Ned Wertimer, The Jeffersons' Ralph the Doorman, Dies at 89

By Stephen M. Silverman

01/09/2013 at 11:45 AM EST

The cast of The Jeffersons, with Ned Wertimer (back row, far right)

Everett

TV has lost one of its most familiar character actors: Ned Wertimer, best known as the tip-hungry Ralph the doorman on The Jeffersons, died Jan. 2 at a nursing facility outside Los Angeles, the result of a fall in his Burbank home last November, his manager announced late Tuesday. He was 89.

With more than 100 small-screen credits to his name, as well as Broadway (Bye Bye Birdie) and film (Mame and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End) roles, Wertimer was known to audiences of such shows as Gunsmoke, McMillan and Wife, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, WKRP in Cincinnati and Mork & Mindy, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

But it was on all 11 seasons of The Jeffersons, from 1975 to 1985, that he made his strongest mark.

Born in Buffalo, N.Y., Wertimer held a business degree from Wharton, which he earned after service as a pliot in World War II. But he also got the performing bug while in school, and starting in the late '40s began landing roles on Broadway.

With TV a new medium – and many shows shot live in New York at the time – Wertimer became a pioneer, and used his gift for improv to joke with Lamb Chop, Charlie Horse and the other puppets on The Shari Lewis Show.

By the mid-'60s he moved to Hollywood, as had most of TV production. Besides his acting, he was also heavily involved with his unions, SAG and AFTRA, and served as a longtime member of the board of directors of their Federal Credit Union, according to the Reporter.

Among his survivors, the trade paper also reports, are his wife Skyne, a professor emerita at California State University Long Beach; his sister-in-law Eleanor; and a niece and three nephews.

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Freed Iranians arrive in Damascus after prisoner swap

DAMASCUS/ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Forty-eight Iranians freed by Syrian rebels in exchange for more than 2,000 civilian prisoners held by the Syrian government arrived in central Damascus on Wednesday, a Reuters witness reported.

The Syrian government has not referred to the prisoner swap and the whereabouts of the civilian prisoners was not immediately known.

Opposition groups accuse it of detaining tens of thousands of political prisoners during his 12 years in office and say those numbers have spiked sharply during the 21-month-old civil war.

The Syrian rebel al-Baraa brigade seized the Iranians in early August and initially threatened to kill them, saying they were members of Iran's elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps sent to fight for President Bashar al-Assad.

The Islamic Republic, one of his staunchest allies, denied this, saying they were Shi'ite Muslim pilgrims visiting shrines, and it asked Turkey and Qatar to use their connections with Syrian insurgents to help secure their release.

The freed Iranians arrived at a Damascus hotel in six small buses, looking tired but in good health, each carrying a white flower, and they were welcomed by Iranian Ambassador Mohammad Reza Sheibani. They did not speak to reporters.

Bulent Yildirim, head of the Turkish humanitarian aid agency IHH which helped broker the deal, told Reuters by telephone from Damascus shortly beforehand that the reciprocal release of 2,130 civilian prisoners - most of them Syrian but also including Turks and other foreign citizens - had begun.

Syrian government forces have struck local deals with rebel groups to trade prisoners but the release announced on Wednesday was the first time non-Syrians were freed in an exchange.

The Damascus government has periodically freed hundreds of prisoners during the conflict but always stressed such detainees "do not have blood on their hands."

Given the number of political prisoners held during the course of Assad's rule, missing persons became a key issue when street protests against him first erupted in March 2011.

Turkey is one of Assad's fiercest critics, a strong backer of his opponents and proponent of international intervention. It has denounced Iran's stance during the Syrian uprising, which has killed around 60,000 people according to a U.N. estimate.

Turkey, Gulf Arab states, the United States and European allies support the mainly Sunni Muslim Syrian rebels, while Shi'ite Iran supports Assad, whose Alawite minority is an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam.

A pro-government newspaper said on December 31 that Syrian forces arrested four Turkish fighter pilots who were trying to sneak into a military airport with an armed group in the northern province of Aleppo.

The Damascus-based al-Watan newspaper said the arrests at the Koers military base, 24 km (15 miles) east of Aleppo city, proved "scandalous Turkish involvement" in Syria's crisis.

TURKEY, QATAR INTERVENE

The al-Baraa brigade, part of the umbrella rebel organization, the Free Syrian Army, said in October it would start killing the Iranians unless Assad freed Syrian opposition detainees and stopped shelling civilian areas.

But Qatar, following a request from Iran, urged the rebels not to carry out the threat.

Insurgents fighting to topple Assad accuse Iran of sending fighters from the Revolutionary Guards to help his forces crush the revolt, a charge the Islamic Republic denies.

The rebels now control wide areas of northern and eastern Syria, most of its border crossings with Turkey and a crescent of suburbs around the capital Damascus.

But Assad's government is still firmly entrenched in the capital and controls most of the densely populated southwest, the Mediterranean coast and the main north-south highway.

The IHH has been involved in previous negotiations in recent months to release prisoners, including two Turkish journalists and Syrian citizens, held in Syria.

The humanitarian group came to prominence in May 2010 when Israeli marines stormed its Mavi Marmara aid ship to enforce a naval blockade of the Palestinian-run Gaza Strip and killed nine Turks in clashes with activists on board.

(Additional reporting by Oliver Holmes in Beirut and Marcus George in Dubai; Writing by Nick Tattersall)

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Disney joins JAKKS, LA billionaire to bring toys to life

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Walt Disney toys are sold around the world. Now, children can find them in the cloud as well.

The media giant is teaming up with toy company JAKKS Pacific and Patrick Soon-Shiong, Los Angeles’ wealthiest person, on a new line of toys – with a nifty technological twist designed to link the goodies that kids lug home from the store with Disney’s stable of well-known animated characters.

“DreamPlay“, developed by Soon-Shiong’s NantWorks company, and JAKKS works via an app that can be downloaded on Apple Inc devices like the iPad, or smartphones and tablets running Google Inc Android software. When a device’s camera is trained on any toy specifically designed to work with DreamPlay, it triggers one of thousands of preset animations that appear on the device’s screen and seem to be unfolding in the real world.

With viewers’ eyes locked on the tablet or smartphone screen, fairies appear to glide in and out of buildings, animated critters start playing musical instruments, mythical characters prance on a toy piano’s keyboard.

Disney, which licensed its characters to DreamPlay, and its partners hope that children will take to the new approach, which is intended to extend and expand the life of the toy. But it remains to be seen if the concept will prove to be more than a novelty, and be able to arrest a child’s infamously short attention span.

The three will demo their concept on Tuesday at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, but Reuters got a sneak peak at the technology on Monday.

In a showroom in the 20th floor of a Santa Monica, Calif. building, visitors to JAKKS’ demonstration are treated to an animated version of Sebastian – the red Jamaican crab from Disney’s “Little Mermaid” movie – who pops up onscreen on an iPad seconds after the tablet’s camera is trained on a real-life set of toy bongo drums.

The animated crab pounces on the drums and proceeds to bang out a calypso song onscreen, with both Sebastian and the physical drum set appearing together as if the two shared the same cartoon.

REAL, VIRTUAL INTERACTION

DreamPlay allows not just Sebastian, but also Tinker Bell and a host of other well-loved Disney characters to “interact” virtually with specially made toys via image-recognition software. The software was developed by Soon-Shiong, a former cancer surgeon who created drugs to fight diabetes and breast cancer and then sold the companies that produced them for $ 8.6 billion.

Soon-Shiong teamed with JAKKS, a $ 678 million-a-year toy maker and licensee of toys based on the Princess line of dolls, Marvel action figures and other Disney toys, among others.

The technology works via the “cloud” – images and video clips stored on remote servers that are streamed to kids’ mobiles when the app recognizes a particular item.

“It’s a tremendous way to combine great technology and Disney’s magical story telling to extend the time a child can play with a toy,” said Bob Chapek, president of Disney’s consumer products unit. “Kids find out that playing with their toy doesn’t end when they get it home.”

Since taking over in 2011, Chapek has repositioned Disney’s consumer product unit to expand its use of technology with its toys. DreamPlay is the first of what Chapek says are other products that will twin technology with familiar Disney toys, although he won’t name them.

Down the road, Disney may explore new business models, including selling subscriptions to content created specifically to be used with a particular toy, said Chapek.

The market is hardly certain for a product that requires a child to hold up a phone or tablet, and peer through it to play with a toy that’s stationary. Will children want to see Rapunzel endlessly dancing on the keys of a piano or Rosetta, a fairy from Disney’s “Tinker Bell” movies, fly in and out of a cottage?

“The technology may be great, but no one has proven to me yet that a kid will sit in front of an iPhone or iPad instead of playing with a toy that’s right in front of him,” said Sean McGowan, a toy analyst with Needham & Co who downgraded JAKKS to hold in September along with other toy companies, and then downgraded JAKKS to underperform in October.

JAKKS intends to begin selling DreamPlay versions of toys from the Disney Princess line in October. It will then expand its offerings next year, with international sales starting in 2014, said Stephen Berman, JAKKS President and CEO.

DreamPlay toys will be “a couple of dollars” costlier than the regular version, he says.

Target stores and Toys R Us are among the U.S. retailers who will carry the DreamPlay line, Berman says. Top-Toy, the giant Nordic retailer, has also signed on, while Beijing Hualian Group, which operates supermarkets and department stores across China, is coming onboard as well.

“Kids don’t own iPhones or iPads but they all know how to use them,” says Berman. “Kids have so much more imagination than we do. Imagine recording a bunch of the videos and giving the kid an iPad to play with them on a trip to see the grandparents.”

JAKKS will ramp up marketing for the DreamPlay line, said Berman. DreamPlay toys will be prominently displayed at all the partner-retailers, he added, and shoppers will be encouraged to use their smartphones to view them.

Those that aim smartphones at a boxed Tinker Bell, for instance, may get a start as the fairy from “Peter Pan” literally soars out of the box, leaving an empty package behind.

“Technology can help people live better, work better, play better,” said Soon-Shiong as he showed off the line of toys. “This is the way they will play better.”

(Reporting By Ronald Grover; Edited By Edwin Chan)

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How Eva Mendes Helped Ryan Gosling's Mom Get Red Carpet Ready

Stylewatch
Style News Now

01/08/2013 at 11:00 AM ET

Matt Baron/BEImages; Stacie McChesney/NBC/AP

Ryan Gosling looked smokin’ hot in his sleek Gucci suit at Monday night’s Gangster Squad premiere in Los Angeles. But Gosling’s mom Donna (his date for the evening) almost distracted us from his sexiness, because she looked so darn good, too. So what was her secret?

“My mother’s wearing all my girlfriend’s clothes,” Gosling told E! News of his mom’s ruched dress, paisley trench and statement necklace. “I’m wearing Eva Mendes,” Donna confirmed, adding, “She let me raid her closet.”

Gosling and Mendes, who clicked while filming The Place Beyond the Pines together in 2011, were first spotted holding hands in September of that year on a low-key date at Disneyland. Since then, they’ve taken their romance to New York, Los Angeles, Gosling’s native Canada and Paris, with Mendes first meeting Gosling’s mom on a movie date in N.Y.C. last January.

The stars have managed to remain pretty quiet about their relationship to this point, making Gosling’s use of the world “girlfriend” last night all the more poignant. Tell us: Would you ever lend your partner’s mom your clothes? 

–Kate Hogan

PHOTOS: SEE MORE GLAM RED CARPET LOOKS IN ‘LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT?’

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Report: Death rates from cancer still inching down

WASHINGTON (AP) — Death rates from cancer are continuing to inch down, researchers reported Monday.

Now the question is how to hold onto those gains, and do even better, even as the population gets older and fatter, both risks for developing cancer.

"There has been clear progress," said Dr. Otis Brawley of the American Cancer Society, which compiled the annual cancer report with government and cancer advocacy groups.

But bad diets, lack of physical activity and obesity together wield "incredible forces against this decline in mortality," Brawley said. He warned that over the next decade, that trio could surpass tobacco as the leading cause of cancer in the U.S.

Overall, deaths from cancer began slowly dropping in the 1990s, and Monday's report shows the trend holding. Among men, cancer death rates dropped by 1.8 percent a year between 2000 and 2009, and by 1.4 percent a year among women. The drops are thanks mostly to gains against some of the leading types — lung, colorectal, breast and prostate cancers — because of treatment advances and better screening.

The news isn't all good. Deaths still are rising for certain cancer types including liver, pancreatic and, among men, melanoma, the most serious kind of skin cancer.

Preventing cancer is better than treating it, but when it comes to new cases of cancer, the picture is more complicated.

Cancer incidence is dropping slightly among men, by just over half a percent a year, said the report published by the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Prostate, lung and colorectal cancers all saw declines.

But for women, earlier drops have leveled off, the report found. That may be due in part to breast cancer. There were decreases in new breast cancer cases about a decade ago, as many women quit using hormone therapy after menopause. Since then, overall breast cancer incidence has plateaued, and rates have increased among black women.

Another problem area: Oral and anal cancers caused by HPV, the sexually transmitted human papillomavirus, are on the rise among both genders. HPV is better known for causing cervical cancer, and a protective vaccine is available. Government figures show just 32 percent of teen girls have received all three doses, fewer than in Canada, Britain and Australia. The vaccine was recommended for U.S. boys about a year ago.

Among children, overall cancer death rates are dropping by 1.8 percent a year, but incidence is continuing to increase by just over half a percent a year. Brawley said it's not clear why.

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Wall Street dips as earnings season begins

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks were little changed at the open on Tuesday as an earnings season expected to show sluggish corporate growth gets under way.

Profits in the fourth quarter are seen above the previous quarter's lackluster results, but analysts' current estimates are down sharply from where they were in October. Quarterly earnings are expected to grow by 2.8 percent, according to Thomson Reuters data.

If earnings growth appears to be "less bad" than expected that would translate into a near-term uptick in the market, according to Eric Wiegand, senior portfolio manager at U.S. Bank Wealth Management in New York.

"But I think there's still ample areas for concern," he said, listing policy worries in Washington and uneven economic activity as a result of Superstorm Sandy during last quarter.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> fell 40.65 points, or 0.30 percent, to 13,343.64. The S&P 500 <.spx> lost 4.28 points, or 0.29 percent, to 1,457.61. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> dropped 5.04 points, or 0.16 percent, to 3,093.78.

German data showed industrial orders fell more than forecast in November due to a sharp drop in demand from abroad, reinforcing concerns that Europe's largest economy may have contracted in the fourth quarter of 2012.

Monsanto Co shares rose 3.2 percent to $99.05 after hitting a more than four-year high at $99.99. The world's largest seed company raised its earnings outlook for fiscal 2013 and posted strong first-quarter results.

Education provider Apollo Group and Dow component Alcoa Inc , the largest U.S. aluminum producer, round out the start of earnings season after the closing bell.

Shares of restaurant-chain operator Yum Brands Inc fell 4.6 percent to $64.78 a day after the KFC parent warned sales in China, its largest market, shrank more than expected in the fourth quarter.

London-traded Vodafone shares rose almost 2 percent after its partner in U.S. joint venture Verizon Wireless said it would be "feasible" to buy out the British group. U.S.-traded Vodafone stock fell 1.5 percent.

Sears Holdings shares fell 1.4 percent to $42.31 a day after the company said its chief executive will step down for family health reasons. The U.S. retailer also reported a 1.8 percent decline in quarter-to-date sales at stores open at least a year.

GameStop shares fell 7.1 percent to $23 after it reported sales for the holiday season and cut its guidance.

(Reporting by Rodrigo Campos; Editing by Nick Zieminski)

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Tunisia frees man held over attack on U.S. consulate in Libya

Tunis (Reuters) - Tunisia has freed, for lack of evidence, a Tunisian man who had been suspected of involvement in an Islamist militant attack in Libya last year in which the U.S. ambassador was killed, his lawyer said on Tuesday.

Ali Harzi was one of two Tunisians named in October by the Daily Beast website as having been detained in Turkey over the violence in which Christopher Stevens, the U.S. ambassador to Libya, and three other American officials were killed.

"The judge decided to free Harzi and he is free now," lawyer Anouar Awled Ali told Reuters. "The release came in response to our request to free him for lack of evidence and after he underwent the hearing with American investigators as a witness in the case."

A Tunisian justice ministry spokesman confirmed the release of Harzi but declined to elaborate.

A month ago, Harzi refused to be interviewed by visiting U.S. FBI investigators over the September 11 assault on the U.S. consulate in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi.

The Daily Beast reported that shortly after the attacks began, Harzi posted an update on an unspecified social media site about the fighting.

It said Harzi was on his way to Syria when he was detained in Turkey at the behest of U.S. authorities, and that he was affiliated with a militant group in North Africa.

(Reporting by Tarek Amara; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

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Kuwaiti journalist jailed for Twitter ‘insults’

KUWAIT CITY (AP) — A Kuwait newspaper says an online journalist has been sentenced to two years in prison for posts deemed “insulting” to the Gulf nation’s ruler — the second such ruling this week.

The decision reflects a widening social media crackdown across the Gulf Arab states to quell perceived political dissent.

Kuwait’s pro-government Al Watan newspaper reported Monday that Ayyad al-Harbi, a journalist at news website Sabr, was charged with posting Twitter messages considered offensive to the nation’s Western-allied emir. No other details were given.

Kuwait, which hosts thousands of U.S. troops, has been gripped by months of political unrest led by anti-government groups, including Islamist factions.

On Sunday, Kuwaiti media said a social media activist also has received a two-year prison term for Twitter posts that allegedly insulted the emir.

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Brad Pitt Hints at Return to China - Despite Being Banned

01/07/2013 at 11:35 AM EST

Brad Pitt as Austrian mountaineer in Seven Years in Tibet

David Appleby/AP

Looks like Brad Pitt is about to say "Ni hao" to China ... in person.

The actor – who was reportedly banned from China following the government's disapproval of his 1997 film Seven Years in Tibet, which portrayed harsh Chinese rule in Tibet – has hinted at a return to the country. And he took to social media to do it.

Via China's version of Twitter, called Sina Weibo, the actor posted from his verified account, "It is the truth. Yup, I'm coming ..."

The surprising statement is the actor's only "Tweet" on the social network, but it generated more than 24,000 comments from his nearly 160,000 followers.

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Wall Street falls after five-year high, earnings in focus

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks fell on Monday as traders cashed in recent gains that lifted the S&P 500 to a five-year high on Friday and awaited Tuesday's start of the fourth-quarter earnings season.

Last week was the best for U.S. stocks in more than a year as a budget deal and economic data boosted investor confidence.

Investors will likely turn their attention to the fourth-quarter earnings season that kicks off this week. Earnings are expected to be only slightly better than the third-quarter's lackluster results and analysts' current estimates are down sharply from what they were in October.

"We have a cautious market entering fourth-quarter earnings season," said Peter Cardillo, chief market economist at Rockwell Global Capital in New York. "I think it's going to be a disappointing one this time around."

Financial shares will be in focus a day after global regulators known as the Basel Committee gave banks four more years and greater flexibility to build up cash buffers, scaling back moves that aimed to help prevent another financial crisis.

"Basel giving banks four more years to get their act together will be good" for stocks, Cardillo said.

Bank of America shares rose 0.5 percent to $12.17 after hitting their highest since May 2011 as it reached a settlement with Fannie Mae worth roughly $11.6 billion to resolve agency mortgage repurchase claims.

The bank also entered into agreements with Nationstar Mortgage Holdings and Walter Investment Management to sell about $306 billion of residential mortgage servicing rights.

Nationstar rose 16.8 percent to $38.80 and Walter Investment added 7 percent to $47.13.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> fell 63.59 points, or 0.47 percent, to 13,371.62. The S&P 500 <.spx> dropped 6.53 points, or 0.45 percent, to 1,459.94. The Nasdaq Composite <.ixic> lost 12.56 points, or 0.41 percent, to 3,089.09.

Walt Disney Co started an internal cost cutting review several weeks ago that may include layoffs at its studio and other units, three people with knowledge of the effort told Reuters. Disney shares fell 1.4 percent to $51.46.

Video-streaming service Netflix Inc shares gained 4 percent to $99.78 after it said it will carry previous seasons of some popular shows produced by Time Warner's Warner Bros Television.

Amazon.com shares hit their highest price ever at $269.22 after Morgan Stanley raised its rating on the stock. Shares were up 3.6 percent at $268.50.

Roche's chairman was quoted as saying the Swiss pharmaceutical group is no longer considering a bid for the U.S. gene-sequencing company Illumina . Illumina shares were off 8 percent at $50.20.

Major U.S. technology companies could miss estimates for fourth-quarter earnings as budget worries likely led some corporate clients to tighten their belts last month.

(Reporting by Rodrigo Campos; Editing by Kenneth Barry)

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