Musical comedy “The Sapphires” sparkles at Aussie Oscars

SYDNEY (Reuters) – Home-grown romantic musical comedy “The Sapphires” shone at Australia‘s film industry awards on Wednesday, picking up best film and lead acting trophies for Deborah Mailman and “Bridesmaids” star Chris O’Dowd.

Awards host Russell Crowe, an Oscar winner for “Gladiator,” led a star-studded evening whose theme was pride in Australia’s outsized success on the international film stage.

“The Australian academy may be small but over the years we have won more than 60 BAFTAs and Oscars,” said Crowe at the second annual Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts awards, affectionately known as the “Aussie Oscars.”

Cate Blanchett, Nicole Kidman and Jeffrey Rush were all on hand for the event at Sydney’s Star casino, leading guest presenter Jeremy Renner to joke: “You can’t throw a bottle out the window in Hollywood without hitting an Australian.”

The Sapphires, a possibility for next year’s Oscars, tells the story of four women from a remote Aboriginal mission who are catapulted on to the world stage as Australia’s answer to the Supremes when a kind-hearted manager, played by O’Dowd, hears their powerful voices and sends them to entertain troops in Vietnam.

“Films find their way because of a certain strength,” Kidman told Reuters. “The Sapphires is such a unique story and it’s great music and great talent.”

Director Wayne Blair’s debut film also won for direction, cinematography, editing, best production design, costume design and sound.

Best Young Actor went to Saskia Rosendahl for her role in the Australian-German film “Lore”, about a teenage girl who leads her younger siblings across Germany at the end of World War Two. Rosendahl was just 17 when the film was made.

The awards weren’t without controversy after the director of “Bait”, the 3D shark-in-a-supermarket horror-comedy that was Australia’s highest grossing film internationally last year, accused the academy of snubbing his movie.

While The Sapphires was Australia’s top-grossing film domestically, with more than A$ 14 million ($ 14.63 million) in ticket sales, Bait snagged more than $ 41.8 million worldwide, more than half of that in China.

“It was never going to get best film or best director, but how can the cinematography, the visual effects, the editing, the sound design, the production design – we built a supermarket and put it underwater, for goodness’ sake – be overlooked?” said Kimble Rendall to the Sydney Morning Herald.

Prior to last year, the awards were known as the Australian Film Industry (AFI) awards.

($ 1 = 0.9566 Australian dollars)

(Reporting By Jane Wardell, editing by Elaine Lies)

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The Consumer: The Drug-Dose Gender Gap

Most sleeping pills are designed to knock you out for eight hours. When the Food and Drug Administration was evaluating a new short-acting pill for people to take when they wake up in the middle of the night, agency scientists wanted to know how much of the drug would still be in users’ systems come morning.

Blood tests uncovered a gender gap: Men metabolized the drug, Intermezzo, faster than women. Ultimately the F.D.A. approved a 3.5 milligram pill for men, and a 1.75 milligram pill for women.

The active ingredient in Intermezzo, zolpidem, is used in many other sleeping aids, including Ambien. But it wasn’t until earlier this month that the F.D.A. reduced doses of Ambien for women by half.

Sleeping pills are hardly the only medications that may have unexpected, even dangerous, effects in women. Studies have shown that women respond differently than men to many drugs, from aspirin to anesthesia. Researchers are only beginning to understand the scope of the issue, but many believe that as a result, women experience a disproportionate share of adverse, often more severe, side effects.

“This is not just about Ambien — that’s just the tip of the iceberg,” said Dr. Janine Clayton, director for the Office of Research on Women’s Health at the National Institutes of Health. “There are a lot of sex differences for a lot of drugs, some of which are well known and some that are not well recognized.”

Until 1993, women of childbearing age were routinely excluded from trials of new drugs. When the F.D.A. lifted the ban that year, agency researchers noted that because landmark studies on aspirin in heart disease and stroke had not included women, the scientific community was left “with doubts about whether aspirin was, in fact, effective in women for these indications.”

Because so many drugs were tested mostly or exclusively in men, scientists may know little of their effects on women until they reach the market. A Government Accountability Office study found that 8 of 10 drugs removed from the market from 1997 through 2000 posed greater health risks to women.

For example, Seldane, an antihistamine, and the gastrointestinal drug Propulsid both triggered a potentially fatal heart arrhythmia more often in women than in men. Many drugs still on the market cause this arrhythmia more often in women, including antibiotics, antipsychotics, anti-malarial drugs and cholesterol-lowering drugs, Dr. Clayton said. Women also tend to use more medications than men.

The sex differences cut both ways. Some drugs, like the high blood pressure drug Verapamil and the antibiotic erythromycin, appear to be more effective in women. On the other hand, women tend to wake up from anesthesia faster than men and are more likely to experience side effects from anesthetic drugs, according to the Society for Women’s Health Research.

Women also react differently to alcohol, tobacco and cocaine, studies have found.

It’s not just because women tend to be smaller than men. Women metabolize drugs differently because they have a higher percentage of body fat and experience hormonal fluctuations and the monthly menstrual cycle. “Some drugs are more water-based and like to hang out in the blood, and some like to hang out in the fat tissue,” said Wesley Lindsey, assistant professor of pharmacy practice at Auburn University, who is a co-author of a paper on sex-based differences in drug activity.

“If the drug is lipophilic” — attracted to fat cells — “it will move into those tissues and hang around for longer,” Dr. Lindsey added. “The body won’t clear it as quickly, and you’ll see effects longer.”

There are also sex differences in liver metabolism, kidney function and certain gastric enzymes. Oral contraceptives, menopause and post-menopausal hormone treatment further complicate the picture. Some studies suggest, for example, that when estrogen levels are low, women may need higher doses of drugs called angiotensin receptor blockers to lower blood pressure, because they have higher levels of proteins that cause the blood vessels to constrict, said Kathryn Sandberg, director of the Center for the Study of Sex Differences in Health, Aging and Disease at Georgetown.

Many researchers say data on these sex differences must be gathered at the very beginning of a drug’s development — even before trials on human subjects begin.

“The path to a new drug starts with the basic science — you study an animal model of the disease, and that’s where you discover a drug target,” Dr. Sandberg said. “But 90 percent of researchers are still studying male animal models of the disease.”

There have been improvements. In an interview, Dr. Robert Temple, with the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research at the F.D.A., said the agency’s new guidelines in 1993 called for studies of sex differences at the earliest stages of drug development, as well as for analysis of clinical trial data by sex.

He said early research on an irritable bowel syndrome drug, alosetron (Lotronex), suggested it would not be effective in men. As a result, only women were included in clinical trials, and it was approved only for women. (Its use is restricted now because of serious side effects.)

But some scientists say drug metabolism studies with only 10 or 15 subjects are too small to pick up sex differences. Even though more women participate in clinical trials than in the past, they are still underrepresented in trials for heart and kidney disease, according to one recent analysis, and even in cancer trials.

“The big problem is we’re not quite sure how much difference this makes,” Dr. Lindsey said. “We just don’t have a good handle on it.”

---

Readers may submit comments or questions for The Consumer by e-mail to consumer@nytimes.com.

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Blackberry 10 launches after long wait

Research In Motion Ltd unveiled the long-delayed line of smartphones it hopes will put it on the comeback trail on Wednesday but it disappointed investors by saying U.S. sales of its all-new BlackBerry 10 will start only in March.

Chief Executive Thorsten Heins also announced that RIM was abandoning the name it has used since its inception in 1985 to take the name of its signature product, signaling his hopes for a fresh start for the company that pioneered on-your-hip email.

"From this point forward, RIM becomes BlackBerry," Heins said at the New York launch. "It is one brand; it is one promise."

RIM, which is already starting to call itself BlackBerry, had initially planned to launch the new BlackBerry 10 smartphones in 2011. But it pushed the date back twice as it struggled to work with a new operating system.

Ahead of Wednesday's announcements, analysts had said that any launch after February would be a black mark for the Canadian company.

"The biggest disappointment was the delay in the U.S., that it will take so long before the devices get going there," said Eric Jackson, founder and managing Partner at Ironfire Capital LLC in New York.

Heins said the delays reflected the need for U.S. carrier testing, although carrier AT&T offered few clues on what that meant.

"We are very enthusiastic about the devices. We will announce pricing, availability, and other information at a later date. Beyond that, nothing to add," said spokesman Mark Siegel.

RIM launched its first BlackBerry back in 1999 as a way for busy executives to stay in touch with their clients and their offices, and the Canadian company quickly cornered the market for secure corporate and government email.

But its star faded as competition rose. The BlackBerry is now a far-behind also-ran in the race for market share, with a 3.4 percent global showing in the fourth quarter, down from 20 percent three years before. Its North American market share is even worse: a mere 2 percent in the fourth quarter.

RIM shares tumbled along with the company's market share, and the stock is down 90 percent from its 2008 peak.

The shares fell as much as 8 percent on Wednesday, although they are still more than twice the level of their September 2012 low, reflecting ever-louder buzz about the new devices.

TOUCH COMPETITION

The new BlackBerry 10 phones will compete with Apple's iPhone and devices using Google's Android technology, both of which have soared above the BlackBerry in a competitive market.

The BlackBerry 10 devices boast fast browsers, new features, smart cameras and, unlike previous BlackBerry models, enter the market primed with a large application library, including services such as Skype and the popular game Angry Birds.

The BlackBerry Z10 touchscreen device, in black or white, will be the first to hit the market, with a country-by-country roll-out that starts in Britain on Thursday.

A Q10 model, equipped with small "qwerty" keyboard that RIM made into its trademark, will launch globally in April.

The Z10 device won a lukewarm review from Wall Street Journal tech blogger Walt Mossberg, who complained of missing or lagging features and a shortage of apps.

But David Pogue, who writes for The New York Times, apologized for describing BlackBerry as doomed in the past. The Z10 touchscreen device was "lovely, fast and efficient, bristling with fresh, useful ideas," he said.

Announcements about pricing so far have been in line with expectations. U.S. carrier Verizon Wireless said the phone would cost $199 for a two-year contract, while Canada's Rogers Communications is quoting C$149 ($150) for certain three-year plans.

GLITZY LAUNCH

RIM picked a range of venues for its global launch parties, including Dubai's $650-a-night Armani Hotel, which occupies six floors of the Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest tower.

The New York event took place in a sprawling basketball facility on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, just north of the Manhattan Bridge. The BlackBerry has been "Re-designed. Re-engineered. Re-invented," RIM said.

RIM, which is splurging on a Superbowl ad to promote its new phones, also introduced Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Alicia Keys as its global creative director.

"I was in a long-term relationship with BlackBerry, and then I started to notice some new, kind of hotter, attractive, sexier phones at the gym, and I kind of broke up with you for something that had a little more bling," Keys said at the New York launch.

"But I always missed the way you organized my life, and the way you were there for me at my job, and so I started to have two phones - I was kind of playing the field. But then … you added a lot more features … and now, we're exclusively dating again, and I'm very happy."

RIMM data by YCharts

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1 dead, 2 wounded in Grand Crossing shooting

Chicago Police investigate near the body of a shooting victim on S. Champlain Avenue near 75th Street in Chicago. (Terrence Antonio James, Chicago Tribune / January 29, 2013)

Staff report

1:45 p.m. CST, January 29, 2013

Three people were shot, one fatally, in the Grand Crossing neighborhood this afternoon, officials said.

The shooting happened around 12:10 p.m. in the 7500 block of South Champlain Avenue, and one of the victims was found in the 7500 block of South Langley, according to Fire Department spokesman Larry Langford.

One of the victims was dead on the scene, Langford said. The two others, both males, were taken in serious to critical condition to Stroger Hospital.

Police had one person in custody and were searching for another person, according to police, citing preliminary information. A gun was recovered.

"I head four or five shots. Then I heard the ambulance," one neighbor said. "I don't go outside when I hear shots."

chicagobreaking@tribune.com

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Apple announces iPad with double storage capacity

(Reuters) – Apple Inc said on Tuesday that it will sell a version of its iPad tablet computer with 128 gigabytes of storage, which is twice the capacity of its existing models.

Apple, which has sold more than 120 million iPads so far, said that the new iPad will go on sale February 5, in black or white, for a suggested retail price of $ 799 for the iPad with just Wi-Fi model, and $ 929 for the version that also has a cellular wireless connection.

(Reporting By Sinead Carew; Editing by Gerald E. McCormick)

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Clinton coy about political future in joint interview with Obama

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Outgoing U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sidestepped questions about whether she would run for president in 2016 in a CBS television interview done jointly with President Barack Obama, her rival in the 2008 race.

Clinton, 65, denied there were any political tea leaves to read in the unusual joint interview for the CBS show “60 Minutes,” and acknowledged that she still has “some lingering effects” from a recent concussion and blood clot that she said doctors expect to disappear over time.

“The president and I care deeply about what’s going to happen for our country in the future. And I don’t think, you know, either he or I can make predictions about what’s going to happen tomorrow, or the next year,” Clinton said, according to a transcript of the interview, which was taped at the White House on Friday and aired on Sunday.

Obama beat Clinton in a bitter Democratic primary campaign to run for president in 2008. He surprised many by choosing her as his secretary of state, a job she said she initially turned down.

Clinton traveled to a record 112 countries as secretary of state. She has said she wants to take a break from public life, but has not said she will retire.

Democratic Senator John Kerry, who unsuccessfully ran for president in 2004, is expected to be confirmed as Obama’s new secretary of state as early as this week.

After Obama heaped praise on Clinton’s diplomatic achievements, he chided the show’s host, Steve Kroft, who asked about “the date of expiration on this endorsement” of Clinton.

“You guys in the press are incorrigible. I was literally inaugurated four days ago. And you’re talking about elections four years from now,” Obama said.

‘LINGERING EFFECTS’ FROM FALL

Clinton has been in the public eye for 34 years, since her husband, former President Bill Clinton, was governor of Arkansas.

Her cautious answer about her future on Sunday was less definitive than one she gave in an ABC interview in December, when she said in reference to another bid for the presidency: “I’ve said I really don’t believe that that’s something I will do again.”

Many Democrats hope that Clinton will run in 2016. Vice President Joe Biden‘s name has also been frequently mentioned among Democrats. He has said he has not decided whether to run.

Clinton also addressed a recent health issue: a concussion and blood clot that sent her to the hospital.

“The doctors tell me that that will all recede. And so thankfully I’m, you know, looking forward to being at full speed,” she said.

She said she had since been wearing glasses instead of contact lenses because of “lingering effects” from the concussion “that are decreasing, and will disappear.”

Clinton returned from a European tour on December 7 suffering from a stomach virus. On December 15, the State Department announced she had become dehydrated, fainted and suffered a concussion.

During a check-up afterwards, she was diagnosed with the blood clot, hospitalized and treated with blood thinners.

(Additional reporting by Paul Eckert; Editing by David Brunnstrom)

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Well: Ask Well: Squats for Aging Knees

You are already doing many things right, in terms of taking care of your aging knees. In particular, it sounds as if you are keeping your weight under control. Carrying extra pounds undoubtedly strains knees and contributes to pain and eventually arthritis.

You mention weight training, too, which is also valuable. Sturdy leg muscles, particularly those at the front and back of the thighs, stabilize the knee, says Joseph Hart, an assistant professor of kinesiology and certified athletic trainer at the University of Virginia, who often works with patients with knee pain.

An easy exercise to target those muscles is the squat. Although many of us have heard that squats harm knees, the exercise is actually “quite good for the knees, if you do the squats correctly,” Dr. Hart says. Simply stand with your legs shoulder-width apart and bend your legs until your thighs are almost, but not completely, parallel to the ground. Keep your upper body straight. Don’t bend forward, he says, since that movement can strain the knees. Try to complete 20 squats, using no weight at first. When that becomes easy, Dr. Hart suggests, hold a barbell with weights attached. Or simply clutch a full milk carton, which is my cheapskate’s squats routine.

Straight leg lifts are also useful for knee health. Sit on the floor with your back straight and one leg extended and the other bent toward your chest. In this position, lift the straight leg slightly off the ground and hold for 10 seconds. Repeat 10 to 20 times and then switch legs.

You can also find other exercises that target the knees in this video, “Increasing Knee Stability.”

Of course, before starting any exercise program, consult a physician, especially, Dr. Hart says, if your knees often ache, feel stiff or emit a strange, clicking noise, which could be symptoms of arthritis.

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Chicago home price recovery lags

The Chicago area's housing recovery continued to lag behind other cities and the nation, as prices in November fell 1.3 percent from a month earlier, according to a widely watched barometer of the housing market.

On an annual basis, home prices in the Chicago area rose only 0.8 percent in November, the smallest positive gain recorded among the 20 cities included in the S&P/Case-Shiller home price index, released Tuesday.

Nationally, home prices rose 5.5 percent annually for the 20-city composite. Much of that gain can be traced to market improvements in once hard-hit places like Phoenix, where home prices have risen 22.8 percent in 12 months. Other cities recording strong yearly increases included Detroit, up 11.9 percent; Las Vegas, up 10 percent; San Francisco, up 12.7 percent; and Minneapolis, up 11.1 percent.

"Housing is clearly recovering," said David Blitzer, chairman of S&P Dow Jones Indices' index committee. "Prices are rising as are both new and existing home sales."

Most cities saw prices decrease in November from their October levels, which Blitzer tied with the housing market's typical winter weakness.

Nevertheless, Chicago turned in the worst monthly performance among the 20 cities. It was the third consecutive monthly decline for local home prices, which showed signs of strength earlier in 2012.

Condominium values in the Chicago market also fell for the second consecutive month. In November, they were down .9 percent from October but rose 2.7 percent from November 2011.

mepodmolik@tribune.com | Twitter @mepodmolik

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Boy Scouts may end ban on gay scouts, leaders

Tribune wire report

1:38 p.m. CST, January 28, 2013

Boy Scouts of America is discussing ending a longstanding ban on gay members and whether to allow local organizations to decide their own policy, a spokesman said on Monday.

The organization has been under attack from gay rights groups and some parents for discriminating against gay members and gay leaders.

"The BSA is discussing potentially removing the national membership restriction regarding sexual orientation," spokesman Deron Smith said in an email to Reuters.

"The policy change under discussion would allow the religious, civic or educational organizations that oversee and deliver Scouting to determine how to address this issue," the spokesman said

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Crucial, long-overdue BlackBerry makeover arrives

TORONTO (AP) — The maker of the BlackBerry smartphone is promising a speedy browser, a superb typing experience and the ability to keep work and personal identities separate on the same phone, the fruit of a crucial, long-overdue makeover for the Canadian company.

Thorsten Heins, chief executive of Research In Motion Ltd., will reveal the first phone with the new BlackBerry 10 system in New York on Wednesday. Repeated delays have left the once-pioneering BlackBerry an afterthought in the shadow of Apple’s trend-setting iPhone and Google’s Android-driven devices.

Now, there’s some optimism. Previews of the software have gotten favorable reviews on blogs. Financial analysts are starting to see some slight room for a comeback. RIM‘s stock has nearly tripled to about $ 16.30 from a nine-year low in September, though it’s still nearly 90 percent below its 2008 peak of $ 147.

Most analysts consider a BlackBerry 10 success to be crucial for the company’s long-term viability.

“The old models are becoming obsolete quickly,” BGC Financial analyst Colin Gillis said. “There is still a big user base but it’s going to rotate off. The question is: Where do they rotate to?”

The BlackBerry, pioneered in 1999, has been the dominant smartphone for on-the-go business people. Corporate information-technology managers like the phones because they’re relatively secure and easy to manage.

The BlackBerry has also crossed over to consumers. President Barack Obama couldn’t bear to part with it when he took office. Oprah Winfrey declared it one of her “favorite things.” People got so addicted that the device was nicknamed “the CrackBerry.”

But when the iPhone came out in 2007, it showed that phones can do much more than email and phone calls. They can play games, music and movies. Android came along to offer even more choices. Though IT managers still love BlackBerrys, employees were bringing their own devices to the workplace — a trend Heins acknowledged RIM was slow to adapt to.

Suddenly, the BlackBerry looked ancient.

Even as BlackBerry sales continued to grow in many parts of the world, many BlackBerry users in North America switched to iPhones and Android devices. BlackBerry’s worldwide subscriber based peaked at 80 million in the quarter that ended Sept. 1, before dropping to 79 million in the most-recent quarter. In the U.S., according to research firm IDC, shipments of BlackBerry phones plummeted from 46 percent of the market in 2008 to 2 percent in 2012.

RIM promised a new system to catch up, using technology it got through its 2010 purchase of QNX Software Systems. RIM initially said BlackBerry 10 would come by early 2012, but then the company changed that to late 2012. A few months later, that date was pushed further, to early 2013, missing the lucrative holiday season. The holdup helped wipe out more than $ 70 billion in shareholder wealth and 5,000 jobs.

Although executives have been providing a glimpse at some of BlackBerry 10′s new features for months, Heins will finally showcase a complete system at Wednesday’s event. Devices will go on sale soon after that.

RIM redesigned the system to embrace the multimedia, apps and touch-screen experience prevalent today.

“Historically there have been areas that have not been our strongest points,” Rick Costanzo, RIM’s executive vice president of global sales, said in an interview. “Not only have we caught up, but we may even be better than some of the competition now.”

Costanzo said “no one else can touch” what RIM’s new system offers.

The new operating system promises better multitasking than either the iPhone or Android. Simply swipe a finger across the phone’s display screen to switch to another program.

All emails and notifications from such applications as Twitter and Facebook go to the BlackBerry Hub, a nerve center accessible with a finger swipe even if you have another application open. One can peek into it and open an email, or return to the previous application without opening the email.

“You are not going in and out of applications; you’re flowing through applications with one simple gesture of your finger,” Costanzo said. “You can leave applications running. You can effortlessly flow between them. So that’s completely unique to us.”

That said, multitasking will be limited and won’t allow for extensive use of apps side by side, as is typically permitted on traditional computers. If you’re watching a video, it will still run while you check for email. But it will pause if you decide to open an email and resume when you are done.

The BlackBerry’s touch-screen keyboard promises to learn a user’s writing style and suggest words and phrases to complete, going beyond typo corrections offered by rivals. See the one you want, and flick it up to the message area. Costanzo said that “BlackBerry offers the best keyboard, period.”

Gus Papageorgiou, a Scotiabank financial analyst who has tried it out, agreed with that assessment and said the keyboard even learns and adjusts to your thumb placements.

The first BlackBerry 10 phone will have only a touch screen. RIM has said it will release a version with a physical keyboard soon after that. That’s an area RIM has excelled at, and it’s one reason many BlackBerry users have remained loyal despite temptations to switch.

Another distinguishing feature will be the BlackBerry Balance, which allows two personas on the same device. Businesses can keep their data secure without forcing employees to get a second device for personal use. For instance, IT managers can prevent personal apps from running inside corporate firewalls, but those managers won’t have access to personal data on the device.

With Balance, “you can just switch from work to personal mode,” Papageorgiou said. “I think that is something that will attract a lot of people.”

RIM is also claiming that the BlackBerry 10′s browser will be speedy, even faster than browsers for laptop and desktop computers. According to Papageorgiou, early, independent tests between the BlackBerry 10 and the iPhone support that claim.

Regardless of BlackBerry 10′s advances, though, the new system will face a key shortcoming: It won’t have as many apps written by outside companies and individuals as the iPhone and Android. RIM has said it plans to launch BlackBerry 10 with more than 70,000 apps, including those developed for RIM’s PlayBook tablet, first released in 2011. Even so, that’s just a tenth of what the iPhone and Android offer. Papageorgiou said the initial group will include the most popular ones such as Twitter and Facebook. But RIM will have to persuade others to make a BlackBerry version, when they are already struggling to keep up with both the iPhone and Android.

Like many analysts, Papageorgiou recently upgraded RIM’s stock, but cautions that longtime BlackBerry users will have to get used to a whole new operating system.

He said RIM can be successful if about a third of current subscribers upgrade and if the company can get 4 million new users overseas, especially in countries where the BlackBerry has remained popular. IDC said smartphone shipments grew 44 percent in 2012. If those trends continue, it will be possible for the BlackBerry to grow even if iPhone and Android users don’t switch.

“This doesn’t have to be the best smartphone on the planet to be a success for RIM,” he said. “I think the big question though is, if it fails, is it just too late? Are the other two ecosystems just so advanced that no one can catch up? That’s a big risk.”

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