Chicago man gets 35 years for role in Mumbai terror attack

David Coleman Headley, the terrorist who played a key planning role in the Mumbai massacre that killed more than 160 people in 2008, was sentenced today in Chicago’s federal court  to 35 years in prison.

U.S. District Judge Harry Leinenweber could have imposed a life sentence but chose the sentence recommended by federal prosecutors who wanted Headley rewarded for his extensive cooperation in spite of his help in the deadly attacks in India.

Before imposing the 35-year prison term, the judge said he wanted to make sure Headley, 52, is "never in a position again to commit a terrorist attack."

Leinenweber was skeptical of a letter that Headley recently wrote to him. "I don't have any faith in Mr. Headley when he says he's a changed person," the judge said.

Headley should be "under lock and key for the rest of his life," Leinenweber said.

In the letter, Headley claimed he was learning to embrace "American values" and coming to grips with how he was convinced to plan terrorist attacks under the guise of religious obligation, Leinenweber said.

"Mr. Headley's letter to the judge expressed his sincere remorse," Robert Seeder, one of Headley's attorney, told reporters after the sentencing. "He did explain in that letter what led him to this and how sorry he was. And I think we'll leave it at that."

During the hearing, another defense attorney told the judge that Headley "literally saved lives" by providing valuable information that "no one else knew" about terrorist activities. "He has never minimized his role," attorney John Theis said. "He has accepted responsibility."

Theis told reporters later he had asked the judge for a specific sentence for Headley, but he declined to reveal the length, saying the request was made under seal.

Before the sentence was handed down, a victim of the terror attack told the judge how surprised she was by the youth of the terrorists who stormed into a hotel’s first-floor cafe while she was eating there.

Linda Ragsdale, a Nashville woman who was shot in the back during the 2008 rampage, recalled wondering how a man as young as her son could kill innocent people.  Holding back tears, Ragsdale described a barrage of bullets so intense that "waves of heat clouded" her vision.

"I know what a bullet could do to every part of the human body," Ragsdale said. "I know the sound of life leaving a 13-year-old child. These are things I never needed to know, never needed to experience."

Ragsdale also read from a statement written by another survivor of the shooting at the Oberoi Hotel who said it would be an "appalling dishonor" if Headley was sentenced to the 30 to 35 years in prison recommended by federal prosecutors.

But former U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, making a surprise appearance at the sentencing hearing, told Leinenweber he should consider the “unusual nature” of Headley’s cooperation even though Headley was involved in a “very, very heinous crime.”

On the night of his arrest at O’Hare International Airport, Headley “freely admitted” his role in the Mumbai massacre within half an hour of being given his Miranda rights, Fitzgerald said.

Headley, 52,  appearing amid heightened security in Leinenweber’s courtroom, faced up to life in prison. He pleaded guilty to scouting out sites to be targeted in the terrorist attack that killed more than 160 people – including six Americans -- in India’s largest city. He also admitted playing a similar role in an aborted plot to storm a Danish newspaper and behead staffers in retaliation for printing a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad.

Federal prosecutors have cited Headley’s extraordinary cooperation for seeking a sentence of 30 to 35 years in prison.

Headley, who was arrested at O'Hare as he prepared to fly overseas, detailed the inner-workings of Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Pakistani terror organization that planned the Mumbai attacks. His information led to charges against seven terrorist figures, including his childhood friend from a Pakistani school, Tahawwur Rana, a former Chicago businessman.

Headley was the key witness at the trial of Rana, who was convicted of aiding the Denmark plot and providing support to Lashkar.  Judge Leinenweber sentenced him  last week to 14 years in prison, about half what prosecutors sought.

Headley, an American citizen of Pakistani descent, came to the United States at age 17 and was twice convicted of drug smuggling in the late 1980s. He later agreed to work as an informant for the DEA. Headley also revealed during testimony  at Rana’s trial that there was an overlap between his work for the DEA and his early days with Lashkar.

Headley became involved with Lashkar, a radical group that opposes Indian rule in divided Kashmir, around 2000, attending training camps between 2002 and 2005. He had moved to Chicago by 2009 and reconnected with Rana.

Though embraced by Rana’s family, Headley lived a very different life that included multiple wives and apparently indoctrinating even his children with his ideologies. His 5-year-old son once dropped to the ground in a Chicago park and pretended to fire a weapon after a soccer coach yelled "shoot, shoot!" to him during a game, Headley testified at Rana’s trial.

The charges against Headley and Rana likely represented the most significant terrorism case brought during Fitzgerald’s nearly 11 years as Chicago’s chief federal prosecutor.

Bomb-sniffing dogs checked the coats and bags of all the spectators entering Leinenweber’s courtroom today.  At one point, more than 100 people had lined up to attend the sentencing.

asweeney@tribune.com

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Women in Combat Stoke Twitter Debate

The Pentagon’s decision to allow women in combat has elicited some strong and controversial words from opponents of the move.

First, Tucker Carlson. Last night, the Daily Caller publisher tweeted: “Feminism’s latest victory: the right to get your limbs blown off in war. Congratulations.”

This drew some swift criticism on Twitter, and a counterpoint from The Week’s Marc Ambinder, who noted that one woman who lost limbs in combat, Tammy Duckworth, is now serving as a Democrat in the House of Representatives.

Then, Politico reported that Allen West, the former GOP congressman and Army lieutenant colonel, tweeted this morning: “Women in combat billets? Another misconceived lib vision of fairness and equality.”

West is already getting trashed on Twitter by users who took offense. After the controversial remarks made by Newt Gingrich in the mid-1990s and Rick Santorum last year, it’s no surprise that the Pentagon’s decision is stirring debate.

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Beyonce lets others do talking on lip-synch drama

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Beyonce‘s lips remained sealed on Wednesday over her headline-making rendition of the U.S. national anthem at President Barack Obama‘s inauguration, leaving others to do the talking over whether she lip-synched to a pre-recorded track.

Celebrity magazine Us Weekly quoted a source saying the Grammy-winning artist was disappointed by the controversy she stirred by singing “The Star-Spangled Banner” at Monday’s solemn ceremony using a backing track – and drew a comparison to late Italian opera singer Luciano Pavarotti.

As some of America’s singing stars offered sympathy and understanding, an inaugural official, who declined to be identified, told CNN that Beyonce “did not sing live.”

“Because she didn’t have time to rehearse with the U.S. Marine Band, she decided to use her recording with the Marine Band,” the official told CNN on Wednesday.

The U.S. Marine band said in a statement on Tuesday that no one in the band “is in a position to assess whether it was live or pre-recorded.”

Us Weekly meanwhile quoted a different, also unidentified source, as saying “She did sing, but used a track.”

“She didn’t think there was anything wrong with it,” the source told the celebrity magazine‘s website on Wednesday.

“Pavarotti has done it! It was freezing out, and if she messed up just one note, that would have been the story … Everybody uses these tracks, and the music director advised it,” the Us Weekly source added.

Pavarotti lip-synched his last performance, at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, because of the bitter weather and his failing health, according to orchestra conductor Leone Magiera in a 2008 book. The Italian tenor died in 2007 of pancreatic cancer at age 71.

Beyonce‘s publicist has declined to comment on the furor, but Aretha Franklin and Jennifer Lopez chimed in with their support.

“When I heard the news … that she was pre-recorded I really laughed,” Franklin, 70, who sang live at Obama‘s first inauguration in 2009, told ABC News.

“I thought it was funny because the weather down there was about 46 or 44 degrees and for most singers that is just not good singing weather … she did a beautiful job with the pre-record … next time I’ll probably do the same.”

Lopez told Jon Stewart on “The Daily Show” on Tuesday that many performers resort to using pre-recorded tracks.

“You know, sometimes it happens,” Lopez said. “When you’re in certain stadiums and in certain venues, they do pre-record things because you’re going to have that terrible slapback.”

Beyonce, 31, was giving her first major public performance since giving birth to a baby in January 2012. On Sunday, she had posted on Instagram photo of herself in a recording studio holding the sheet music for “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

She is due to take the spotlight again next month by performing, live, at the February 3 Super Bowl halftime show.

(Reporting by Jill Serjeant; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

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New Mutations Discovered in Melanomas

In a leap forward in understanding the basic science of one of the most lethal cancers, two groups of researchers have found mutations in most melanomas that are unlike any they have seen before in cancer. The changes are in regions that control genes, not in the genes themselves. The mutations are exactly the type caused by exposure to ultraviolet light, indicating they might be among the first DNA changes in a cell’s path to melanoma.

The discoveries, published online Thursday in two papers in the journal Science Express, do not immediately suggest new treatments or ways to prevent melanoma, researchers said. But the findings help explain how melanomas — and, possibly, other cancers — develop and what drives their growth, insights that may be critical to long-term efforts to develop ways to prevent or stop the cancer.

For years, cancer researchers have searched for mutations in genes, but this time, they looked for — and found — mutations in a region that regulates genes. They did it by examining the entire DNA of multiple tumors, studying not just genes but also what has been called the dark matter, the 99 percent of the DNA that includes regions that control genes.

“You could think of this as one glimmer in what has been called cancer’s dark matter,” said Dr. Levi A. Garraway of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Broad Institute of Harvard and M.I.T.

The complete DNA sequences of 70 malignant melanomas led to the new discovery. A small control region was mutated in 7 out of 10 of the tumors, and also, the investigators found, in liver and bladder cancers. The cancer cells had one of two tiny changes that together were more common than any mutation ever found in the genes of melanoma.

A team led by Rajiv Kumar of the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg and Dirk Schadendorf of the University of Essen looked for the mutations in a family whose members tended to get melanoma. Four relatives who developed melanoma had inherited one of them, while four who remained melanoma-free did not have it. They also found the mutation in a 36-year-old member of the family who had not developed melanoma but had had many moles, often a sign of risk in families prone to melanoma.

Their findings indicate that those who inherit the mutations might be born with cells that have taken a first step toward cancer.

The mutations spur cells to make an enzyme, telomerase, that keeps cells immortal by preventing them from gradually losing the ends of their chromosome, the telomeres. When telomeres erode, a cell dies. But the enzyme also has other, poorly understood functions that are thought to keep cancer cells alive, said Robert Weinberg, an M.I.T. researcher who studies telomerase and cancer and was not involved with the research. “The paradigm that it does nothing but extend telomeres is a gross oversimplification,” he said.

Abundant telomerase is so important to cancers that it occurs in 90 percent of them, said Immaculata De Vivo, a Harvard Medical School researcher who studies telomerase and cancer and directs a DNA sequencing program. She, too, was not involved with the research.

The results of the two studies presented in the papers “are like a court of law — it’s the preponderance of the evidence,” she said. “We all knew telomerase was important for cancer, but now we are finding the mechanisms, the machinery.”

Scientists were surprised that the mutations in the dark matter of melanoma tumors were so commonplace. Dr. Garraway and his colleagues had the entire DNA sequences for a collection of melanomas — genes as well as the rest of the DNA including areas that turn genes on and off.

“We said, ‘Let’s just take a look and see if there are any mutations in a regulatory region,” Dr. Garraway said.

At first, they looked at the DNA sequences of 19 tumors. They were amazed to find one or the other of the two mutations in 17 of them. So the researchers decided to look at 51 additional melanomas and a handful of bladder and liver cancers. The mutations popped up again.

“It was really quite striking,” Dr. Garraway said.

But it’s not clear how to reverse the mutations’ cancer-causing effects, Dr. Garraway said. And although people have long wanted to block telomerase production in cancer cells, they have not found a drug to do it.

Still, the findings are highly significant, experts said.

“We have always known that just looking at genes alone would provide a limited number of answers about why cancer develops,” said Elaine Mardis of Washington University, who was not involved with the research. “The brakes or the gas that control the genes that cause cancer are as important as gene mutations,” she said. The new papers, Dr. Mardis added, “show where additional answers may lie.”

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United to cut 600 front-office jobs

United Continental Holdings Inc. will cut about 600 front-office jobs through voluntary and involuntary cuts, the company said Thursday as it announced disappointing financial losses for 2012.

The world's largest airline did not detail where cutbacks will take place, but Chicago is likely to be most affected considering the corporate headquarters and network operations center are in downtown Chicago and that Chicago O'Hare airport is one of the airline's largest hubs.

The job cuts were announced Thursday morning during a conference call about the airline's profits. United officials said they were disappointed in the airline company's 2012 performance and pledged to improve in 2013, both in financial performance and the airline's operational reliability.

They said they intend to win back corporate customers who defected to other airlines last year when the airline experienced periods of poor on-time performance and high cancellations rates. The operational problems, which have abated since the fall, stemmed from numerous computer-related glitches after the airline merged United and Continental customer reservation systems onto a common platform last March.

United CEO Jeff Smisek called 2012 "the toughest year of our merger integration," but that the airline was "back on track."

"Despite our integration pains, we accomplished an enormous amount and we are now in a position to go forward as a single carrier and compete effectively on a global scale," he said. "Our operations are running smoothly. Our many product improvements are rolling out and our customer satisfaction scores are climbing."

Smisek also said the airline maintains its confidence in the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, which was grounded in the U.S. and elsewhere after numerous glitches, including a serious fire hazard with its lithium ion batteries.

He said he had confidence in the airplane and "Boeing's ability to fix the issues just as they have done on every other new aircraft model they've produced."

Smisek said he has no indication on when the Federal Aviation Administration will allow the planes to fly again, including Dreamliner on a route between Chicago and Houston. Boeing is also based in Chicago.

United, the only U.S. carrier currently operating 787 planes, has six Dreamliners. Smisek said the company expects to take delivery of two additional 787s in the second half of this year.

EARNINGS

United Continental said it lost $723 million in 2012, or $2.18 per share. Excluding special charges of $1.3 billion, mostly related to merging United and Continental, the company earned $589 million, or $1.59 per share, meeting Wall Street analyst expectations.

In the fourth quarter, United lost $620 million, or $1.87 per share, compared with a loss of $138 million, or 42 cents per share, in the same quarter a year earlier.

It took charges of $430 million in the quarter, with much of that tied to paying off pension debt and costs for systems integration and training and severance. Excluding items, United said the 2012 quarterly loss was 58 cents a share, compared with a 61 cent loss expected by analysts on average, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Revenue fell 2.5 percent to $8.7 billion.

Superstorm Sandy, which barreled through the U.S. Northeast in late October, reduced revenue by about $140 million and profit by about $85 million in the fourth quarter. The storm caused shutdowns at major New York area airports, including New Jersey's Newark Liberty International where United operates a major hub.

CUSTOMER SERVICE

Customer service will be a larger focus for the airline, Smisek said during the conference call.

That focus includes a comprehensive customer service training program for airport agents, contact center agents and flight attendants, he said. It will also roll out a program called "It's Our Job," a companywide approach to customer service "that clearly explains our customer service standards and expectation for front line coworkers," Smisek said.

It will also include an expanded recognition program to reward employees for outstanding service, collecting more customer-satisfaction data and roll out of a new set of tools for airport agents, he said.

JOB CUTS

As far as the job cuts, they will not affect unionized workers, such as pilots, flight attendants and airport ground workers, a spokeswoman said. The airline in December reduced the officer ranks by several positions, representing 7 percent of managers with titles of vice president and higher. It will reduce management and administrative staff by 6 percent through voluntary and involuntary cuts and not filling empty positions.

Those cuts will begin in early February, Smisek said in a letter to employees Thursday morning.

gkarp@tribune.com

 

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2 men died in high-rise fire after rescuing elderly woman: officials

A high-rise fire on Chicago's south side killed two men and seriously injured a woman.

The two men who died in a South Shore high-rise fire had rescued an elderly woman on the seventh floor and had returned to the burning apartment with fire extinguishers when they apparently were overcome by smoke, officials said today.

Jameel Johnson, 36, and his co-worker, John Fasula, 50, were doing contract work for a cable company when the fire broke out on the seventh floor of the 16-story building in the 6700 block of South Shore Drive Tuesday morning. The two heard an 81-year-old woman screaming for help and placed her inside an elevator and pressed a button to take her to the first floor, according to police and David A. Fields Jr., Johnson’s cousin.

Fasula and Johnson returned to her apartment with fire extinguishers, police said. They were later found by firefighters, collapsed on the floor and were in full cardiac arrest, according to police and fire officials.

The woman collapsed on the floor of the lobby after the elevator doors opened, but was revived by paramedics and taken to the University of Chicago Hospitals, where she was listed in critical condition from smoke inhalation, according to police.

“He died a hero,” Fields said in a telephone interview. “They died saving a woman’s life.”

Johnson, the father of two girls, was working as a private contractor for a cable company, his family said. He did not like being inside high-rise buildings, but the company could not find a replacement, relatives said.

“He went with the understanding that maybe it was just a service call and he could be in and out,” Fields said. “He didn’t want to be in the high-rise building, that was his whole thing. He didn’t want to be there.”

Relatives described Johnson, an Englewood native, as a fun-loving man who did whatever he could to take care of his fiance and two children, ages 14 and 3. Johnson had ventured into different careers over the years, but returned to the cable business about a year ago.

“He was a good father who was just trying to make sure his kids had the best,” Fields said.

He had been with his fiance for 15 years and the family lives in Gary, Ind., Fields said. His youngest daughter still doesn’t understand what happened, relatives said.

“She’s still looking for her father to come home,” said Johnson’s aunt, Rosemary Cohns. “That’s the hardest part.”

Relatives of Fasula said they were not surprised to hear he risked his life for someone else.

“That’s how my brother-in-law was,” said Michelle Kozicki, 65, Fasula’s sister-in-law. “There’s never going to be another one like my brother-in-law Johnny. There’s not a bad bone in his body.”

Fasula was a maintenance manager for the CTA, spokeswoman Lambrini Lukidis said. He started working for the transit agency in 1983.

Fasula’s family knew he was at the apartment building for a “side job,” though she wasn’t sure what the work entailed. Kozicki said it was common for Fasula, who had been married for nearly 40 years, to work jobs outside his day job at the CTA.
 
“He didn’t like to sit still,” she said.

He went out of his way to help his father before he died in 2009. He was with him “every step of the way,” Kozicki said. For example, Fasula took time off of work to drive his father to doctor’s appointments.

Fire officials have said the fire apparently started in a bedroom on the seventh floor. Fire Department spokesman Larry Langford said the cause is undetermined pending further analysis of electrical information.  It does not appear suspicious, he added.

“In short, it generally means we have to have some items looked at,” Langford said of the analysis.

chicagobreaking@tribune.com

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Why the Future of TV Still Isn’t Here Yet

As content providers continue to intimidate tech companies with a seemingly endless couch-potato conundrum, the latest innovation in the war to win your living room isn’t some new gadget from Apple or Netflix, or even that exciting à la carte content delivery system from Intel — it’s a protocol that helps our screens better communicate with one another. YouTube and Netflix have teamed up to create something called DIAL, a competitor of sorts to Apple’s AirPlay, which, as GigaOm’s Janko Roettgers describes it, ”helps developers of second-screen apps to discover and launch applications on smart TVs and connected devices.” Basically, it turns your phone into a kind of wireless super-remote for your TV, as Roettgers explains: 

With DIAL, the Netflix app on your phone will automatically discover that there is a device with a Netflix app connected to your TV. It will fire up that app, and then the two apps are free to do whatever they want — which presumably involves some healthy binge-viewing.

This solves a “big problem” because it makes using those apps on your smart television a lot easier.  As of right now, controlling the Netflix app on a PlayStation still requires the console remote to open up the app on your television before controlling it from a phone or tablet. This eliminates a step — and that, ladies and gents, is the biggest thing actually happening in TV tech right now. Instead of letting us pay just for the content we want, the cable industry’s aging model is still forcing tech companies to help us sift through all the extras were forced to buy. Because with the big media companies refusing to budge on innovative content deals so far this year, “content discovery” tools like GIAL and AirPlay remain one of the only ways everyone can get along. 

RELATED: Netflix Is Winning the Internet

It wasn’t supposed to be this way, of course. Many expected hardware like a supped-up Apple TV or the Roku streaming stick to “fix” television — instead of some protocol that makes finding stuff on our TVs easier. But, as Netflix discovered when it tried to get in the hardware business, the total package can alienate the other key players. Back in 2007, the streaming company had a set-top box in the works that would transform Netflix into a cable competitor, reports Fast Company’s Austin Carr. But CEO Reid Hastings scrapped the idea because it was too competitive. “We could not be competing against Sony, LG, and Samsung,” says Steve Swasey, then the company’s VP of communications. On top of the potential loss of support from hardware makers, this separate Netflix box scared away the content owners, with which Netflix has worked so hard to get streaming TV deals. 

RELATED: The Future of Streaming Video Looks Like TV Reruns

The old-school media industry’s fear of tech-world competition has driven the future of television in a spiraling direction. When one of the too-many entities gets offended, the future falls apart, as we saw with Google TV in an experiment that ultimately scared off content providers as well. A protocol like DIAL is the politically correct solution: It doesn’t change how we pay for content — but it sure does work within the comfortable way we’re used to sitting down and watching TV!

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Shia LaBeouf’s “Charlie Countryman” finds love in gritty Romania

Park City, Utah (Reuters) – Shia LaBeouf and Evan Rachel Wood spin a twist on classic fairytales in their new film “The Necessary Death of Charlie Countryman,” a modern day love story that swaps castles in the sky for the underbelly of Romania’s capital, Bucharest.

The film, which premiered at Sundance Film Festival this week, is a dark story of love unfolding between two unlikely people against the backdrop of a violent and crime-filled eastern European city.

Charlie (LaBeouf), an American, finds himself on a journey of self-discovery that takes him to Bucharest, where he meets the mysterious and captivating Gabi (Evan Rachel Wood), and puts his life on the line for love.

“Love is always the easiest answer, but somehow it’s the hardest place to get for some people. I love the contrast of this world, which is filled with violence and hatred and crime, and above all there’s love,” Wood said.

Director Fredrick Bond picked Bucharest because he was looking for a place that has not been captured in film prominently, and would compliment the complex nature of Charlie and Gabi’s story.

“Charlie has to go through quite a tough journey and a very romantic journey, so I needed a city that had an edge,” he said.

Wood, 25, said the connection that Charlie and Gabi feel the moment they meet resonated with her because that is what she felt for her husband, actor Jamie Bell, when they first met at Sundance and started dating in 2005.

“It’s almost this karmic connection, this kindred spirit, this soulmate of some sort, where he looks at her and he immediately falls in love. He’s never said a word to her – that really happens. That’s how I met my husband,” Wood said.

“We fell in love immediately, because it was almost meant to be, it was fate.”

FINDING TRUTH IN LOVE

“Charlie Countryman” is the feature film debut from Swedish director Bond, an award-winning creator of commercials. Bond said he was eager to work with LaBeouf and Wood, calling them the “most talented young actors of their generation.”

“They have such a sense of truthfulness,” Bond said. “It’s a wild, crazy journey, I needed actors who could ground their performances … Evan and Shia are about truth.”

LaBeouf, a former child star who became a box office staple as the lead in the “Transformers” franchise, has been taking on grittier roles more recently, such as a bootlegger in gangster drama “Lawless.”

The 26-year-old actor said he had been drawn to the role of Charlie when he read the script three years ago.

“It spoke honestly to me, it was really original. It had a Zsa Zsa Gabor narrative and it just read like ‘The Graduate’ with a bloody nose,” he said.

Wood, who shot to fame as the troubled young lead of teen drama “Thirteen” in 2003, said she had wanted to work with LaBeouf for a long time.

For the role of Gabi, a complex Romanian cellist who has a penchant for bad boys, Wood had to perfect a Romanian accent without the help of a dialect coach, turning to her surroundings in Bucharest to draw inspirations.

“It’s very stressful because you want to do it justice, and I wanted it to be spot-on because a lot of times, it can be very distracting. You can overdo the accent,” the actress said.

The film co-stars Mads Mikkelsen and Til Schweiger as Romanian mobsters, with British actors Rupert Grint, best known as Ron Weasley in the “Harry Potter” movies, and James Buckley as Charlie’s errant friends.

Bond said the biggest filming challenges were the action-packed fight scenes, especially because LaBeouf did his own stunts.

“Shia wants to do everything for real, so he takes hits for real … which is fantastic, because it gives a reality to it, but you also have only so many takes, you have to be really well prepared to do it,” Bond said.

“Charlie Countryman” may defy the archetype of a traditional love story with its fierce characters in a harsh yet beautiful setting, but LaBeouf and Wood said they hoped audiences would take away messages of honesty in love from the film.

(Reporting By Piya Sinha-Roy; Editing by Patricia Reaney and Mohammad Zargham)

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Well: Can You Read the Face of Victory?

Picture a tennis player in the moment he scores a critical point and wins a tournament. Now picture his opponent in the instant he loses the point that narrowly cost him the title. Can you tell one facial expression from the other, the look of defeat from the face of victory?

Try your hand at the images below, of professional tennis players at competitive tournaments. All were included in a new study that suggests that the more intense an emotion, the harder it is to distinguish it in a facial expression.

The researchers found that when overwhelming feelings set in, the subtle cues that convey emotion are lost, and facial expressions tend to blur. The face of joy and celebration often appears no different from the look of grief and devastation. Winning looks like losing. Pain resembles pleasure.

But that is not the case when it comes to body language. In fact, the new study found, people are better able to identify extreme emotions by reading body language than by looking solely at facial expressions. But even though we pick up on cues from the neck down to interpret emotion, we instinctively assume that it is the face that tells us everything, said Hillel Aviezer, a psychologist who carried out the new research with colleagues at Princeton University.

“When emotions run high, the face becomes more malleable: it’s not clear if there’s positivity or negativity going on there,” he said. “People have this illusion that they’re reading all this information in the face. We found that the face is ambiguous in these situations and the body is critical.”

Dr. Aviezer and his colleagues, who published their work in the journal Science, carried out four experiments in which subjects were asked to identify emotions by looking at photographs of people in various situations. In some cases, the subjects were shown facial expressions alone. In others, they looked at body language, either alone or in combination with faces. The researchers chose photographs taken in moments when emotions were running high – as professional tennis players celebrated or agonized, as loved ones grieved at funerals, as needles punctured skin during painful body piercings.

According to classic behavioral theories, facial expressions are universal indicators of mood and emotion. So the more intense a particular emotion, the easier it should be to identify in the face. But the study showed the exact opposite. As emotions peaked in intensity, expressions became distorted, similar to the way cranking up the volume on a stereo makes the music unrecognizable.

“When emotions are extremely high, it’s as if the speakers are blaring and the signal is degraded,” said Dr. Aviezer, who is now at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. “When the volume is that high, it’s hard to tell what song is playing.”

In one experiment, three groups of 15 people were shown photographs of professional tennis players winning and losing points in critical matches. When the subjects were shown the players’ expressions alone — separated from their bodies — they correctly identified their emotion only half of the time, which was no better than chance. When they looked at images of just the body with the face removed — or the body with the face intact — they were far more accurate at identifying emotions. Yet when asked, 80 percent said they were relying on the facial expressions alone. Twenty percent said they were going by body and facial cues together, and not a single one said they were looking only for gestures from the neck down.

Then, the researchers scrambled the photos, mixing faces and bodies together. The upset faces of players were randomly spliced onto the bodies of celebrating players, and vice versa.

When asked to judge the emotions, the subjects answered according to the body language. The facial expression did not seem to matter. If a losing face was spliced onto a celebrating body, the subjects tended to guess victory and jubilation. If they were looking at the face of an exuberant player placed on the body of an anguished player, the subjects guessed defeat and disappointment.

Although they were not aware of it, the subjects were clearly looking at body language, Dr. Aviezer said. Clenched fists, for example, suggested victory and celebration, while open or outstretched hands indicated a player’s disappointment.

In another experiment, the researchers looked at four other emotional “peaks.” For pain, they used the faces of men and women undergoing piercings. Grief was captured in images of mourners at a funeral. For joy, they used images of people on the reality television show “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition,” capturing their impassioned faces at the very moment they were shown their beautiful, brand new homes. And for pleasure, they went with a rather risqué option: images from an erotic Web site that showed faces at the height of orgasm.

Once again, the subjects could not correctly guess the emotions by looking at facial expressions alone. In fact, they were more likely to interpret “positive” faces as being “negative” more than the actual negative ones. When faces showing pleasure were spliced onto the body of someone in pain, for example, the subjects relied on body language and were often unaware that the facial expression was conveying the opposite emotion.

“There’s this point on ‘Extreme Makeover’ where people see their new house for the first time and the camera is on their face, so we have these wonderful photos of their expressions,” Dr. Aviezer said. “At that moment, they look like the most miserable people in the world. For a few seconds, it’s as if they are seeing their house burn down. They don’t look like you would expect.”

The researchers noted that they were not suggesting that facial expressions never indicate specific feelings – only that when the emotion is intense and at its peak, for those first few seconds, the expression is ambiguous. Dr. Aviezer said the facial musculature simply might not be suited for accurately conveying extremely intense feelings – in part because in the real world, so much of that is conveyed through situational context.

And this may not be limited to facial cues.

“Consider intense vocal expressions of grief versus joy or pleasure versus pain,” the researchers wrote in their paper. For example, imagine sitting in a coffee shop and hearing someone behind you shriek. Is it immediately obvious whether the emotion is a positive or negative one?

“When people are experiencing a very high level of excitation,” Dr. Aviezer said, “then we see this overlap in expressions.”

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Chicago hotel occupancy climbs back

Visitors filled downtown hotel rooms in 2012 at a rate not seen since before the recession.

Hotel occupancy rose to 75.2 percent, up from 72.2 percent in 2011, according to an announcement by Choose Chicago, the city's tourism and convention agency, and Mayor Rahm Emanuel. The 2012 level matched a previous record set in 2007.

Hotel operators also saw increases in two other key measures, though those remain slightly below their peaks. The average daily room rate rose to $187.27, from $177.33 in 2011. And the revenue per available room, a key indicator of profitability, increased by 10 percent to $140.76.

The data comes from STR Global, with analysis by Choose Chicago.

Among the factors affecting performance, officials said, was a more aggressive marketing strategy. They cited Choose Chicago's regional advertising campaigns. An eight-week winter and 12-week summer campaign, at a combined cost of $2 million, targeted Cincinnati, Detroit, Grand Rapids, Indianapolis, Milwaukee and St. Louis.

The improved performance, along with a hike in the city's hotel tax rate, brought the city's hotel tax revenue to more than $100 million for the first time. This was an increase of $25 million, or 33 percent, from 2011.
 
The city share of the hotel tax increased by 1 percentage point last year, bringing the total Chicago hotel tax rate to 16.39 percent. The city's share of that is 4.5 percentage points.

 kbergen@tribune.com | Twitter@kathy_bergen

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