Famous film couple back 9 years on in “Before Midnight”

BERLIN (Reuters) – Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy reprise the roles of Jesse and Celine in “Before Midnight”, the third but not necessarily the last movie in their long-running series based on the same characters as they age over time.

In this film, set 18 years after “Before Sunrise”, the couple is on holiday in Greece and we learn that they live with their twin daughters in Paris while Jesse’s son has stayed with his mother in Chicago.

Screening at the Berlin film festival on Monday, “Before Midnight” examines how life’s twists have taken their toll on the American tourist and French student who met on a train bound for Vienna in 1995 and again in Paris nine years later in “Before Sunset”.

They still love each other but this time they are older, heavier, and bicker more, and the forces pulling Jesse back towards his teenage son and Celine’s determination to pursue her career in France test that bond to its limits.

Director Richard Linklater, on board throughout the series, underlined the organic nature of the “Before…” films when he was asked whether there might be a fourth installment, presumably sometime around 2022.

“The fact that we’ve made two sequels, I guess it begs the question, but I think I speak for the group here, I’m sure we have absolutely no idea what that (sequel) could possibly be,” he told reporters at the 11-day film festival.

“We probably won’t for another six years. Who knows the future?”

French actress Delpy joked that the final film in the series would be a remake of Michael Haneke’s Oscar-nominated drama “Amour”, about an elderly couple aged in their 80s facing the inevitability of imminent death.

“STIFLING” EXPECTATIONS

Critical reaction to “Before Midnight” has been mixed.

In its review, the Guardian newspaper said the movie felt forced, but The Hollywood Reporter wrote: “Though this stage is harder to watch, audiences who have aged along with Celine and Jesse will treasure this new episode.”

Hawke said he, Delpy and Linklater, who jointly developed the script over two years, felt the weight of expectation as they embarked on the third part of a story which many viewers identified with so closely.

“I haven’t met a director in the last nine years that didn’t tell me what he or she thought the third film should be. So we knew we were up against a lot of people having an agenda about where Jesse and Celine should be. That agenda is stifling.”

“Before Midnight” consists of a handful of long, single-shot scenes focusing on the couple as they navigate a life complicated by broken families, work pressures and the familiarity of living together.

In the first scene Jesse sees his son off at the airport in an awkward exchange that underlines how the two have grown apart. In the next Jesse and Celine discuss children, work and their relationship in frank and often funny exchanges.

At one point Celine says men measure themselves against leading figures from history. When Jesse counters that women do too, he mentions Joan of Arc.

“She was burned at the stake and was a virgin,” jokes Celine. “Who wants to be Joan of Arc?”

As the film goes on, banter becomes bickering, then descends into a blazing row. Linklater stressed that the dialogue may seem off-the-cuff but it required a lot of hard work.

“It feels improvised. It’s not,” he said. “It’s meticulously rehearsed and structured.”

(Reporting by Mike Collett-White; Editing by Belinda Goldsmith)

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Well: Price for a New Hip? Many Hospitals Are Stumped

Jaime Rosenthal, a senior at Washington University in St. Louis, called more than 100 hospitals in every state last summer, seeking prices for a hip replacement for a 62-year-old grandmother who was uninsured but had the means to pay herself.

The quotes she received might surprise even hardened health care economists: only about half of the hospitals, including top-ranked orthopedic centers and community hospitals, could provide any sort of price estimate, despite repeated calls. Those that could gave quotes that varied by a factor of more than 10, from $11,100 to $125,798.

Ms. Rosenthal’s grandmother was fictitious, created for a summer research project on health care costs. But the findings, which form the basis of a paper released on Monday by JAMA Internal Medicine, are likely to fan the debate on the unsustainable growth of American health care costs and an opaque medical system in which prices are often hidden from consumers.

“Transparency is all the rage these days in government and business, but there has been little push for pricing transparency in health care, and there’s virtually no information,” said Dr. Peter Cram, an associate professor of internal medicine at the University of Iowa, who wrote the paper with Ms. Rosenthal. He added: “I can get the price for a car, for a can of oil, for a gallon of milk. But health care? That’s not so easy.”

President Obama’s Affordable Care Act focused primarily on providing insurance to Americans who did not have it. But the high price of care remains an elephant in the room. Although many experts have said that Americans must become more discerning consumers to help rein in costs, the study illustrates how hard that can be.

“We’ve been trying to help patients get good value, but it is really hard to get price commitments from hospitals — we see this all the time,” said Jeff Rice, the chief executive of Healthcare Blue Book, a company that collects data on medical procedures, doctors visits and tests. “And even if they say $20,000, it often turns out $40,000 or 60,000.”

There are many caveats to the study. Most patients — or insurers — never pay the full sticker price of surgery, because insurance companies bargain with hospitals and doctors for discounted rates. When Ms. Rosenthal balked at initial high estimates, some hospitals produced lower rates for a person without insurance.

But in other ways the telephone quotations underestimated prices, because they did not include the fees for outpatient rehabilitation, for example.

In an accompanying commentary, Andrew Steinmetz and Ezekiel J. Emanuel of the University of Pennsylvania acknowledged that there was “no justification” for the inability to provide estimates or for the wide range of prices. But they said that more rigorous data on quality — like infection rates and unexpected deaths — were required to know when high prices were worth it.

“Without quality data to accompany price data, physicians, consumers and other health care decision makers have no idea if a lower price represents shoddy quality of if it constitutes good value,” they wrote.

But, broadly, researchers emphasized that studies had found little consistent correlation between higher prices and better quality in American health care. Dr. Cram said there was no data that “Mercedes” hip implants were better than cheaper options, for example.

Jamie Court, the president of the California-based Consumer Watchdog, said: “If one hospital can put in a hip for $12,000, then every hospital should be able to do it. When there’s 100 percent variation in sticker price, then there is no real price. It’s about profit.”

Dr. Cram said the study did contain some good news: some of the country’s top-ranked hospitals came up with “bargain basement prices” in response to repeated calls. “If you’re a good consumer and shop around, you can get a good price — you don’t have to pay $120,000 for a Honda,” he said.

But that shopping can be arduous in a market not set up to respond to consumers. To get a total price, Ms. Rosenthal often had to call the hospital to get its estimate for on-site care, and a separate quote from doctors. And many were simply perplexed when she asked for a price upfront, Ms. Rosenthal said, adding, “The people who answered didn’t know what to do with the question.”

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Dozens of airline fees rose, changed in 2012

Airline travel fees — including charges to check a bag and to board early — have become so prevalent that travelers almost need an advanced degree in mathematics to calculate overall trip costs.

Last year at least 36 airline fees increased, and 16 others were redefined, bundled or unbundled with other services, according to a recent study by the consumer travel website Travelnerd.

One bright spot in the Travelnerd study of 14 U.S. airlines is that most fee increases were only $5 to $10 each.

In one case an airline had a big fee reduction. The study found that United Airlines reduced its fee for checking an overweight bag to $100 from $200 for bags 50 to 70 pounds and to $200 from $400 for bags 71 to 100 pounds.

"Travelers really have to be extra cautious when booking a flight," said Alicia Jao, vice president of travel media at Travelnerd, who predicts travelers will see even more fees in 2013. "U.S. carriers are becoming creative at charging consumers extra fees."

But some airlines seem to charge fees arbitrarily, said Perach Mazol, a Los Angeles resident who recently flew to Florida with friends from Romania to take a cruise.

On her flight from L.A. to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., on Spirit Airlines, she said the Florida airline did not charge for the carry-on bags she and her friends were carrying, but the carrier asked for $50 each to carry the same bags on the flight back. (Spirit is one of only two airlines in the U.S. that charge passengers for carry-on luggage.)

"I don't understand why they charged us on one flight and they don't on the other," Mazol said. "It's confusing."

A spokeswoman for Spirit said the airline tries to enforce its policies consistently.

"Maybe she got lucky one way and didn't have to pay," Spirit spokeswoman Misty Pinson said.

United offering satellite-based Wi-Fi

United Airlines was one of the last major airlines to offer onboard wireless Internet. But the Chicago carrier is trying to make up for its tardiness.

United offers Wi-Fi in about 3% of its fleet of about 700 planes, one of the lowest rates of any major carrier in the nation, according to a recent study.

But United recently became the first U.S.-based international carrier to offer satellite-based Wi-Fi Internet for passengers traveling on long-haul overseas flights.

The carrier has installed satellite-based Wi-Fi on nearly a dozen planes, with plans to expand the service to more than 300 planes, or about 43% of the fleet, by the end of the year.

"With this new service, we continue to build the airline that customers want to fly," said Jim Compton, vice chairman and chief revenue officer at United.

Satellite-based Wi-Fi is typically as fast as ground-based Wi-Fi, experts say, but the advantage is that it can give passengers Internet access when flying over areas where cellular towers don't exist — such as the Pacific or Atlantic oceans.

But, of course, there is a price to pay for the service.

United is charging $3.99 to $14.99 for standard speed, depending on the duration of the flight, and $5.99 to $19.99 for faster speeds.

United is not the only airline to offer satellite-based Wi-Fi. Southwest Airlines, the nation's largest domestic carrier, offers it through Westlake Village-based Row 44.

Delta to raise fee to access lounges

Airline fees are rising not only for onboard services but for amenities at the airport too.

Delta Air Lines, which has invested more than $20 million in its airport lounges over the last two years, announced that it would raise the cost for annual membership to access its lounges across the country by $50, starting March 1.

The increase means that an annual membership will range from $350 to $450, depending on membership level. (The more miles passengers fly on Delta the less they pay for membership.)

Among the investments Delta has made is the addition of a new luxury bar that opened recently at Delta's lounge at Los Angeles International Airport. Instead of helping themselves at a self-serve bar, members can now belly up to a fully stocked bar and order a drink from a bartender.

hugo.martin@latimes.com

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Woman killed when 2 cars collide on Tri-State

Photo: Scene of crash (February 10, 2013)

Staff report

11:22 a.m. CST, February 10, 2013

A Chicago woman died after she was thrown from a car in an accident along the Tri-State Tollway in Glenview, authorities said.

Danielle M. Pisterzi, 21, of the 5700 block of North Nina Avenue, died about an hour after the crash near Willow Road, according to Illinois State Police Master Sgt. Brian McKinney.

Two cars collided around 10:45 p.m., McKinney said. Pisterzi was taken to Advocate Lutheran General Hospital, where she was pronounced dead at 11:52 p.m.

The woman was the only person in her 2004 Hyundai when it crashed with an Audi SUV which had four people inside, police said.

No one else was taken to the hospital, McKinney said.

The crash happened in the southbound lanes of the tollway which were closed for hours as police investigated. By 4 a.m. all four southbound lanes had been reopened.

chicagobreaking@tribune.com

Twitter: @ChicagoBreaking

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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?”

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The fine line between legitimate businesses and pyramid schemes

Controversy is again casting a shadow over the multilevel marketing industry, as nutritional supplement company Herbalife Inc., which has thousands of distributors in the Chicago region, has been publicly called a pyramid scheme by a prominent investor — an allegation the company vigorously denies.

Meanwhile, a different multilevel marketer, Fortune Hi-Tech Marketing, was shut down in recent weeks after a lawsuit was brought by regulators and several states, including Illinois, alleging the company scammed consumers out of $169 million. The scheme affected an estimated 100,000 Americans, including some in Chicago, where it targeted Spanish-speaking consumers, the Federal Trade Commission alleged.

Most people outside the industry might have only a vague notion about multilevel marketing, also called network marketing and direct selling. It often involves personal sales of cosmetics, wellness products or home decor items — or as critics flippantly call it, "pills, potions and lotions" — usually sold through product parties hosted by friends or relatives.

For sellers, the companies offer the appeal of starting a business on the cheap with little training, working from home and being their own boss, if only for part-time money. Some might recruit friends and family to become sellers, which augments their own commissions and gives them a shot at the six-figure compensation many such marketing companies tout but few distributors attain.

The largest multilevel marketing companies, often known as MLMs, are household names: Avon, Mary Kay, Pampered Chef and Amway. MLMs have annual sales of about $30 billion, with about 16 million people in the United States selling their products, according to the industry group Direct Selling Association, which represents these firms and others.

The recent controversies might raise the question: What's the difference between a legitimate multilevel marketing company and an illegal pyramid scheme, in which only people who get in first — at the top of the pyramid-like structure — make money and everyone else is a dupe?

The harshest critics maintain there is no difference, that there's no such thing as a legitimate MLM and that the industry's secrets stay safe because of a cultlike mentality and a blind eye of regulators.

Jon M. Taylor, who was once a seller for an MLM company, said he has studied the industry for 18 years and analyzed more than 500 MLM companies. He maintains the website MLM-thetruth.com and offers a free e-book there.

"I have not yet found a good MLM — a good MLM is an oxymoron," Taylor said.

He said all MLM companies have the same flaw: They depend on endless chains of recruiting new members.  "There is no more unfair and deceptive practice than multilevel marketing," Taylor said.

Tracy Coenen, a forensic accountant and fraud investigator with Sequence Inc. in Chicago and Milwaukee, is author of the Fraud Files Blog. She is also a critic.

"Multilevel marketing companies are pyramid schemes that the government allows to operate," said Coenen. "The only difference is that Herbalife, or any multilevel marketing company, has a tangible product that they use to make their pyramid appear legitimate."

The Direct Selling Association says MLMs are legitimate businesses, and that the group has about 200 members carefully screened by the organization to ensure they are not pyramid schemes and don't use deceptive practices.

The Federal Trade Commission agrees there are legitimate MLMs. The difference between a legitimate business and pyramid scheme comes down to products.

If the company and its distributors make money primarily from the sale of products to end-users (and not boxes of product accumulating in a distributor's garage), it's OK.

By contrast, a pyramid scheme compensates those at the top of the pyramid with participation fees paid by those recruited at the bottom. It eventually collapses when the scheme can't recruit more people.

But identifying a pyramid scheme can be difficult because MLMs typically have product sales, along with recruitment fees and recruitment incentives.

"It gets cloudy when you have a situation where you have fees being paid for both," said Monica Vaca, assistant director of the FTC's division of marketing practices. "It's very nuanced."

While prosecuting an MLM can seem somewhat of a judgment call, cases have a common factor: deceptive promises about how much money distributors will earn, Vaca said.

In the Fortune Hi-Tech Marketing case filed last month, C. Steven Baker, director of the FTC's Midwest region, said, "These defendants were promising people that if they worked hard they could make lots of money. But it was a rigged game, and the vast majority of people lost money."

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Hadiya Pendleton funeral: 'God is our refuge'

The funeral of slain teen Hadiya Pendleton began today amid large crowds, long lines and heavy security prompted by the attendance of first lady Michelle Obama.

While family and friends kept the focus on the 15-year-old girl who was shot dead in a South Side park, the first lady's appearance inevitably brought attention to anti-gun efforts nationwide.

Hadiya's pastor, Courtney C. Maxwell from the Greater Deliverance Temple Church of Christ, opened the services about 11:15 a.m. after a heart-shaped balloon was placed near her casket.
 
He thanked everyone for being at the Greater Harvest Baptist Church, including elected officials. “The family says thank you and God bless you.’’ He asked for round of applause for the Pendleton family.
 
“Only God can keep you and strengthen you, for God is our refuge and our strength,’’ the pastor said. 

The pastor said Hadiya was “genuine and real.’’

“She was energetic, loved music, loved the arts,’’ the pastor said.

After the pastor spoke, a female reverend dressed in white addressed the crowd and a choir behind her began singing.

“Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted,’’ she said, as the choir sang after her.

Another man, who identified himself as an assistant pastor of the Life Center church, read from scriptures.

“She is more precious than rubies. … Her ways are of pleasantness,’’ he said.

About 11:30 a.m., Pastor Elder Eric Thomas of the host Greater Harvest Baptist Church spoke to the mourners and described Hadiya as a “beloved angel.’’
 
“Her life has not been in vain,’’ Thomas said.
 
A female singer and organist the played a religious song, as about 30 others in the choir, all dress in white, stood and swayed gently from side to side before the large cross that was draped in white.

Kenya Edwards, who identified herself as a radio personality and a friend, read a poem called “Walking,’’ which was written for Hadiya by Zora Howard.

Afterwards, Edwards said: “Ladies and gentlemen, it’s time for us to start walking. It’s time to take a stand.’’

Then two girls who appeared to be Hadiya's classmates and friends performed a poem they wrote for her, which began by comparing violence in Chicago to that of Iraq.
 
The girls then took turns to speak each part of the poem: “Dear Hadiya. I wish you were still here with me. That smile … that you smile so confidentially.’’

They also spoke to the killer: “Know that you killed an innocent person."

It ended when they both said: “We’re sorry Hadiya. We miss you,’’ and sat down to applause.

Hundreds of mourners had lined up early to pay respects to Hadiya, who was a majorette for King College Prep's band and performed during President Barack Obama's inauguration festivities just days before she was slain, shot in the back while hanging out with friends at a North Kenwood neighborhood park.

Thirty minutes before the doors were set to open, hundreds stood waiting in line amid heavy security to get into Greater Harvest Baptist Church in the Washington Park neighborhood, about two miles from where the 15-year-old girl was gunned down last month. Among the groups of high school-age students waiting in the line was the King College Prep majorettes team, who came together in their yellow and black majorette coats.

Guests who were invited by the family were given orange wristbands and were able to enter through a shorter security line. Classmates and friends of Pendleton were given green wristbands and allowed to enter through that same line.

Trinity Dishmon, 40, said her daughter Deja, 15, and Hadiya were close friends in middle school. The two girls stayed in touch and were texting about their upcoming 16th birthdays while Hadiya was in D.C. for the president's inauguration in January.

"Hadiya was a gift to everyone that knew her," Dishmon said, tearing up. "These last 12 days have been unbelievably numbing. It's not six degrees of separation anymore, it's one. It's just unreal."

Dishmon said she feared that the day was less about the teenager and more about a larger issue.

"This is Hadiya's day and should be about her -- not something sensational," Dishmon said. "But maybe by honoring her life we can help make a difference."

Inside the church, Hadiya’s silver casket was placed in the front, surrounded by flowers and two large hearts, one with her picture on it. Behind the casket, a TV screen showed pictures of Hadiya with her family, from birth to her teenage years.

At 9:09 a.m., friends, students and others with wristbands were allowed to file down the aisle to view the body. Her young friends were seated in the front pews, directly behind the casket. Her classmates and friends filled the middle section of the church — 11 rows in all. Members of the Crystal Elegance Majorette squad held on to each other as they filed down the aisle in pairs to view the body.

A funeral director wearing a suit and white gloves came outside at 9:40 a.m. to announce to the hundreds still waiting in line that the church was “at capacity.” Those still in line could come in and view the body, he said, but would have to leave before the services.

The funeral procession arrived at about 9:45 a.m., including three limousines and dozens of cars.

The first lady’s motorcade pulled into the church parking lot at about 10:15 a.m. She went in through a separate side entrance at the rear of the church, stepping directly from a vehicle into the building.

At about the same time, the funeral director came back out and announced to the hundreds still waiting in line that no one else would be allowed inside — not for the viewing or the funeral.

The family filed down the aisle a little after 10 a.m. and viewed the body in the still open casket. The pastor led the procession down the aisle chanting "the Lord is my shepherd" as soft organ music played in the background.

Ushers walked down the aisle handing out tissues, and those without wristbands were asked to give up their seats so that family members could be seated in the sanctuary. Every seat was filled by 9:45 a.m.

Purple, Hadiya’s favorite color, is represented in many of the flowers in the church and the lining of her casket. Ushers handed out a glossy funeral program booklet printed on purple paper. The front cover says "Celebrating The Life Of ... Hadiya Zaymara Pendleton.” Inside are more than 50 photos of Hadiya throughout her life.
 
Her obituary printed in the booklet describes her work in the church and even her favorite foods: Chinese, cheeseburgers, ice cream and Fig Newtons. It includes tributes from her grandmother, her cousin and an aunt as well as close friends. According to the program, the speakers are to include Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White.
 
The back of the program has a copy of a handwritten note from President Barack Obama: "Dear Cleopatra and Nathaniel, Michelle and I just wanted you to know how heartbroken we are to have heard about Hadiya's passing. We know that no words from us can soothe the pain, but rest assured that we are praying for you, and that we will continue to work as hard as we can to end this senseless violence. God Bless.”

Gov. Pat Quinn entered from the upstairs balcony, went up to greet the family and then stood for a brief moment over the casket, looking at Hadiyah.

Other dignitaries entering the church were Ill. Attorney General Lisa Madigan and Rev. Michael Pfleger, a longtime community activist on the South Side and pastor of St. Sabina Catholic Church in Chicago. Rev. Jesse Jackson stood at the front near the casket with members of the family for a while and then took a seat in the audience behind the family. 

Prior to the service, the first lady met privately with about 30 of Hadiya's friends and classmates, and then with members of Hadiya's family, according to a White House official.

Just before the funeral began, the first lady, Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle could be seen seated near one another other and near the casket. Colorful bouquets of flowers were placed near the casket.

Michelle Obama, wearing dark blue, was then seen standing, comforting someone, possibly the pastor.

Even after those outside were told they would not be allowed in, many continued to gather around the church's front gate.

Some began to file out, having to hop over the metal barricades to exit the long line.

One man asked the funeral staff member if he could at least have a pamphlet from the funeral before he left.

"Oh sir, those are long gone. They only printed 1,500," the funeral staff member said.

Activists, religious groups and others passed out printed material to those standing in line. Some kept the papers, others were left on the snowy ground as the crowds left.

Michelle Obama's attendance puts Chicago solidly in the middle of a national debate over gun violence that has polarized Congress and forced President Obama to take his gun control initiatives on the road to garner more public support.

The first lady's visit is being seen not only as a gesture of condolence to the family but as part of an effort to draw attention and support for the president's gun initiatives.

But the visit also meant scores of security, police and Secret Service agents, metal detectors and other security measures.

Other dignitaries expected to attend the funeral included Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and Valerie Jarrett, senior adviser to Barack Obama.

The church is surrounded by an iron fence and all of the openings -- a pedestrian gate in the front, front and side doors to the church, and a driveway to the north -- are guarded by city police or men in white shirts, ties and long black coats. Chicago police vehicles -- two wagons, a handful of squads and SUVs -- guarded the outside of the church while other vehicles circle the block.

Chicago police staffing the event are wearing dress blues -- a blue overcoat with pockets that allow access to the duty belt, creased navy pants, and a hat.

King College Prep math and engineering teacher Alonzo Hoskins stood quietly in line with others. He said he taught Hadiya in his first-period geometry class, where he now has an empty desk.

"She was full of life," Hoskins said.

Hoskins looked at the sea of people that preceded him in line. "I want to support the family. For me, this isn't about the dignitaries," Hoskins said.

"But I don't know if I'll even get in."

Some waiting in line for the funeral said they didn't know the Pendletons personally but felt some connection to the teenager's death.

Earl Worthington, 51, said his mother was an elementary school teacher in Chicago and would have embraced a driven young student like Hadiya.

“She's the type of girl my mother would have produced in her class,” Worthington said. “I feel a connection to Hadiya's death through my mother. I feel my mother is with her right now in heaven.”

Nate Weathers, 16,  Jeramy Brown, 16, and Antoine Fuller, 15, all stood in line to see their former classmate. The three young men said they attended Carter G. Woodson Middle School with Hadiya.

“This tears me up,” Fuller said. “She was my 7th grade crush.”

Brown described Hadiya as “sweet and innocent.”

“Something like this should have never happened to her,” Brown said.

Police took two men into custody after they got into an altercation near the back of the long line of mourners waiting to get into the church. One man was agitated, complaining about the long wait to get in. A second man confronted him and they began shoving each other before police intervened.

Local and national pool reports contributed.

chicagobreaking@tribune.com

Twitter: @chicagobreaking 

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Springsteen says “freaky” to be honored at pre-Grammys tribute

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Bruce Springsteen was honored as MusiCares Person of the Year on Friday at a star-studded pre-Grammys event where some of the biggest names in music like Sting, Alabama Shakes and Neil Young paid homage to “The Boss.”

The annual event, now in its 23rd year, celebrates a star’s musical achievements and philanthropic work, and is hosted by Grammy organizers to kick off the weekend of the awards show.

The 55th annual Grammy Awards will air this Sunday on CBS.

Past Musicares honorees include Bono, Tony Bennett, Aretha Franklin and ex-Beatle Paul McCartney.

“It’s kind of a freaky experience,” said Springsteen, 63, as he accepted the award, saying it was “like the Italian wedding” he never had with his wife Patti Scialfa, or a “huge Bar Mitzvah.”

Scialfa later accompanied Springsteen on vocals and guitar, along with other members of his band, as he performed a set of his hits, including “We Take Care of Our Own,” “Born to Run” and “Glory Days.”

Earlier in the night, he helped boost the value of an auctioned signed guitar. “With this guitar comes one free guitar lesson with me,” he said to the audience to trigger more bids. Then he threw in a ride in the sidecar of his Harley motorcycle, and his mom’s lasagna. The guitar sold for $ 250,000.

All of the proceeds from the show and silent auction go to Musicares, which provides support to struggling musicians in financial, medical and personal need.

Other artists including Ben Harper, Emmylou Harris, Jackson Browne, John Legend and Patti Smith performed songs to honor Springsteen.

Springsteen recently performed at the 12/12/12 Hurricane Sandy charity concert in Madison Square Garden to raise funds for the thousands affected by the superstorm.

The singer-songwriter from New Jersey has sold more than 120 million albums worldwide and is vying for three Grammys on Sunday, including best rock album for “Wrecking Ball.” His single “We Take Care of Our Own” is nominated for both Best Rock Song and Best Rock performance.

President Barack Obama used “We Take Care of Our Own” as one of his top campaign songs in last year’s election, in which he defeated Mitt Romney.

(Editing by Mark Trevelyan)

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In Nigeria, Polio Vaccine Workers Are Killed by Gunmen

At least nine polio immunization workers were shot to death in northern Nigeria on Friday by gunmen who attacked two clinics, officials said.

The killings, with eerie echoes of attacks that killed nine female polio workers in Pakistan in December, represented another serious setback for the global effort to eradicate polio.

Most of the victims were women and were shot in the back of the head, local reports said.

A four-day vaccination drive had just ended in Kano State, where the killings took place, and the vaccinators were in a “mop-up” phase, looking for children who had been missed, said Sarah Crowe, a spokeswoman for the United Nations Children’s Fund, one of the agencies running the eradication campaign.

Dr. Mohammad Ali Pate, Nigeria’s minister of state for health, said in a telephone interview that it was not entirely clear whether the gunmen were specifically targeting polio workers or just attacking the health centers where vaccinators happened to be gathering early in the morning. “Health workers are soft targets,” he said.

No one immediately took responsibility, but suspicion fell on Boko Haram, a militant Islamist group that has attacked police stations, government offices and even a religious leader’s convoy.

Polio, which once paralyzed millions of children, is now down to fewer than 1,000 known cases around the world, and is endemic in only three countries: Nigeria, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Since September — when a new polio operations center was opened in the capital and Nigeria’s president, Goodluck Jonathan, appointed a special adviser for polio — the country had been improving, said Dr. Bruce Aylward, chief of polio eradication for the World Health Organization. There have been no new cases since Dec. 3.

While vaccinators have not previously been killed in the country, there is a long history of Nigerian Muslims shunning the vaccine.

Ten years ago, immunization was suspended for 11 months as local governors waited for local scientists to investigate rumors that it caused AIDS or was a Western plot to sterilize Muslim girls. That hiatus let cases spread across Africa. The Nigerian strain of the virus even reached Saudi Arabia when a Nigerian child living in hills outside Mecca was paralyzed.

Heidi Larson, an anthropologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine who tracks vaccine issues, said the newest killings “are kind of mimicking what’s going on in Pakistan, and I feel it’s very much prompted by that.”

In a roundabout way, the C.I.A. has been blamed for the Pakistan killings. In its effort to track Osama bin Laden, the agency paid a Pakistani doctor to seek entry to Bin Laden’s compound on the pretext of vaccinating the children — presumably to get DNA samples as evidence that it was the right family. That enraged some Taliban factions in Pakistan, which outlawed vaccination in their areas and threatened vaccinators.

Nigerian police officials said the first shootings were of eight workers early in the morning at a clinic in the Tarauni neighborhood of Kano, the state capital; two or three died. A survivor said the two gunmen then set fire to a curtain, locked the doors and left.

“We summoned our courage and broke the door because we realized they wanted to burn us alive,” the survivor said from her bed at Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital.

About an hour later, six men on three-wheeled motorcycles stormed a clinic in the Haye neighborhood, a few miles away. They killed seven women waiting to collect vaccine.

Ten years ago, Dr. Larson said, she joined a door-to-door vaccination drive in northern Nigeria as a Unicef communications officer, “and even then we were trying to calm rumors that the C.I.A. was involved,” she said. The Iraq and Afghanistan wars had convinced poor Muslims in many countries that Americans hated them, and some believed the American-made vaccine was a plot by Western drug companies and intelligence agencies.

Since the vaccine ruse in Pakistan, she said, “Frankly, now, I can’t go to them and say, ‘The C.I.A. isn’t involved.’ ”

Dr. Pate said the attack would not stop the newly reinvigorated eradication drive, adding, “This isn’t going to deter us from getting everyone vaccinated to save the lives of our children.”

Aminu Abubakar contributed reported from Kano, Nigeria.

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Rosenthal: Chevrolet restores style to Impala name

Because a brand embedded in our subconsciousness can find a space in our garage, the Impala endures.

About 16 million Chevys named for an African antelope have hit the road since 1958. And even though the one you recently returned to the airport rental lot bore little resemblance the one whose "giddy-up" the Beach Boys sang of a half-century ago, General Motors is betting the bloodline still can claim hearts.

A revamped 10th-generation 2014 model is now on display at the just-opened 105th Chicago Auto Show as a prelude to its dealership debut in a few weeks, a bid to re-establish its good name.

"It's always been a great brand name," Russ Clark, director of Chevrolet marketing, said alongside one of the made-over Impalas on the Auto Show floor at McCormick Place. "In fact, when we did research on the name, we found Impala is one of the strongest in terms of consideration and favorable opinion of any name in the industry. A lot of that is heritage. A lot of it is the fact that people say, 'I know people who have had them, and everybody loved them.'"

The brand has been ubiquitous for decades, even if you don't remember the Beach Boys immortalizing the vintage growl of a "four-speed dual-quad Posi-Traction 409" or how Robert Blake's 1970s TV tough guy Baretta drove a rusted-out Impala from '66, the era when Chevrolet could move about 1 million Impala sedans and station wagons a year. My own first car was a four-door V-8 '72 Impala, a powerful and roomy hand-me-down whose weather-beaten body — like the brand's identity — clearly had seen better days by the late '70s and early '80s.

More recent Impalas have hardly been the stuff of song, and it's hard to imagine them inspiring nostalgia. They've been too dully utilitarian to be iconic.

Nonetheless, although sales have slowed, it has been the overall best-seller among big sedans. Three-quarters of those sales have been as fleet vehicles for corporate salespeople, government agencies and rental companies. That means the premium has been on space, reliability and keeping costs down rather than the kind of panache and extras that might foster pride of ownership.

The goal of this Impala overhaul in both four- and six-cylinder iterations — drafting on similar nameplate revivals for models such as Ford's Taurus, Dodge's Charger and Chrysler's 300 — is to flip that 75-25 ratio of fleet sales to retail on its head.

"It makes perfectly good sense on General Motors' part to finally put some style back in the Impala," auto industry analyst Art Spinella, president of CNW Research, explained. "If you have a great brand name, to almost toss it off, treat it as an orphan and send it off to the fleet sales department with bland styling and cheap interiors, that's a disgrace. What they've done is kind of salvage themselves with this.

"It's finally dawned on General Motors that you can sell a consumer car to fleets, but you can't sell a fleet car to consumers. You always keep fleet cars (looking) relatively obscure and you keep the price way down, and that's what General Motors had been doing for years to keep the (Impala sales) volume up. Now they're taking another look. I don't think they've necessarily gone far enough, but it's a step in the right direction."

To wander through the vast Auto Show, which runs through Feb. 18, is to be reminded of how deeply many of us connect to vehicles, starting as children playing with toy trucks and cars. There's a teenage rite of passage when car keys and a license expand the world. Certain makes and models mesh with what played on their radios, the places traveled in them, the stage of life they marked.

That emotional bond doesn't form so easily with a mere box with wheels.

"What was it that made us fall in love with cars in the first place?" Henrik Fisker, executive chairman and co-founder of high-end hybrid carmaker Fisker Automotive, asked the crowd at Thursday's Economic Club of Chicago luncheon. "It struck me that most of us, when we really start to get our heart pumping about cars, it's usually not the cars of today. It's usually the cars of the '50s and '60s."

Road salt, slush and rain were my old '72 Impala's kryptonite. In time, its front bench seat reclined like a La-Z-Boy whenever I hit the gas because the floor beneath had rusted through. Whatever my affection for the vehicle, I could see the road we were on — literally and figuratively — both looking ahead and glancing down.

Thirty years after I traded it in for a sporty red Pontiac with seats that reclined only how and when I wanted, I would not have expected my old flame to generate much heat.

Carmakers, like most marketers, know that even when a brand is disconnected from what it once represented, it still can resonate. The new Impala is neither the muscular car of old nor the generic conveyance of late. Yet Impala means something to would-be buyers, and good or bad, it gives them something to measure this latest version against.

"They have equity in the name and you never get rid of a brand that has a good reputation," Spinella said. "Some people will buy it because it's an Impala. Some people won't. But they'll look at it because it's an Impala and they remember the Impala. It's easier to reintroduce a name than to introduce a name nobody knows."

I can still remember driving around with my friends with no particular place to go, a song on the radio about a horse with no name. If there was a tune about a nameless car, I don't recall it.

philrosenthal@tribune.com

Twitter @phil_rosenthal

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