named best new artist, an acknowledgment of the good-time music the group brought to listeners and viewers last summer largely through its runaway hit single "We Are Young," which has racked up nearly 200 million YouTube views. It also was named song of the year, bringing awards for the group's songwriters, Jack Antonoff, Andrew Dost and Nate Ruess, and collaborator Jeff Bhasker.

GRAMMYS 2013: Full coverage | Pre-show winners | Winners | Ballot

"Everyone can see our faces, and we are not very young — we've been doing this for 12 years," Ruess said as they collected the award.

The song's title could also serve as a theme for the evening, which was dominated by other relatively young acts in the most prestigious Grammy categories.

Singer, rapper and songwriter Ocean emerged the victor in the one category that pitted him directly against real-life rival Chris Brown, as his critically acclaimed solo debut album, "Channel Orange," won the urban contemporary album award. A few minutes later Ocean got a second Grammy with Kanye West, Jay-Z and the Dream in the rap-sung collaboration category for their single "No Church in the Wild."

GRAMMYS 2013: Winners list | Best & Worst |  Red carpet | Timeline | Fashion | Highlights

Ocean's tuxedo covered all but his hands, but it appeared as he picked up the urban album award that his left arm remained in a wrist brace he'd exhibited Thursday at rehearsals for this year's broadcast, a remnant of his scuffle last month with Brown over a parking space at a recording studio. Los Angeles Police Department investigators said Ocean informed them that he would not press charges against Brown.

It was the Black Keys' Dan Auerbach who quickly built up steam as the front-runner to dominate this year's awards, taking several statuettes barely an hour into the show, including producer of the year for himself and three with his group including rock performance, rock song and rock album for "El Camino."

The Black Keys homed in on the fundamentals of rock 'n' roll — big guitar riffs, lustful lyrics and a bevy of musical hooks on "El Camino," one of the best reviewed albums of the group's career.

FULL COVERAGE: Grammy Awards 2013

Auerbach picked up another award as producer of the blues album winner, Dr. John's "Locked Down."

Carrie Underwood grabbed the country solo performance Grammy for the title track from her album "Blown Away," which also won the country song award for writers Josh Kear and Chris Tompkins earlier during the pre-telecast ceremony at Nokia Theatre, across the street from Staples Center.

The Zac Brown Band added to its growing place as a new-generation country powerhouse with a win of the country album trophy for its "Uncaged," built on muscular Southern rock guitar riffs, elaborate multipart vocal harmonies and jam-band instrumental excursions.

Last year's big winner, Adele, collected the first statuette of the night for her single "Set Fire to the Rain" in the pop solo performance category.

The show got off to an eye-popping start with a Cirque du Soleil-inspired performance by Taylor Swift of her nominated single "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together."

The preponderance of youthful acts not broadly known to mainstream TV audiences heightened the use of cross-generational pairings. Rising songwriter and singer Ed Sheeran shared the stage early with veteran Grammy darling Elton John, while Bruno Mars teamed with Sting and Rihanna in a Bob Marley tribute later in the show. Several members of Americana acts, including Alabama Shakes and Mumford & Sons, sang alongside veterans John, Mavis Staples and T Bone Burnett in a salute to drummer Levon Helm of the Band.

But it was the young guns to whom the evening — and perhaps the future — of the Grammy Awards belonged.

The Grammys are determined by about 13,000 voting members of the Recording Academy. The eligibility period for nominated recordings was Oct. 1, 2011, to Sept. 30, 2012. The show aired on CBS live except on the West Coast, which gets a tape delay.

randy.lewis@latimes.com

Twitter: @RandyLewis2

Read More..

Judge Dismisses Axl Rose's $20M <cite>Guitar Hero</cite> Lawsuit

Two years ago, Guns N’ Roses frontman Axl Rose brought a $20 million lawsuit against Guitar Hero III maker Activision for the inclusion of his former bandmate Slash in the 2007 videogame. Rose claimed that his deal with the company to license the song “Welcome to the Jungle” for use in the game included a promise from Activision that no images of Slash would be used in the game.

On Friday, LA Superior Court Judge Charles Palmer threw out Rose’s claims of fraud and misrepresentation, the San Marino Tribune reported. Palmer reasoned that Rose had waited too late to file the charges; Rose submitted his complaint three years after the release of Guitar Hero III.

As of 2011, Guitar Hero III had brought in over $830 million for Activision. The publisher announced that it was abandoning the series and canceling games in progress in early 2011.

Slash was all over Guitar Hero III: as a playable character, an opponent in a challenge mode and even in the center of the game’s box art.

Rose was neither the first nor last artist to sue Activision over the Guitar Hero franchise. The Romantics sued the company in 2007 for a cover version of one of their songs that appeared in Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80s. In 2009, Courtney Love announced that she planned to “sue the shit out of Activision” for its portrayal of her late husband, Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain, in the game Guitar Hero 5, calling his appearance in the game “vile.”

Later, both Maroon 5 singer Adam Levine and Gwen Stefani’s band No Doubt sued the company over their own portrayals in Band Hero, a Guitar Hero series spin-off.

Read More..

Mother’s obsessive love exposed in Romanian movie at Berlin

BERLIN (Reuters) – Actress Luminita Gheorghiu plays a domineering mother trying to save her son from jail in “Child’s Pose”, a stark family drama from Romania competing in this year’s Berlin film festival.

The movie, directed by Calin Peter Netzer, shines an unforgiving light on the casual corruption and flashy materialism of post-communist Romania’s upper middle class which expects to be able to buy itself out of any difficulty.

Netzer belongs to a group of young Romanian directors who have emerged since the death in 1989 of Communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu who had controlled the arts with an iron hand.

With its black humor, social satire and a remorseless focus on its protagonists’ neuroses, the film stands firmly in the tradition of Romanian new wave cinema that has wowed Western audiences over the past decade.

But Gheorghiu said the film’s theme is universal, not local.

“I don’t think this is a problem specific to Romania. There are mothers like this everywhere … who are victims of their unconditional love for their child,” she told a news conference after the film’s world premiere on Monday.

Gheorghiu’s character Cornelia hopes to win back the love of her son Barbu by using her social connections and splashing cash around liberally after he accidentally knocks down and kills a boy while speeding along a road outside Bucharest.

Barbu, 30, traumatized by the accident, faces up to 15 years in jail if convicted but he is also desperate to escape a mother who has always tried to run his life and refuses to let him grow up.

Cornelia, 60, always immaculately turned out in designer outfits and jewellery, lives in a plush villa in Bucharest where the bookshelves are lined with unread works by, among others, Romanian-born Nobel literature laureate Herta Mueller.

BUYING OFF PEOPLE

Cornelia’s imperious attitude to the police, her arrogant disdain for Barbu’s girlfriend, and her awkward attempt to buy off the poor family of the dead boy provide an unflattering insight into the attitudes of Romania’s nouveau riche.

“People from this social class are perhaps more likely to suffer from this kind of almost pathological relationship between a mother and her children than the lower social strata,” said Netzer, who spent part of his youth in Germany.

But Cornelia’s blindness to her own selfishness is also both comic and tragic. In the emotional culmination of the film, during a visit to the humble village home of the dead boy’s parents to pay her condolences, she ends up speaking obsessively about her own son as though he were the one who had died.

Netzer said the film’s title “Child’s Pose” comes from a yoga position, a detail that was edited out of the film, and refers to Cornelia’s inability to let her son break free.

“Child’s Pose” is one of 19 films in this year’s competition at the 11-day Berlinale, the first major European film festival of the year.

Netzer is best known for “Medal of Honour”, an ironic movie about a pensioner who erroneously receives an award for his “heroic” actions in World War Two.

(Reporting by Gareth Jones, Editing by Belinda Goldsmith)

Movies News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Title Post: Mother’s obsessive love exposed in Romanian movie at Berlin
Url Post: http://www.news.fluser.com/mothers-obsessive-love-exposed-in-romanian-movie-at-berlin/
Link To Post : Mother’s obsessive love exposed in Romanian movie at Berlin
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..

Catholic Bishops Reject Contraception Compromise

The bishops said they would continue fighting the federal mandate in court.

The administration said the proposal, issued last Friday, would guarantee free employee coverage of birth control “while respecting religious concerns” of organizations that objected to paying or providing for it.

The bishops said the proposal seemed to address part of their concern about the definition of religious employers who could be exempted from the requirement to offer contraceptive coverage at no charge to employees. But they said it did not go far enough and failed to answer many questions, like who would pay for birth control coverage provided to employees of certain nonprofit religious organizations.

“The administration’s proposal maintains its inaccurate distinction among religious ministries,” said Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan of New York, the president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. “It appears to offer second-class status to our first-class institutions in Catholic health care, Catholic education and Catholic charities. The Department of Health and Human Services offers what it calls an ‘accommodation,’ rather than accepting the fact that these ministries are integral to our church and worthy of the same exemption as our Catholic churches.”

The bishops’ statement, issued after they had reviewed President Obama’s proposal for six days, was more moderate and measured than their criticisms of the original rule issued by the White House early last year. Cardinal Dolan said the bishops wanted to work with the administration to find a solution.

The administration had no immediate reaction to the bishops’ statement, other than to say it was not a surprise.

Marcia D. Greenberger, co-president of the National Women’s Law Center, said that 99 percent of women used contraceptives at some point in their lives and that their interests must be considered.

“The health needs, the religious and conscience beliefs of women deserve to be respected and protected,” said Ms. Greenberger, who supports the White House proposal.

Under the latest proposal, churches and nonprofit religious groups that object to providing birth control coverage on religious grounds would not have to pay for it. Women who work for such organizations could get free contraceptive coverage through separate individual health insurance policies. The institution objecting to the coverage would not pay for the contraceptives. Costs would be paid by an insurance company, with the possibility that it could recoup the costs through lower health care expenses resulting in part from fewer births.

The administration refused to grant an exemption or accommodation to secular businesses owned by people who said they objected to contraceptive coverage on religious grounds.

The bishops rallied to the defense of such employers.

“In obedience to our Judeo-Christian heritage,” Cardinal Dolan said, “we have consistently taught our people to live their lives during the week to reflect the same beliefs that they proclaim on the Sabbath. We cannot now abandon them to be forced to violate their morally well-informed consciences.”

Federal courts have issued differing judgments on the legality of the federal rule. The litigation appears likely to end up in the Supreme Court.

Archbishop Charles J. Chaput of Philadelphia said that the administration’s proposal, at first glance, had “struck some people as a modest improvement.” The proposal, he said, appeared to increase the number of religiously affiliated entities that could claim exemption from the requirement.

But on closer examination, the archbishop said, the federal mandate “remains unnecessary, coercive and gravely flawed.”

“The White House has made no concessions to the religious conscience claims of private businesses, and the whole spirit of the ‘compromise’ is minimalist,” Archbishop Chaput said.

In court cases, judges have expressed keen interest in details of the arrangements for contraceptive coverage. The most difficult question, which the administration has yet to resolve, is how coverage will be provided and financed for employees of self-insured faith-based institutions, which serve as both employers and insurers.

Read More..

Advertising: Self Magazine Widens Its Focus for a Younger Audience

WHAT’S the point of having Michelle Obama’s triceps if you can’t show them off in a smart sleeveless sheath?

That seems to be the thinking behind a remake of Self magazine, the Condé Nast publication best known for teaching women how to crunch their abs, tone their thighs and eat the right foods.

Self is broadening its tight focus on exercise and wellness to become a more general lifestyle magazine infused with more beauty and fashion, an effort that will include editorial changes, a new look for the cover and logo and licensing agreements.

“We think there’s a shift in how women think of their bodies and beauty,” said Laura McEwen, the vice president and publisher of Self. “Being fit and fashionable are really one.”

According to Ms. McEwen, the magazine’s typical reader is in her mid-30s with a median household income of $75,000 a year; the rebranded magazine is meant to appeal to the generation of women 18 to 30 who are obsessed with social media. “The magazine is being edited for the women who think in 140 characters,” she said, referring to the character limit of a Twitter post.

That editorial shift can be most felt in the chatty headlines created for subsections in the magazine and its bolder, fashion-focused images. One section, “It’s a Thing,” highlights new trends (in March, the color will be lemon yellow). Others include “You Look Awesome in That,” featuring fashion coverage, and “Just Shoot Me Now,” which doles out advice to readers in embarrassing situations.

Self finds itself between two of its biggest competitors in women’s fitness magazines.

The magazine, which has a total print circulation of 1.5 million readers, had a slight increase in advertising dollars, but not ad pages, last year. Advertisers spent $163.2 million on ads in the magazine in 2012, a 1.8 percent increase from 2011, when they spent $160.2 million.

Total ad pages declined 2.3 percent to 905.4 in 2012 from 926 in 2011, according to data from the Publishers Information Bureau. Online, the magazine has 6.9 million unique visitors a month, executives said, with a fifth of that traffic coming from the social media content sharing site Pinterest.

Shape magazine, which is owned by American Media, claims a similarly strong print circulation of 1.63 million readers, but has had a tough time sustaining advertising dollars. The fitness and lifestyle magazine suffered an 18.4 percent decrease in advertising revenue from 2011, when advertisers spent $206.8 million, to 2012, when they spent $168.8 million on the magazine. The total number of ad pages in the magazine decreased 22.7 percent from 2011 to 2012.

Women’s Health, which is owned by Rodale, showed a 12.3 percent increase in paid advertising from 2011 to 2012, and a 6.8 percent increase in ad pages for the same period. In 2011 the magazine reported a circulation of 1.6 million.

Self magazine, its Web site and its mobile site will be divided into three main sections that focus on body, looks and lifestyle. The new look, which will make its debut this week, includes a larger font for the title and a clean white background. The changes will be consistent across all platforms.

Readers will also be able to download a new mobile application, called Self Plus. When users hover their phones over pages tagged with icons promoting the app, they can watch videos and skim through photo galleries and other content.

Millennial women, said Lucy Schulte Danziger, the editor in chief of Self, have “this sense that you want to be really healthy, but you also want to go drink martinis with your friends.” (To that end, the March issue will include a calorie-counting game on matching cocktails with bar food without blowing your diet.) “It’s trying to have fun. It should be fun; this is not rocket science,” she said.

Self’s last makeover was in 2010, when it overhauled its design, updated its logo and tweaked section headlines.

Beyond the latest editorial changes is a range of marketing efforts to get the word out. Print and digital ads will run in Condé Nast magazines like Allure, Glamour and Lucky and on taxi tops in New York City. Digital ads will also run on DailyCandy.com and Refinery29.com.

The March issue of Self, featuring the dancer Julianne Hough on the cover, will be available in print on Feb 19. Ms. Hough is the lead actress in the new film “Safe Haven.” Self will also be the co-host at a premiere party for the film on Monday in New York City.

The brand has also licensed its name to a new line of fitness gear including yoga mats and kettlebells and is considering extending that to healthy food products. Self is also capitalizing on its annual event, “Self Workout in the Park,” by announcing a college-themed contest, “Self Workout on the Quad,” where college students who participate most heavily with the Facebook “Workout in the Park” social game can win an event at their school.

Sponsors for the event include Garnier, Reebok, Calvin Klein, LaRoche-Posay, LeSportsac, Luna Bar and Club Med. Ads promoting the contest will be shown on HerCampus.com.

“This is clearly a strategy not only to reach young women readers where they’re at right now, but also to be more attractive to advertisers,” said Laura Portwood-Stacer, a visiting assistant professor of media, culture and communication at the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development at New York University. “It seems to tap into this trend of fitness lifestyle consumption that you see a lot now.”

One new advertiser is LeSportsac, which in addition to sponsoring the workout events, will advertise in the April issue of Self.

“Seeing where the consumer is going today is very much lifestyle,” said Paula Spadaccini, the marketing director for LeSportsac. “They don’t just aspire to wear Christian Louboutin and be very fashionable. They also aspire to be fit and cook healthy recipes.”

Walter Coyle, the president of Pedone, an independent advertising agency, said that some of his clients like Burt’s Bees, the beauty product line, and Essie, the nail polish brand, will continue to advertise in Self, and that other clients including Clarins and Lacoste were considering it. “Whenever a formidable magazine like Self reimagines its position in the marketplace, it’s something everyone is going to look at,” he said.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 11, 2013

An earlier version of this column misidentified the owner of the magazine Women’s Health. It is owned by Rodale, not Meredith.

Read More..

Ambitious makeover planned for old housing project

Denise Penegar puts a little extra effort into the teenage girls, the ones who've dropped out of high school to care for their firstborns.

Don't be afraid, the outreach worker tells them. Come down to the housing project's community center, get your GED and some job skills. Change your life.

"I was one of those girls," said Penegar, now 51 and still living in Jordan Downs, the Watts housing project where she was born.

Sometimes, she imagines how different her life might have been if someone had knocked on her door when she was 17, caring for her first baby. What would it have meant just to have "someone who is here who can help pick me up"?

Penegar is on the front lines of a bold social experiment underway at Jordan Downs, a project notorious to outsiders for its poverty, blight and violence but seen by many longtime residents, for all its problems, as a close-knit community worth preserving.

In the last year, the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles has begun an effort to transform Jordan that could cost more than $600 million. The plan is to turn the complex of 700 aging units into a mixed-income community of up to 1,400 apartments and condominiums, with shops and restaurants and fancy touches such as native plant gardens. The city hopes to draw in hundreds of more-affluent residents willing to pay market rate to live side by side with the city's poorest.

Spurred by changes in federal funding and policy, such "mixed use" developments have sprung up in place of infamous housing projects all over the country. But experts say Jordan is taking an approach that has not been tried on this scale.

Typically, public housing residents are moved out ahead of the bulldozers, scattered to search for new shelter. In Los Angeles, the housing authority has promised that any of the 2,300 Jordan residents "in good standing" can stay in their old units until the day they move into new ones. The project is to be built in phases, beginning with units on 21 acres of adjacent land purchased by the authority in 2008 for $31 million.

To ease the transition, the city has dispatched "community coaches" like Penegar, along with teachers, social workers, therapists — even police officers whose charge is not to make arrests but to coach youth football and triathlon teams.

In essence, officials intend to raze the buildings, not the community — and radically change its character.

It will be an enormous challenge, with success likely to be measured in tiny increments.

Only 47% of adults at Jordan reported any wages to the housing authority last year. As in many urban projects, poverty and social ills have multiplied through the generations, leaving some residents unfamiliar with opportunities and expectations beyond the neighborhood. Some rarely leave the area.

Before inviting in new neighbors with expectations of safety and comfort, the housing authority has begun flooding Jordan Downs with social services. Many of the programs are focused on women, because more than 60% of Jordan Downs' tenants live in households headed by single mothers. But men are targeted too — for job training and lessons in parenting, for instance.

By December, 10 months into the effort, more than 450 families had been surveyed by intake workers and 280 signed up for intensive services.

"Most people would say it's ambitious, but I think it's essential," said Kathryn Icenhower, executive director of Shields for Families, the South Los Angeles nonprofit that is running many of the new programs under a more than $1-million annual contract with the housing authority.

It is unknown, however, how effective the social services will be, how easy it will be to draw in wealthier residents and how many millions of dollars the federal government — a major source of funding — will provide.

Already, the housing authority has picked a development team — the for-profit Michaels Organization and the nonprofit Bridge Housing, both with respectable track records in other cities. But with financing still uncertain, it is unclear exactly how many units will be built or how much various occupants would pay.

Ultimately, a working family could pay hundreds of dollars more in rent than unemployed tenants next door for a nearly identical unit. Officials say they do not expect Watts to draw the same kind of high-income residents as the former Cabrini Green project in Chicago, which sat on prime real estate near downtown. But Jordan is in a convenient location, near the intersection of the 105 and 110 Freeways; and in a high-rent city like Los Angeles, even the steepest rates at Jordan are likely to seem a bargain.

Despite the onslaught of social services and some palpable changes — including a 53% plunge in the violent crime rate at Jordan last year — financial risks abound.

Later this spring, the authority plans to put in an application for $30 million from the federal government's Choice Neighborhoods Program as seed money. Without it, the project could be delayed.

Read More..

Wired Science Space Photo of the Day: Wings of the Seagull Nebula

This image shows the intricate structure of part of the Seagull Nebula, known more formally as IC 2177. These wisps of gas and dust are known as Sharpless 2-296 (officially Sh 2-296) and form part of the “wings” of the celestial bird. This region of the sky is a fascinating muddle of intriguing astronomical objects — a mix of dark and glowing red clouds, weaving amongst bright stars. This new view was captured by the Wide Field Imager on the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile.

Image: ESO [high-resolution]

Caption: ESO

Read More..

For Families Struggling with Mental Illness, Carolyn Wolf Is a Guide in the Darkness

When a life starts to unravel, where do you turn for help?

Melissa Klump began to slip in the eighth grade. She couldn’t focus in class, and in a moment of despair she swallowed 60 ibuprofen tablets. She was smart, pretty and ill: depression, attention deficit disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, either bipolar disorder or borderline personality disorder.

In her 20s, after a more serious suicide attempt, her parents sent her to a residential psychiatric treatment center, and from there to another. It was the treatment of last resort. When she was discharged from the second center last August after slapping another resident, her mother, Elisa Klump, was beside herself.

“I was banging my head against the wall,” the mother said. “What do I do next?” She frantically called support groups, therapy programs, suicide prevention lines, anybody, running down a list of names in a directory of mental health resources. “Finally,” she said, “somebody told me, ‘The person you need to talk to is Carolyn Wolf.’ ”

That call, she said, changed her life and her daughter’s. “Carolyn has given me hope,” she said. “I didn’t know there were people like her out there.”

Carolyn Reinach Wolf is not a psychiatrist or a mental health professional, but a lawyer who has carved out what she says is a unique niche, working with families like the Klumps.

One in 17 American adults suffers from a severe mental illness, and the systems into which they are plunged — hospitals, insurance companies, courts, social services — can be fragmented and overwhelming for families to manage. The recent shootings in Newtown, Conn., and Aurora, Colo., have brought attention to the need for intervention to prevent such extreme acts of violence, which are rare. But for the great majority of families watching their loved ones suffer, and often suffering themselves, the struggle can be boundless, with little guidance along the way.

“If you Google ‘mental health lawyer,’ ” said Ms. Wolf, a partner with Abrams & Fensterman, “I’m kinda the only game in town.”

On a recent afternoon, she described in her Midtown office the range of her practice.

“We have been known to pull people out of crack dens,” she said. “I have chased people around hotels all over the city with the N.Y.P.D. and my team to get them to a hospital. I had a case years ago where the person was on his way back from Europe, and the family was very concerned that he was symptomatic. I had security people meet him at J.F.K.”

Many lawyers work with mentally ill people or their families, but Ron Honberg, the national director of policy and legal affairs for the National Alliance on Mental Illness, said he did not know of another lawyer who did what Ms. Wolf does: providing families with a team of psychiatrists, social workers, case managers, life coaches, security guards and others, and then coordinating their services. It can be a lifeline — for people who can afford it, Mr. Honberg said. “Otherwise, families have to do this on their own,” he said. “It’s a 24-hour, 7-day-a-week job, and for some families it never ends.”

Many of Ms. Wolf’s clients declined to be interviewed for this article, but the few who spoke offered an unusual window on the arcane twists and turns of the mental health care system, even for families with money. Their stories illustrate how fraught and sometimes blind such a journey can be.

One rainy morning last month, Lance Sheena, 29, sat with his mother in the spacious family room of her Long Island home. Mr. Sheena was puffy-eyed and sporadically inattentive; the previous night, at the group home where he has been living since late last summer, another resident had been screaming incoherently and was taken away by the police. His mother, Susan Sheena, eased delicately into the family story.

“I don’t talk to a lot of people because they don’t get it,” Ms. Sheena said. “They mean well, but they don’t get it unless they’ve been through a similar experience. And anytime something comes up, like the shooting in Newtown, right away it goes to the mentally ill. And you think, maybe we shouldn’t be so public about this, because people are going to be afraid of us and Lance. It’s a big concern.”

Her son cut her off. “Are you comparing me to the guy that shot those people?”

“No, I’m saying that anytime there’s a shooting, like in Aurora, that’s when these things come out in the news.”

“Did you really just compare me to that guy?”

“No, I didn’t compare you.”

“Then what did you say?”

Read More..

Israeli Says Syria Twisted Comments by Rebel Supporter

BEIRUT, Lebanon — A public relations controversy erupted Saturday after a leading Israeli newspaper published comments from a brief interview with the leader of Syria’s main exile opposition group.

The news media outlets of the Syrian government, and its ally Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group, reported that the opposition leader had declared that Israel had “nothing to fear” from a rebel-led Syrian government. Moreover, the reports said, the opposition was working with other countries to keep Syria’s chemical weapons away from Hezbollah, which he called a “son of the devil.”

But the opposition leader, Sheik Ahmad Moaz al-Khatib, never said any of that, according to the article in the Israeli newspaper, Yediot Aharonot, and its author, a prominent Israeli defense expert, Ronen Bergman.

Sheik Khatib was quoted in the article reiterating the opposition’s promise to keep Syria’s chemical arsenal out of “the hands of unauthorized elements,” and it was the international community, he said, not Israel, that had “nothing to fear.”

When Sheik Khatib realized that Mr. Bergman was an Israeli — after glancing at his business card — he abruptly ended the conversation, Mr. Bergman said in a Skype interview, repeating what he had written.

The original article was published only in Hebrew — and only in print — so it was the Arabic and English versions put out by the Syrian government and Hezbollah that raced around the Internet on Saturday, provoking outrage from government supporters and opponents at Sheik Khatib, who posted a message on his Facebook page denying that he had given the interview.

Yet the episode appeared to have been more than a simple misunderstanding. Syria’s conflict is not only a shooting war but also a propaganda war. Pro-government media apparently could not resist the chance to bolster their contention that the rebellion had been promoted by Israel and the West to punish Syria and its president, President Bashar al-Assad, for taking uncompromising positions against Israel.

“Unfortunately, the original text was less exciting,” Mr. Bergman said. “I would be happy if he would say something like, ‘Yes, we will make peace with Israel’ — then I would get the front page.” As it was, the article elicited little reaction in Israel.

But misrepresentation of the article suggested that it hit a nerve on one issue. An unnamed opposition member, not Sheik Khatib, called Hezbollah “sons of the devil,” according to Mr. Bergman, and said the rebel coalition was working with other countries to ensure that “not one piece of military equipment, not chemical weapons and not any other item, will pass into their hands.”

Syria is Hezbollah’s main conduit for arms, and Hezbollah has backed Mr. Assad’s bloody crackdown at great cost to its popularity in the wider Arab world.

Although Mr. Bergman said the opposition member was offering his own opinion and not presenting official policy, his comments bolstered the widely held view that a rebel-led government might halt the shipment of Iranian arms through Syria to Hezbollah. Hezbollah, a Shiite group and political party, is also concerned about the rise within the rebel movement of extremist Sunni jihadists who view Shiites as apostates.

The misleading reports appeared to be an attempt to further divide the opposition. Sheik Khatib found himself fending off critics from within the anti-Assad movement who objected to his even speaking with an Israeli reporter, though by all accounts he did not initially realize that Mr. Bergman was an Israeli.

It was the second time in a month that Sheik Khatib found himself on the defensive. He recently proposed talks with members of Mr. Assad’s government, but had not built political support for the proposal.

On Friday, Syria’s information minister, Omran al-Zoubi, gave the first official response to the proposal, saying that the government would negotiate with any opposition members who agreed to lay down their arms.

On Saturday, Mr. Assad named new cabinet ministers for oil, finance, social affairs, labor, housing, public works and agriculture, as Syria faces growing economic problems and shortages of electricity, fuel and bread.

Anne Barnard reported from Beirut, and Isabel Kershner from Jerusalem. Hania Mourtada contributed reporting from Beirut.

Read More..