Rodman tells Kim Jong Un he has 'friend for life'

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Ex-NBA star Dennis Rodman hung out Thursday with North Korea's Kim Jong Un on the third day of his improbable journey with VICE to Pyongyang, watching the Harlem Globetrotters with the leader and later dining on sushi and drinking with him at his palace.

"You have a friend for life," Rodman told Kim before a crowd of thousands at a gymnasium where they sat side by side, chatting as they watched players from North Korea and the U.S. play, Alex Detrick, a spokesman for the New York-based VICE media company, told The Associated Press.

Rodman arrived in Pyongyang on Monday with three members of the professional Harlem Globetrotters basketball team, VICE correspondent Ryan Duffy and a production crew to shoot an episode on North Korea for a new weekly HBO series.

The unlikely encounter makes Rodman the most high-profile American to meet Kim since the young North Korean leader took power in December 2011, and takes place against a backdrop of tension between Washington and Pyongyang. North Korea conducted an underground nuclear test just two weeks ago, making clear the provocative act was a warning to the United States to drop what it considers a "hostile" policy toward the North.

Kim, a diehard basketball fan, told the former Chicago Bulls star he hoped the visit would break the ice between the United States and North Korea, VICE founder Shane Smith said.

Dressed in a blue Mao suit, Kim laughed and slapped his hands on the table before him during the game as he sat nearly knee to knee with Rodman. Rodman, the man who once turned up in a wedding dress to promote his autobiography, wore a dark suit and dark sunglasses, but still had on his nose rings and other piercings. A can of Coca-Cola sat on the table before him in photos shared with AP by VICE.

"The crowd was really engaged, laughed at all of the Globetrotters antics, and actually got super loud towards the end as the score got close," said Duffy, who suited up for the game in a blue uniform emblazoned with "United States of America. "Most fun I've had in a while."

Kim and Rodman chatted in English, but Kim primarily spoke in Korean through a translator, Smith said after speaking to the VICE crew in Pyongyang.

"They bonded during the game," Smith said by telephone from New York after speaking to the crew. "They were both enjoying the crazy shots, and the Harlem Globetrotters were putting on quite a show."

The surprise visit by the flamboyant Hall of Famer known as "The Worm" makes him an unlikely ambassador at a time when North Koreans are girding for battle with the U.S. Just last week, Kim guided front line troops in military exercises.

North Korea and the U.S. fought on opposite sides of the three-year Korean War, which ended in a truce in 1953. The foes never signed a peace treaty, and do not have diplomatic relations.

Thursday's game ended in a 110-110 draw, with two Americans playing on each team alongside North Koreans, Detrick said. The Xinhua News Agency first reported on the game, citing witnesses who attended.

After the game, Rodman addressed Kim in a speech before a crowd of tens of thousands of North Koreans, telling him, "You have a friend for life," Detrick said.

At a lavish dinner at Kim's palace, the leader plied the group with food and drinks as the group made round after round of toasts.

"Dinner was an epic feast. Felt like about 10 courses in total," Duffy said in an email to AP. "I'd say the winners were the smoked turkey and sushi, though we had the Pyongyang cold noodles earlier in the trip and that's been the runaway favorite so far."

Duffy said he invited Kim to visit the United States, a proposal met with hearty laughter from the North Korean leader.

"Um ... so Kim Jong Un just got the (hash)VICEonHBO crew wasted ... no really, that happened," VICE producer Jason Mojica wrote on Twitter.

Rodman's trip is the second attention-grabbing U.S. visit this year to North Korea. Google's executive chairman, Eric Schmidt, made a four-day trip in January to Pyongyang, but did not meet the North Korean leader.

In Washington, the State Department refused comment on Rodman's visit or his meeting with Kim. "Private, individual Americans are welcome to take actions they see fit," spokesman Patrick Ventrell said.

He said the Obama administration wasn't in touch with Rodman and wasn't making an effort to contact him.

The administration had frowned on the trip by Schmitt and former New Mexico governor Bill Richardson, but has avoided criticizing Rodman's outing, saying it's about sports.

North Korea's invitation to a man known as much for his piercings, tattoos and bad behavior as for his basketball may seem inexplicable. But Kim is known to love the NBA, and has promoted sports since becoming leader.

"We knew that he's a big lover of basketball, especially the Bulls, and it was our intention going in that we would have a good will mission of something that's fun," Smith said. "A lot of times, things just are serious and everybody's so concerned with geopolitics that we forget just to be human beings."

Rodman's agent, Darren Prince, said Rodman wasn't concerned about criticism about making a visit to an enemy nation.

"Dennis called me last night and said it's been a great experience and he made this trip out of the love of the USA ," he said. "It's all about peace and love."

___

Associated Press NBA writer Brian Mahoney in New York and writer Bradley Klapper in Washington contributed to this report. Follow AP's Korea bureau chief Jean Lee at twitter.com/newsjean.

Read More..

Tribeca to open with documentary on the National

NEW YORK (AP) — The Tribeca Film Festival will open with a documentary about the National, along with a performance by the Brooklyn band.

The festival announced Thursday that "Mistaken for Strangers," which documents the National on tour, will premiere April 17. The film is directed by Tom Berninger, brother to lead to singer Matt Berninger.

Tribeca's Chief Creative Officer Geoff Gilmore called the film "a highly personal and lighthearted story about brotherly love."

The band will perform following the film's premiere. In 2011, Tribeca also paired a movie and concert with Elton John performing after Cameron Crowe's music documentary "The Union."

The Tribeca Film Festival runs April 17 through April 28. It will next week announce the feature film slate for its 12th annual festival.

Read More..

Economic expansion weakest since 2011

The U.S. economy barely grew in the fourth quarter although a slightly better performance in exports and fewer imports led the government to scratch an earlier estimate that showed an economic contraction.

Gross domestic product expanded at a 0.1 percent annual rate, the Commerce Department said on Thursday, missing the 0.5 percent gain forecast by analysts in a Reuters poll.

The growth rate was the slowest since the first quarter of 2011 and far from what is needed to fuel a faster drop in the unemployment rate.

However, much of the weakness came from a slowdown in inventory accumulation and a sharp drop in military spending. These factors are expected to reverse in the first quarter.

Consumer spending was more robust by comparison, although it only expanded at a 2.1 percent annual rate.

Because household spending powers about 70 percent of national output, this still-lackluster pace of growth suggests underlying momentum in the economy was quite modest as it entered the first quarter, when significant fiscal tightening began.

Initially, the government had estimated the economy shrank at a 0.1 percent annual rate in the last three months of 2012. That had shocked economists.

Thursday's report showed the reasons for the decline were mostly as initially estimated. Inventories subtracted 1.55 percentage points from the GDP growth rate during the period, a little more of a drag than initially estimated. Defense spending plunged 22 percent, shaving 1.28 points off growth as in the previous estimate.

There were some relatively bright spots, however. Imports fell 4.5 percent during the period, which added to the overall growth rate because it was a larger drop than in the third quarter. Buying goods from foreigners bleeds money from the economy, subtracting from economic growth.

Also helping reverse the initial view of an economic contraction, exports did not fall as much during the period as the government had thought when it released its advance GDP estimate in January. Exports have been hampered by a recession in Europe, a cooling Chinese economy and storm-related port disruptions.

Excluding the volatile inventories component, GDP rose at a revised 1.7 percent rate, in line with expectations. These final sales of goods and services had been previously estimated to have increased at a 1.1 percent pace.

Business spending was revised to show more growth during the period than initially thought, adding about a percentage point to the growth rate.

Growth in home building was revised slightly higher to show a 17.5 percent annual rate. Residential construction is one of the brighter spots in the economy and is benefiting from the Federal Reserve's ultra easy monetary policy stance, which has driven mortgage rates to record lows. (Reporting by Jason Lange; Editing by Andrea Ricci)
 

Read More..

Obama cites Navy threat, immigrants freed as cuts loom

Speaker of the House John Boehner tells Scott Pelley in a "CBS Evening News" interview that a budget deal is now out of his hands.

NEWPORT NEWS, Va. —

President Barack Obama on Tuesday warned of threats to Navy readiness and the government released hundreds of illegal immigrants due to budget pressure as automatic government spending cuts crept closer.

In the latest event staged by the White House to warn of the possible damage to public services, Obama spoke at the Newport News Shipbuilding shipyard where scheduled maintenance to the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln has been delayed by the budget crisis.

President Barack Obama on Tuesday warned of threats to Navy readiness and the government released hundreds of illegal immigrants due to budget pressure as automatic government spending cuts crept closer.

In the latest event staged by the White House to warn of the possible damage to public services, Obama spoke at the Newport News Shipbuilding shipyard where scheduled maintenance to the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln has been delayed by the budget crisis.

"The threat of these cuts has already forced the Navy to cancel the deployment, or delay the repair of certain aircraft carriers. One that's currently being built might not get finished," he warned.

The $85 billion across-the-board budget cuts are due to begin on Friday, and might eventually force the government to scale back on a host of services such as air traffic control, law enforcement and food safety inspections.

"These cuts are wrong. They are not smart. They're not fair. They are a self-inflicted wound that doesn't have to happen," he told workers in Newport News, Virginia.

In a move criticized by Republicans as a dangerous political stunt, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency released several hundred detained illegal immigrants in order to save money in preparation for the cuts.

An agreement in Congress would halt the cuts, but with days to go before the ax starts to fall, the two parties do not agree on what to replace them with. There have been hardly any budget talks between the parties since New Year.

Republicans seek different, more targeted, spending cuts than entailed in "sequestration," as the automatic cuts are known in Washington budget parlance. They complain that Obama is overplaying worries about sequestration to promote long-held plans to close tax loopholes.

House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner accused Obama of using "our military men and women as a prop in yet another campaign rally to support his tax hikes."

Boehner, under pressure by conservatives not to cave to Obama's demand for higher taxes, said members of the Democratic-controlled Senate need to "get off their ass" and pass legislation that would blunt the impact of the cuts.

In the Senate, Republicans struggled to come up with a unified plan for replacing the cuts, with Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell saying lawmakers should simply pass a law giving the president flexibility on how the reductions would be carried out. Obama rejected that idea.

In a sign of how far they are from halting sequestration, congressional Republicans and the White House have been trying to blame each other for the cuts, which both Democrats and Republicans agreed to in a 2011 plan to fix an earlier budget crisis.

President Obama plans to convene a meeting with the top leaders in Congress on Friday at the White House, congressional aides confirmed.
 
The president’s confab with Boehner (R-Ohio), Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), McConnell (R-Ky.) and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) will come on the day the indiscriminate across-the-board budget cuts, known as the sequester, are set to begin slicing $85 billion in federal spending by the end of September.
 
Republicans on Capitol Hill immediately questioned whether the administration was "serious" about stopping the automatic budget cuts or whether the meeting was a "farce."

BLAME SHARED FOR CUTS

"The president's been running around acting like the world's going to end because Congress might actually follow through on an idea he proposed and signed into law - all the while pretending he's somehow powerless to stop it," said McConnell.

Americans blame both Obama and congressional Republicans for the sequestration crisis, according to a Reuters/Ipsos online poll released on Tuesday.

Twenty-five percent of people said Republicans in Congress were responsible for sequestration, 23 percent blamed Obama and 5 percent pointed to congressional Democrats. Thirty percent said all of them were to blame.

With a trip to a defense-heavy region of the country, Obama is seeking to draw attention to how the cuts would play out in communities where the military is a major source of jobs.

Defense spending makes up 9.8 percent of Virginia's gross domestic product.

But sequestration will be brought in gradually, and no shock to the economy is expected on Friday when it starts.

IMMIGRANTS RELEASED

"The impact of this policy won't be felt overnight but it will be real," Obama said. "The longer these cuts are in place the greater the damage."

The planned cuts will be phased in over seven months, giving lawmakers time to halt the worst effects, possibly in budget talks later in March.

But the Obama administration is highlighting a series of cuts to public services which are threatened.

The release of several hundred illegal immigrants due to budget pressures was criticized by the Republican head of the House Judiciary Committee as a political stunt to pressure Congress to put off sequestration.

"It's abhorrent that President Obama is releasing criminals into our communities to promote his political agenda on sequestration," U.S. Representative Bob Goodlatte said in a statement.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement released the immigrants while their deportation cases proceed. ICE spokeswoman Gillian Christensen said serious offenders were still being held.

Sequestration might be stopped as part of negotiations next month over another unrelated fiscal issue: a continuing resolution to fund government operations.

But House Republicans think they are in a strong bargaining position as there is not likely to be public outcry when the cuts start, unlike the "fiscal cliff" crisis at the New Year when the threat of tax hikes for most working Americans kept pressure on lawmakers to reach a deal.

The sequestration cuts apply in equal measure to non-defense spending and defense spending.

The reductions will force the Pentagon to put most of its 800,000 civilian employees on unpaid leave for 22 days, slash ship and aircraft maintenance and curtail training, Defense Department officials have told Congress. Pentagon contracting and acquisitions personnel were authorized last week to consult with their industry counterparts about the upcoming spending cuts.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, in testimony on Tuesday to the Senate Banking Committee, urged lawmakers to avoid the spending cuts, warning that combined with earlier tax increases it could create a "significant headwind" for the economic recovery.

 
"The threat of these cuts has already forced the Navy to cancel the deployment, or delay the repair of certain aircraft carriers. One that's currently being built might not get finished," he warned.

The $85 billion across-the-board budget cuts are due to begin on Friday, and might eventually force the government to scale back on a host of services such as air traffic control, law enforcement and food safety inspections.

"These cuts are wrong. They are not smart. They're not fair. They are a self-inflicted wound that doesn't have to happen," he told workers in Newport News, Virginia.

In a move criticized by Republicans as a dangerous political stunt, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency released several hundred detained illegal immigrants in order to save money in preparation for the cuts.

An agreement in Congress would halt the cuts, but with days to go before the ax starts to fall, the two parties do not agree on what to replace them with. There have been hardly any budget talks between the parties since New Year.

Republicans seek different, more targeted, spending cuts than entailed in "sequestration," as the automatic cuts are known in Washington budget parlance. They complain that Obama is overplaying worries about sequestration to promote long-held plans to close tax loopholes.

House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner accused Obama of using "our military men and women as a prop in yet another campaign rally to support his tax hikes."

Boehner, under pressure by conservatives not to cave to Obama's demand for higher taxes, said members of the Democratic-controlled Senate need to "get off their ass" and pass legislation that would blunt the impact of the cuts.

In the Senate, Republicans struggled to come up with a unified plan for replacing the cuts, with Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell saying lawmakers should simply pass a law giving the president flexibility on how the reductions would be carried out. Obama rejected that idea.

In a sign of how far they are from halting sequestration, congressional Republicans and the White House have been trying to blame each other for the cuts, which both Democrats and Republicans agreed to in a 2011 plan to fix an earlier budget crisis.

BLAME SHARED FOR CUTS

"The president's been running around acting like the world's going to end because Congress might actually follow through on an idea he proposed and signed into law - all the while pretending he's somehow powerless to stop it," said McConnell.

Americans blame both Obama and congressional Republicans for the sequestration crisis, according to a Reuters/Ipsos online poll released on Tuesday.

Twenty-five percent of people said Republicans in Congress were responsible for sequestration, 23 percent blamed Obama and 5 percent pointed to congressional Democrats. Thirty percent said all of them were to blame.

With a trip to a defense-heavy region of the country, Obama is seeking to draw attention to how the cuts would play out in communities where the military is a major source of jobs.

Defense spending makes up 9.8 percent of Virginia's gross domestic product.

But sequestration will be brought in gradually, and no shock to the economy is expected on Friday when it starts.

IMMIGRANTS RELEASED

"The impact of this policy won't be felt overnight but it will be real," Obama said. "The longer these cuts are in place the greater the damage."

The planned cuts will be phased in over seven months, giving lawmakers time to halt the worst effects, possibly in budget talks later in March.

But the Obama administration is highlighting a series of cuts to public services which are threatened.

The release of several hundred illegal immigrants due to budget pressures was criticized by the Republican head of the House Judiciary Committee as a political stunt to pressure Congress to put off sequestration.

"It's abhorrent that President Obama is releasing criminals into our communities to promote his political agenda on sequestration," U.S. Representative Bob Goodlatte said in a statement.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement released the immigrants while their deportation cases proceed. ICE spokeswoman Gillian Christensen said serious offenders were still being held.

Sequestration might be stopped as part of negotiations next month over another unrelated fiscal issue: a continuing resolution to fund government operations.

But House Republicans think they are in a strong bargaining position as there is not likely to be public outcry when the cuts start, unlike the "fiscal cliff" crisis at the New Year when the threat of tax hikes for most working Americans kept pressure on lawmakers to reach a deal.

The sequestration cuts apply in equal measure to non-defense spending and defense spending.

The reductions will force the Pentagon to put most of its 800,000 civilian employees on unpaid leave for 22 days, slash ship and aircraft maintenance and curtail training, Defense Department officials have told Congress. Pentagon contracting and acquisitions personnel were authorized last week to consult with their industry counterparts about the upcoming spending cuts.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, in testimony on Tuesday to the Senate Banking Committee, urged lawmakers to avoid the spending cuts, warning that combined with earlier tax increases it could create a "significant headwind" for the economic recovery.

Read More..

Apple CEO says he feels shareholders' pain, urges long view

CUPERTINO, California (Reuters) - Apple Inc CEO Tim Cook acknowledged widespread disappointment in the company's sagging share price but shared few details about its secretive product pipeline or a raging debate about how to best reward shareholders.

The world's most valuable technology company headed into its annual shareholders' meeting at its headquarters on Wednesday on shakier ground than it has been accustomed to in years, since the iPhone and iPad helped vault the company to premier investment status.

A declining share price has lent weight to Wall Street's demand that it share more of its $137 billion in cash and securities pile - equivalent to Hungary's Gross Domestic Product, and growing - a debate now spearheaded by outspoken hedge fund manager David Einhorn.

Einhorn was not spotted at the meeting on Wednesday. Cook repeated that the company's board remained in "very very active" discussions about options for cash sharing, and said he shared investors' dissatisfaction over the stock price.

"I don't like it either. The board doesn't like it. The management team doesn't like it," Cook told investors at the company's headquarters on 1 Infinite Loop.

But by focusing on the long term, revenue and profit will follow, he said.

Cook added that the company was working on new product categories, but, as usual, would not elaborate.

Speculation is rife on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley that the iPhone maker is working on a project to revolutionize the television and TV content, or a smart "iWatch."

Apple's stock was down 1 percent to $444 in afternoon trade. It is now down more than 35 percent from its $702.10 September peak.

Despite a slipping share price, dissatisfaction on the Street over its cash allocation and uncertainty over its product pipeline, shareholders re-elected the entire board on Wednesday, and Cook won more than 99 percent of the vote in preliminary results.

SHARE AND SHARE ALIKE

Apple's annual shareholder meetings have been celebrations in recent years. Since the company came out with its first iPhone in 2007, the company has multiplied in market value until it peaked in September.

Then Samsung Electronics and Amazon.com Inc began seriously eroding its market share in 2012, powered by arch-rival Google Inc's Android software. On March 14, Samsung will launch the Galaxy SIV smartphone, the latest iteration of a flagship smartphone that helped it dethrone Apple from the top of the industry.

Institutional investors want the company to share a greater chunk of its cash and securities pile, a demand growing increasingly strident with the company's stock wallowing at levels untested since the start of 2012.

Einhorn himself is advocating "iPrefs, preferred stock that will carry a perpetual 4 percent dividend to boost returns while not hampering cash flow.

On Friday, Einhorn won an important legal victory that strengthened his hand. His Greenlight Capital secured an injunction that invalidated shareholder voting on a proposal to scrap Apple's power to issue preferred stock at its discretion.

Apple says this will enhance governance. But the hedge fund manager argued it could complicate efforts to issue preferred securities in the future.

Cook said again on Wednesday that Einhorn's lawsuit - regardless of its efficacy - was a "silly sideshow". The underlying principle of cash distribution was something he and the board took seriously, he added.

The California Public Employees Retirement System, owner of 2.7 million Apple shares, had supported the so-called Proposal 2. Senior Portfolio Manager Anne Simpson said it was unfortunate the proposal could not be put forward for a vote.

"We know there is hot debate going on with cash," Simpson told the assembled shareholders at 1 Infinite Loop. "We are willing and happy to wait."

(Reporting by Poornima Gupta; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn and Tim Dobbyn)

Read More..

AP Source: 49ers to send Smith to KC

Alex Smith is headed to Kansas City, the first major acquisition by the Chiefs since Andy Reid took over as coach.

A person with knowledge of the trade told The Associated Press on Wednesday that the Chiefs have agreed to deal for the 2005 top overall draft pick who lost his starting quarterback job in San Francisco to Colin Kaepernick last season.

The person spoke on condition of anonymity because the trade does not become official until March 12, when the NFL's new business year begins.

Another person familiar with the deal said the 49ers will get a second-round draft pick in April, No. 34 overall, and a conditional pick in the 2014 draft.

Fox Sports first reported the deal.

Smith sustained a concussion Nov. 11 and Kaepernick played well in his place. Coach Jim Harbaugh stuck with him even when Smith got healthy, and Kaepernick led the 49ers to the NFC championship and a close loss to Baltimore in the Super Bowl.

The 28-year-old Smith struggled for most of his career in San Francisco, plagued as much by coaching and coordinator changes as by his own indecisiveness. But when Harbaugh became coach, Smith blossomed. He was among the league leaders in passer rating (104.1) with a 70.2 completion percentage when he was injured in a 24-24 tie against St. Louis.

Smith never started again for the 49ers, but now will replace Matt Cassel in Kansas City.

The Chiefs went 2-14 in 2012, earning the top pick in April's draft. But with no standout quarterbacks coming out of college this year, they quickly turned to finding a veteran.

Reid was fired by Philadelphia after 14 highly successful seasons, although the Eagles went 4-12 last year. Kansas City made him the first coach hired to fill a vacancy in January — there were eight of them — and the Chiefs also fired general manager Scott Pioli.

Now Reid has found his quarterback, and Smith has found another starting job.

Kansas City also has Brady Quinn on the roster, and he started eight games last season, going 1-7.

The 49ers, meanwhile, will be searching for a veteran to back up Kaepernick, their second-round draft choice in 2011.

Read More..

Vt. lye victim gets new face at Boston hospital

BOSTON (AP) — The 2007 chemical attack left the Vermont nurse unrecognizable to anyone who knew her.

But now Carmen Blandin Tarleton's face has changed again following a facial transplant this month.

Doctors at Brigham & Women's Hospital in Boston said Wednesday that the 44-year-old's surgery included transplanting a female donor's facial skin to Tarleton's neck, nose and lips, along with facial muscles, arteries and nerves.

"I know how truly blessed I am, and will have such a nice reflection in the mirror to remind myself what selfless really is," Tarleton wrote on her blog Wednesday.

The Thetford, Vt., woman suffered burns on more than 80 percent of her body and was blinded after her estranged husband attacked her with a baseball bat and doused her with lye in 2007.

Tarleton, who once worked as a transplant nurse, has undergone more than 50 surgeries since the attack, including work to restore some of her vision.

The latest surgery took 15 hours and included a team of more than 30 medical professionals. The lead surgeon, Bohdan Pomahac, called her injuries among the worst he's seen in his career.

"Carmen is a fighter," the doctor said Wednesday. "And fight she did."

Pomahac's team has performed five facial transplants at the hospital. He said the patient is recovering very well and is in great spirits as she works to get stronger.

He said she was very pleased when she saw her face for the first time, and that her appearance will not match that of the late donor's face.

"I think she looks amazing, but I'm biased," he said with a smile.

The donor's family wants to remain anonymous, but released a statement through a regional donor bank saying that her spirit would live on through Tarleton and three other organ recipients.

The estranged husband, Herbert Rodgers, pleaded guilty in 2009 in exchange for a prison sentence of at least 30 years.

Read More..

Author tells businesses to be like Mike

CAPTIONS

MJ in 1982
Michael Jordan in his college days with teammates Matt Doherty (44) and Sam Perkins and coach Dean Smith. (AP photo by Robert Willett /October 14, 1982)

By Samantha Bomkamp




Tribune reporter

10:11 a.m. CST, February 27, 2013

An author of a new book has some sage advice for business leaders: Be more like Michael Jordan.

Bruce Piasecki, who penned "Doing More with Teams: The New Way to Winning," says Michael Jordan's long and storied career "is a shining example of how the best teams operate."

Jordan shouldn't be emulated just because of the Bulls star's individual success, the author says, but by the way he showed leadership and helped create a seemingly unstoppable team, meshing with different personalities such as the quiet Scottie Pippen and outrageous Dennis Rodman to create a basketball dynasty.

Those team dynamics are similar in the business world, the author says. And businesses are most successful when they are led by the right leaders and are composed of a mix of people with varying talents, he argues.

Jordan also is held up as an example in other tenets of good business teamwork the author describes.

-- Ego and individual goals have no place on teams.

"When we pin all our hopes on a single individual and ignore the context in which he or she operates, we will be disappointed," he says.

--  Failure is part of winning.

"Leaders must instill in teams a tolerance of losing," he said. "We must convey that failure is a part of life and thus a part of business."

Jordan, who helped the Chicago Bulls win six NBA championships, famously said "I've failed over and over and over again in my life, and that is why I succeed."

The book is set to be released next month but is available for pre-order on Amazon.com.

Read More..

Chicago pelted by snow, sleet

Chicago's midday full weather forecast. (WGN - Chicago)

A winter weather advisory is in effect until tonight as the Chicago area is getting hit with sleet, freezing rain and snow that is making travel hazardous and grounding hundreds of flights.

The National Weather Service expects the heaviest snow to fall this afternoon. Winds gusting at 35 to 40 mph will reduce visibility and glaze roads, the weather service warned in the advisory.

"Snowfall rates in excess of an inch per hour could occur at times," it said. "This will likely be a heavy wet snow sometimes referred to as heart attack snow."

Mike Bardou, a weather service meteorologist, said "the early part of the rush hour will be most affected."

Spinouts have already been reported this on interstates 90, 94 and 55, according to the Illinois State Police. Chicago's Street and Sanitation Department had its full fleet of 284 trucks out. And the Illinois Tollway said it was mobilizing its fleet of 182 snowplows.

The northern part of the city and the northwest suburbs could see 2 to 3 inches of snow by the evening rush hour, Bardou said. Chicago's South Side and southwest suburbs like Oak Lawn, Tinley Park and Joliet might only get 1 to 2 inches of snow, and the far south suburbs could see less than an inch.

Snow will continue to fall, at a lighter intensity, through the evening until early Wednesday morning  and temperatures are expected to hover around freezing. When it's over, we could see anywhere from 3 to 6 inches throughout the area.

Here are some early snowfall totals from the National Weather Service: 2 inches in west suburban Elmhurst, 1.5 inches in west suburban Westmont, 1 inch in south suburban Peotone, and .5 inches in west suburban Elmwood Park.

By midday, nearly 400 flights had been canceled at O'Hare and 60 at Midway, according to FlightStats, which gathers data from airports and airlines. There were 252 delays at O'Hare and 78 at Midway.

Chicago's Streets and Sanitation Department has deployed its entire fleet of 284 plows. Drivers will plow the main roads, such as Lake Shore Drive, through the evening rush hour. As the snow begins to taper off, the plows will clear residential roads, said department spokeswoman Anne Sheahan.

Extra plows are being deployed to the 2^nd congressional district, to help residents get to their polling places for today's primary election, Sheahan said.

As of 1 p.m., road conditions were treacherous throughout the southwest suburbs, especially along Interstates 55 and 80 in Will County, police and fire officials said.

Several vehicles have slipped into ditches along I-55 near Plainfield, especially near U.S. Route 30, said Jon Stratton, a deputy chief with the Plainfield Fire Protection District.  "On I-55, there are vehicles everywhere in the ditch," Stratton said. "Visibility is going down and roads are getting all snow covered, so it's going to be an interesting day."

The most serious accident in the area so far today occurred when an SUV slid under a semi's trailer on the Route 30 overpass over I-55, Stratton said.

Firefighters extricated the woman who was driving the SUV, and she was taken by ambulance to Provena Saint Joseph Medical Center in Joliet, Stratton said. The woman was conscious and stable when removed from the SUV, he said.

Plainfield police have responded to several reports of crashes and vehicles that have slid into ditches, Sgt. Mike Fisher said. "It is getting slick out there, so people should give themselves extra time, slow down and drive safe," Fisher said.

Schools in the southwest suburbs have also begun changing their schedules because of the storm.

High school students in Plainfield Community Consolidated School District 202 will be dismissed 20 minutes early today, at 1:50 p.m., to give bus drivers more time to complete their routes, according to a news release from the district.

Middle school students will be dismissed as soon as buses arrive at those schools after completing their high school routes. Elementary school students will be dismissed as close to their usual time as possible, according to the district.

All after-school activities in the district have also been cancelled, including sports practices and games and Plainfield Park District programs that are usually held in the school district's buildings.

Read More..

Marlins owner says he didn't renege on promises

JUPITER, Fla. (AP) — A cluster of media stood outside the Miami Marlins clubhouse, awaiting the arrival of owner Jeffrey Loria, when outfielder Bryan Petersen walked past.

"Somebody getting married?" Petersen said.

It was more like somebody trying to salvage a relationship. Loria's three-day public relations campaign to patch things up with angry fans brought him to spring training Tuesday for an interview session that included several testy exchanges before the owner cut it short.

Loria reiterated many of his previous comments regarding the 2012 payroll purge, saying it wasn't about money but about improving the farm system. Ten minutes into the news conference, he bristled when asked why fans should believe him.

"You've said that question in four different ways," Loria said. "My response to you is we have put together some championship-caliber players. We're going to field an excellent team in the next two or three years that you're going to be proud of."

Fans are upset that after only one season of big spending in a new ballpark built mostly with tax money, the Marlins have reverted to their tight budgets of the past. Loria was asked about trying to change the impression the ballpark project was "a con job."

"A con job? I'm not even going to answer that," Loria said.

Many project the Marlins to lose 100 games only a year after they were the talk of baseball and touted as playoff contenders. This year's payroll is expected to be less than $45 million, compared with $90 million in 2012.

Loria denied he reneged on any promise, noting the Marlins finished last in the NL East with their biggest payroll ever.

"I fulfilled my promise in the new ballpark last year," he said. "It didn't work. So what do you do? Go back again and lose more games? We needed to do something to beef up the organization."

A blockbuster trade in November sent to Toronto three of the Marlins' highest-paid players — shortstop Jose Reyes and pitchers Mark Buehrle and Josh Johnson. In exchange Miami acquired mostly prospects.

"We have some very exciting young players here," Loria said. "We need to bring them along and develop our own stars, or else we're going to be a last-place team forever."

As he stepped away from the TV cameras after 15 minutes, a PR aide said the owner would take more questions. Instead, Loria disappeared through a clubhouse door and didn't return.

At some point the team's play will have to speak for itself.

Read More..