Integrys Energy Services tapped to supply Chicago's electricity

The same company that heats homes in Chicago has been picked to provide the electricity that powers them.

Integrys Energy Services, a sister company to Peoples Gas, on Friday was named the city's choice to supply electricity to about 1 million Chicagoans. It's the largest such deal negotiated by a city on behalf of its residents.

The City Council is to vote on the contract Wednesday after a Monday public hearing.

Chicagoans should see discounts of 20 to 25 percent from March through June. Afterward, savings are expected to drop. Overall, the average household is expected to save $130 to $150 through May 2015, when the contract ends, according to the mayor's office.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel said Friday the deal "will put money back into the pockets of Chicago families and small businesses."

The contract calls for the elimination of power produced from coal, the largest source of greenhouse gases. About 40 percent of Chicago's electricity is from coal.

"That's a giant step toward healthier air and clean, renewable energy that supports good paying jobs in the technologies of tomorrow," said Jack Darin, executive director of the Sierra Club's Illinois chapter and a member of the advisory committee that worked on the deal.

However, the no-coal provision is largely symbolic since there is no way to know the precise origin of electricity flowing into Chicago homes.

Integrys Energy Services, a subsidiary of Chicago-based Integrys Energy Group, was chosen from eight bidders and was the only company other than Exelon-owned Constellation NewEnergy that made it to the final round.

Integrys Energy Group's board includes William Brodsky, head of the Chicago Board Options Exchange and a member of World Business Chicago, which Emanuel chairs.

The Integrys unit won the electrical aggregation contract despite Emanuel's connection to Constellation through its parent company, Exelon, which also owns Commonwealth Edison. While working at investment banking firm Wasserstein Perella & Co. after leaving the Clinton White House in 1998, Emanuel helped set up the merger that created Exelon.

Price was the determining factor, the mayor's office said.

Bidding documents, including pricing and how the contract would be structured, were not made public Friday.

In picking a price, Integrys must account for a large number of customers that will come and go. If electricity prices rise, Integrys risks losing money. Still, Integrys stands to become a dominant player in the retail electricity business and gain about $300 million in yearly revenue.

"Scale is important in this business," said Travis Miller, a utilities analyst with Chicago-based Morningstar. "The winner is immediately going to gain a huge scale advantage within the retail market."

ComEd still will be responsible for delivering electricity and fixing outages. ComEd makes its money delivering electricity, not supplying it. Customers' new bills will look like the old bills, except that the portion titled "electricity supply services" will have a new rate and include the new supplier's name.

Chicagoans can opt out and stick with ComEd or choose their own supplier like thousands of people already have.

Tribune reporter John Byrne contributed.

jwernau@tribune.com

Twitter @littlewern

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More waiting for man seeking to clear his name

Bennie Starks has been waiting 26 years to clear his name. It became apparent today that he will have to wait a bit longer.

As one of his first official acts, newly elected Lake County State’s Attorney Mike Nerheim announced this week that he would drop a final battery charge against Starks – a move that would end a legal ordeal that saw Starks spend 20 years in prison for the rape and beating of a woman in Waukegan before he was eventually exonerated of the rape charge.

But an apparent technicality prevented a judge from formally dropping the last remaining charge against Starks Friday, as planned.

Judge Victoria A. Rossetti said she would need a “letter of mandate” from the Illinois Supreme Court that would formally return the case to Lake County.

The state Supreme Court was the last to rule in the case, when it declined last week to consider a request from Nerheim’s predecessor to overturn a lower court’s ruling requiring a hearing at which Starks’ lawyers could argue for a new trial on the battery charges.

Starks was released from prison in 2006 after DNA evidence raised doubts over his guilty in the 1986 attack. Former State’s Attorney Michael Waller eventually dropped the rape charge against Starks in May, but his office continued to seek to hold Starks accountable for beating the woman in the same attack.

Though Starks has called his legal odyssey “26 years of hell,” he took what appeared to be a brief setback toward final exoneration in stride.

“I’m still positive,” he said after today’s hearing. “I wanted it done now, but a couple of more weeks won’t hurt. I’m still positive.”

Starks conceded, however, that it has been difficult having the case hanging over his head for so many years.
“I got out in 2006 but I felt I was still incarcerated, still fighting. But my life goes on. The main thing is they are going to dismiss it,” he said.

Nerheim said he would file a motion seeking to have the case returned to Lake County immediately. He said he hopes to have the matter resolved before the new year.

“An hour after I was sworn in (Monday) I was briefed on (Starks’ case),” Nerheim said. “After reviewing various appellate rulings and evidence, I didn’t believe the interest of justice was served.”

Waller, who spent 22 years as state’s attorney – during which time the cases against Starks and three other violent crime suspects fell apart after DNA evidence pointed to their innocence -- could not immediately be reached for comment.

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‘Post-PC’ is more than just marketing buzz for Apple CEO Tim Cook

Apple (AAPL) is no stranger to ditching technologies when it deems them to no longer be useful. The company dropped the floppy disk for a CD-ROM drive on the first iMac and most recently has shifted to building MacBooks and iMacs without any physical disc drives. In his first televised interview on NBC’s Rockcenter with Brian Williams, Apple CEO Tim Cook revealed that he has “ditched physical keyboards” now that he spends 80% of his time using his iPad “authoring email” and “working on things.” Cook says he’s gotten quite good at typing on the screen and advises people to trust auto-correction as it’s “quite good” — though it’s a feature we still blast iOS for some five years after the first iPhone launched. But what does it mean when the boss of the country’s most valuable company and the most revered technology company in the world doesn’t even use physical keyboards anymore? Perhaps the “post-PC” era will become mainstream sooner than we thought.

For years, Apple has touted the idea that we’re entering the “post-PC” era – a period when touchscreen-equipped smartphones and tablets will eclipse desktops, notebooks and complex operating systems as they slowly fade away into a niche reserved for professionals.

While there will still be a need for notebooks, Windows PCs and Macs, the increasing numbers of smartphones and tablets sold and continued decline of worldwide PC sales support Apple’s claim that mobile is where the next tech battleground is, even if Microsoft (MSFT) thinks otherwise.

The term “dogfooding” is often thrown around between tech blogs and Cook is doing exactly that — using his “own product to demonstrate the quality and capabilities of the product.”

As Steve Jobs once said, Apple only builds products its own engineers and designers would use themselves.

Cook’s not saying, “iPads are great” for some people and some tasks. The fact that Cook uses his iPad for 80% of his work and an iPhone all the time suggests he and Apple are serious about this post-PC era. Apple wants iPads and iPhones to be great for all of your computing needs.

Apple is serious enough about it that the big boss has shifted his habits from old-school typing on actual keyboards to using virtual keyboards. And for all we know, Cook could be using even more natural human interfaces such as more voice recognition (ex: Siri in iOS and built-in dictation in OS X Mountain Lion).

Will physical keyboards go the way of the dodo in the next handful of years? It’s doubtful, but don’t be surprised if you see fewer and fewer offices with QWERTY keyboards attached to PCs and more desks and execs just carrying tablets and a smartphone on the side.

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UK’s Kate and William “saddened” by nurse’s death

LONDON (Reuters) – Britain’s Prince William and his wife Kate said on Friday they were “deeply saddened” by the death of a nurse who fell victim to a prank call from an Australian radio station seeking details of the duchess’s condition while she was in hospital for morning sickness.

The King Edward VII hospital earlier confirmed the death of the nurse, Jacinda Saldanha.

“Their Royal Highnesses were looked after so wonderfully well at all times by everybody at King Edward VII Hospital, and their thoughts and prayers are with Jacintha Saldanha‘s family, friends and colleagues at this very sad time,” said a statement from William’s office.

(Reporting by Tim Castle; editing by Stephen Addison)

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The New Old Age Blog: A Son Lost, a Mother Found

My friend Yvonne was already at the front door when I woke, so at first I didn’t realize that my mother was missing.

It was less than a week after my son Spencer died. Since that day, a constant stream of friends had been coming and going, bringing casseroles and soup, love, support and chatter. Mom hated it.

My 94-year-old mother, who has vascular dementia, has been living in my home in upstate New York for the past few years. Like many with dementia, mom is courteous but, underneath, irascible. Pride defines her, especially pride in her Phi Beta Kappa intellect. She hates to be confronted with how she has become, as she calls it, “stupid.”

The parade of strangers confused her. She had to be polite, field solicitous questions, endure mundane comments. She could not remember what was going on or why people were there. It must have been stressful and annoying.

That night, like every night since the state troopers brought the news, I woke hourly, tumbling in panic. As if it were not too late to save my son. Mom knew something was wrong, but she could not remember what. As I overslept that morning, she must have decided enough was enough. She was going home.

In a cold sky, the sun blazed over tall pines. As I opened the door, the dogs raced out to greet Yvonne and her two housecleaners. Yvonne often brags about her cleaning duo. They were her gift to me. They were going to clean my house before the funeral reception, which was scheduled for later that week. This was a very big gift because, like my mother before me, I am a very bad housekeeper.

Mom’s door was shut. I cautioned the housecleaners to avoid her room as I showed them around. Yvonne went to the kitchen to listen to the 37 unheard messages on my answering machine; the housecleaners went out to their van to get their instruments of dirt removal.

I ducked into Mom’s room to warn her about the upcoming noise. The bed was unmade; the floor was littered with crumpled tissues; the room was empty.

Normally, I would have freaked out right then. I knew Mom was not in the house, because I had just shown the whole house to the cleaners. Although Mom doesn’t wander like some dementia patients, she does on occasion run away. But I could not muster a shred of anxiety.

“Yvonne,” I called, “did you see my mother outside?”

Yvonne popped her head into the living room, eyebrows raised.“Outside? No!” She was alarmed. “Is she missing?”

“Yeah,” I said wearily, “I’ll look.” I stepped out onto the front porch, tightening the belt of my bathrobe and turning up the collar. Maybe she had walked off into the woods. The dogs danced around my legs, wanting breakfast.

I had no space left in my body to care. Either we would find her, or we would not. Either she was alive, or she was not. My child was gone. How could I care about anything ever again?

Then I saw my car was missing. My mouth fell open and my eyeballs rolled up to the right, gazing blindly at the abandoned bird’s nest on top of the porch light: What had I done with the keys?

Mom likes to run away in the car when she is angry. She used to do it a lot when my father was still alive — every time they fought. Since Mom took off in my car almost a year ago, after we had had a fight, I’d kept the keys hidden. Except for this week; this week, I had forgotten.

I was reverting to old habits. I had left the doors unlocked and the keys in the cupholder next to the driver’s seat. Exactly like Mom used to do.

“Uh-oh,” I said aloud. Mom was still capable of driving, even though she did not know where she was going. I just really, really hoped that she didn’t hurt anybody on the road. I pulled out my cellphone, about to call the police.

“Celia!” Yvonne shouted from the kitchen. She hurried up behind me, excited. “They found your mother. There are two messages on your machine.”

At that very moment, Mom was holed up at the College Diner in New Paltz, a 20-minute drive over the mountain, through the fields, left over the Wallkill River and away down Main Street.

Yvonne called the diner. They promised to keep the car keys until someone arrived. By that time, Yvonne had to go to work. She drove my friend Elizabeth to the diner, and Elizabeth drove Mom home in my car.

Half an hour later, they walked in the front door. Mom’s cheeks were rouged by the chill air and her eyes sparkled, her white hair riffing with static electricity. “Hello, hello,” she sang out. “Here we are.” She was wearing the flannel nightgown and robe I had dressed her in the night before. It was covered by her oversized purple parka, and her bare feet were shoved into sneakers.

I started laughing as soon as I saw her. I couldn’t help it. Elizabeth and Mom started laughing too. “You had a big adventure,” I said, hugging them both. “How are you?”

“I’m just marvelous,” said my mother. Mom always feels great after doing something rakish. We settled her on the sofa with her feet on the ottoman. By the time I got her blanket tucked in around her shoulders, she had fallen asleep.

Elizabeth couldn’t stop laughing as she described the scene. “Your mother was holding court in this big booth. She was sitting there in her nightgown and her parka, talking to everybody, with this plate of toast and coffee and, like, three of the staff hovering around her.”

The waitress said Mom seemed “a little disoriented” when she got there. Mom said she was meeting a friend for breakfast, but since she was wearing a nightgown and didn’t know whom she was meeting or where she lived, the staff thought there might be a problem. They convinced Mom to let them look in the glove compartment of the car, where they found my name and number.

It was then that I realized I was laughing – something I’d thought I would never be able to do again. “Elizabeth, Elizabeth, I’m laughing,” I said.

“Ha, ha, ha,” laughed Elizabeth, holding her belly.

“Ha, ha, ha,” I laughed, rolling on the floor.

And she who gave me life, who had suffered the death of my child and the extinction of her own intellect, snoozed on: oblivious, jubilant, still herself, still mine.

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O'Hare affected by United's latest computer glitch

United Airlines experienced more computer problems Friday, causing systems to slow down.

"We have been experiencing short-term, intermittent Internet connectivity issues, causing some systems to run more slowly than normal," United spokesman Rahsaan Johnson said.

However, the airline is continuing to operate flights and "take care of customers," he said, adding that interruptions last for about five minutes.

The problem is only at some locations, including Chicago O'Hare International Airport, he said.

The glitch has not harmed the airline's on-time performance, which was running at 91.5 percent for United Airlines flights and about 85 percent for United Express flights, he said. Those rates are higher than normal for United, which has been running closer to 80 percent on time.

Computer problems have plagued the airline this year, starting in March when it switched to a new reservations system. During the summer its operations were especially poor, with rampant flight delays and cancellations.

gkarp@tribune.com

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Driver killed after colliding with school bus near Kankakee

By Deanese Williams-Harris




Tribune reporter

12:18 p.m. CST, December 6, 2012

The driver of a car was killed after crashing into the back of a school bus carrying high school students near Kankakee this morning, state police said.

Several of the children were taken to hospital but their injuries were minor, police said.

The accident happened about 7:15 a.m. on Illinois Route 113 west of Warner Bridge Road in the town of Limestone, state police said.

According to preliminary reports, a 2002 Chevrolet struck the rear of the bus from Herscher High School. The bus had its lights flashing and students were boarding at the time, police said.

The driver of the Chevrolet was pronounced dead at the scene and identified as Aaron Ballenger, 29, of Braceville, police said.

Officials at Herscher High School were notifying parents about the students involved in the accident.

dawilliams@tribune.com

Twitter: @neacynewslady

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Apple and Samsung return to court to battle over $1 billion verdict

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mtvU honors Frank Ocean, wounded Pakistani teen

NEW YORK (AP) — The mtvU network is honoring a rap superstar who detailed his love for another man and a Pakistani girl shot for her education advocacy as its Man and Woman of the Year.

Frank Ocean, who earned six Grammy nominations Wednesday, published a letter online about his first love, a man, just as his “channel ORANGE” disc was being released. MtvU on Thursday called it “an incredibly brave move for an artist on the verge of superstardom.”

Fifteen-year-old Malala Yousufzai (mah-LAH’-lah YOO’-suf-ZAY’) blogged about her support of education for girls in Pakistan. For that, Taliban militants stormed her school bus and shot her in the head and neck, but she survived.

The mtvU network is geared toward college students and is seen on more than 750 campuses.

Entertainment News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Well: Running in Reverse

This column appears in the Dec. 9 issue of The New York Times Magazine.

Backward running, also known as reverse or retro running, is not as celebrated as barefoot running and will never be mistaken for the natural way to run. But a small body of science suggests that backward running enables people to avoid or recover from common injuries, burn extra calories, sharpen balance and, not least, mix up their daily routine.

The technique is simple enough. Most of us have done it, at least in a modified, abbreviated form, and probably recently, perhaps hopping back from a curb as a bus went by or pushing away from the oven with a roasting pan in both hands. But training with backward running is different. Biomechanically, it is forward motion’s doppelgänger. In a study published last year, biomechanics researchers at the University of Milan in Italy had a group of runners stride forward and backward at a steady pace along a track equipped with force sensors and cameras.

They found that, as expected, the runners struck the ground near the back of their feet when going forward and rolled onto the front of their feet for takeoff. When they went backward though, they landed near the front of their feet and took off from the heels. They tended to lean slightly forward even when running backward. As a result, their muscles fired differently. In forward running, the muscles and tendons were pulled taut during landing and responded by coiling, a process that creates elastic energy (think rubber bands) that is then released during toe-off. When running backward, muscles and tendons were coiled during landing and stretched at takeoff. The backward runners’ legs didn’t benefit from stored elastic energy. In fact, the researchers found, running backward required nearly 30 percent more energy than running forward at the same speed. But backward running also produced far less hard pounding.

What all of this means, says Giovanni Cavagna, a professor at the University of Milan who led the study, is that reverse running can potentially “improve forward running by allowing greater and safer training.”

It is a particularly attractive option for runners with bad knees. A 2012 study found that backward running causes far less impact to the front of the knees. It also burns more calories at a given pace. In a recent study, active female college students who replaced their exercise with jogging backward for 15 to 45 minutes three times a week for six weeks lost almost 2.5 percent of their body fat.

And it aids in balance training — backward slow walking is sometimes used as a therapy for people with Parkinson’s and is potentially useful for older people, whose balance has grown shaky.

But it has drawbacks, Cavagna says — chiefly that you can’t see where you’re going. “It should be done on a track,” he says, “or by a couple of runners, side by side,” one facing forward.

It should be implemented slowly too, because its unfamiliar motion can cause muscle fatigue. Intersperse a few minutes periodically during your regular routine, Cavagna says. Increase the time you spend backward as it feels comfortable.

The good news for serious runners is that backward does not necessarily mean slow. The best recorded backward five-kilometer race time is 19:31, faster than most of us can hit the finish line with our best foot forward.

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