Beyonce admits Inauguration Day pre-recording

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Beyonce answered critics of her Inauguration Day performance the best way she could — with another sterling performance of the national anthem.

The difference?

On Thursday, it was live: She admitted during her Super Bowl news conference that when she performed for President Barack Obama and the nation, she decided to sing to a prerecorded track because she didn’t have time to practice. Calling herself a self-proclaimed “perfectionist,” she said wanted the day to go off without a hitch.

“I practice until my feet bleed and I did not have time to rehearse with the orchestra,” she said, adding that she was also emotional that day. “Due to no proper sound check, I did not feel comfortable taking a risk. It was about the president and the inauguration, and I wanted to make him and my country proud, so I decided to sing along with my pre-recorded track, which is very common in the music industry. And I’m very proud of my performance.”

It was the superstar’s first public comments on what has become known as “Beyonce-gate.”

Her rendition of the anthem was critically praised, but was scrutinized less than a day later when a representative from the U.S. Marine Band said Beyonce was lip-syncing — merely mouthing the words to a pre-recorded track — and the band’s accompanying performance was taped. Shortly after, the group backed off its initial statement and said no one could tell if she was singing live or not.

With the controversy growing each day, and everyone from politicians to other entertainers weighing in, the inauguration performance threatened to overshadow her planned Super Bowl halftime show. So the 31-year-old, wearing a tight, cream mini-dress, addressed the issue as soon as she took to the podium Thursday afternoon.

She asked everyone to stand, and, with an image of the American flag behind her, performed a live rendition of the national anthem that mirrored the one on Inauguration Day. After, she said with a laugh: “Any questions?”

Despite her performance, there were.

When pressed about whether any sound was coming from her voice when she sang for the president, she said she was singing along to the track and not mimicking (though it’s unclear how audible her voice was). And when asked if she would be singing live at the Super Bowl, she said: “I will absolutely be singing live.

“This is what I was born to do.”

She added later: “I always sing live. … The inauguration was unfortunately a time where I could not rehearse with the orchestra, actually because I was rehearsing for the Super Bowl. So that was always the plan.”

Beyonce also got a chance to talk more in detail about the reason why she was in New Orleans — to perform at the halftime show. Calling it one of her career aspirations, she said when she arrived at the Superdome, she was so moved by the experience she took her shoes off and ran on the field, taking in the history at the famed venue.

“It really makes me emotional,” she said. “When I am no longer here, it’s what they’re gonna show.”

Beyonce has teased photos and video of herself preparing for the show, which will perhaps be the biggest audience of her career. Last year, Madonna’s halftime performance was the most-watched Super Bowl halftime performance ever, with an average of 114 million viewers. It garnered more viewers than the game itself, which was the most-watched U.S. TV event in history.

But she would not give anything more away about the performance. While a Destiny’s Child reunion was shot down by Michelle Williams, who is starring in a production of “Fela!”, the third Destiny’s Child member, Kelly Rowland, is in town. Beyonce laughed off questions of whether Rowland or Beyonce’s husband, Jay-Z, would join her on stage.

“I can’t give you any details, sorry,” she said.

She also would not reveal her set list, though acknowledged she was having a hard time trying to “condense a career into 12 minutes.”

Before the news conference, Beyonce’s “Life is But A Dream” was shown to the media. The documentary about the star’s life features her talking in-depth about intimate details of her life, including suffering a miscarriage; it will air on HBO on Feb. 16.

In it, she also reveals more of her 1-year-old daughter Blue Ivy, whom she called her inspiration.

“I feel like my daughter changed me and changed my life and has given me so much purpose,” she said. She added that she was counting down until 9 p.m. Sunday, when her performance would be over — and she could be reunited with Blue Ivy.

___

Follow Nekesa Mumbi Moody at http://www.twitter.com

Entertainment News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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The New Old Age Blog: Caregiving, Laced With Humor

“My grandmother, she’s not a normal person. She’s like a character when she speaks. Every day she’s playing like she’s an actress.”

These are words of love, and they come from Sacha Goldberger, a French photographer who has turned his grandmother, 93-year-old Frederika Goldberger, into a minor European celebrity.

In the photos, you can see the qualities grandson and grandmother have in common: a wicked sense of humor, an utter lack of pretension and a keen taste for theatricality and the absurd.

This isn’t an ordinary caregiving relationship, not by a long shot. But Sacha, 44 years old and unmarried, is deeply devoted to this spirited older relation who has played the role of Mamika (“my little grandmother,” translated from her native Hungarian) in two of his books and a photography exhibition currently underway in Paris.

As for Frederika, “I like everything that my grandson does,” she said in a recent Skype conversation from her apartment, which also serves as Sacha’s office. “I hate not to do anything. Here, with my grandson, I have the feeling I am doing something.”

Their unusual collaboration began after Frederika retired from her career as a textile consultant at age 80 and fell into a funk.

“I was very depressed because I lived for working,” she told me in our Skype conversation.

Sacha had long dreamed of creating what he calls a “Woody Allen-like Web site with a French Jewish humor” and he had an inspiration. What if he took one of the pillars of that type of humor, a French man’s relationship with his mother and grandmother, and asked Frederika to play along with some oddball ideas?

This Budapest-born baroness, whose family had owned the largest textile factory in Hungary before World War II, was a natural in front of the camera, assuming a straight-faced, imperturbable comic attitude whether donning a motorcycle helmet and goggles, polishing her fingernails with a gherkin, wearing giant flippers on the beach, lighting up a banana, or dressed up as a Christmas tree with a golden star on her head. (All these photos and more appear in “Mamika: My Mighty Little Grandmother,” published in the United States last year.)

“It was like a game for us, deciding what crazy thing we were going to do next, how we were going to keep people from being bored,” said Sacha, who traces his close relationship with his grandmother to age 14, when she taught him how to drive and often picked him up at school. “Making pictures was a very good excuse to spend time together.”

“He thought it was very funny to put a costume on me,” said Frederika. “And I liked it.”

People responded enthusiastically, and before long Sacha had cooked up what ended up becoming the most popular character role for Frederika: Super Mamika, outfitted in a body-hugging costume, tights, a motorcycle helmet and a flowing cape.

His grandmother was a super hero of sorts, because she had helped save 10 people from the Nazis during World War II, said Sacha. He also traced inspiration to Stan Lee, a Jewish artist who created the X-Men, The Hulk and the Fantastic Four for Marvel comics. “I wanted to ask what happens to these super heroes when they get old in these photographs with my grandmother.”

Lest this seem a bit trivial to readers of this blog, consider this passage from Sacha’s introduction to “Mamika: My Might Little Grandmother”:

In a society where youth is the supreme value; where wrinkles have to be camouflaged; where old people are hidden as soon as they become cumbersome, where, for lack of time or desire, it is easier to put our elders in hospices rather than take care of them, I wanted to show that happiness in aging was also possible.

In our Skype conversation, Sacha confessed to anxiety about losing his grandmother, and said, “I always was very worried about what would happen if my grandmother disappeared. Because she is exceptional.”

“I am not normal,” Frederika piped up at his side, her face deeply wrinkled, her short hair beautifully coiffed, seemingly very satisfied with herself.

“So, making these pictures to me is the best thing that could happen,” Sacha continued, “because now my grandma is immortal and it seems everyone knows her. I am giving to everybody in the world a bit of my grandma.”

This wonderful expression of caring and creativity has expanded my view of intergenerational relations in this new old age. What about you?

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DealBook: Dutch Government Takes Control of SNS Reaal

The Dutch government took control of one of the country’s biggest financial institutions, SNS Reaal, after the troubled company failed to find a private-sector buyer.

The Dutch finance minister, Jeroen Dijsselbloem, said the government would spend 3.7 billion euros, or $5 billion, in taxpayer money to clean up the bank, which has struggled for years with unprofitable real estate loans. The government will also require the country’s top three banks — ING, ABN Amro and Rabobank — to contribute 1 billion euros next year in a one-time payment, he said.

The moves comes as Europe continues to deal with a sluggish economic and debt problems. Last year, Spain took over Bankia, a mortgage lender also hurt by property deals.

Problems at SNS Reaal, which is based in Utrecht, had intensified in the last two weeks as depositors began losing faith, fearing talks with potential buyers would fail. The company had been reportedly negotiating possible investments with CVC Capital Partners and other funds in the hope of averting disaster.

Mr. Dijsselbloem, the finance minister, said in a statement that the takeover ‘‘was made necessary by the extreme situation’’ of the bank and the ‘‘serious and immediate threat posed by that situation to the stability of the financial system.’’

Shareholders and subordinated bondholders of SNS Reaal will be wiped out, effective immediately, Mr. Dijsselbloem said. The holders of senior debt will be repaid and depositors will not lose their money.

Three top executives of SNS Reaal said in a statement that they were stepping down, as ‘‘they do not want to and cannot take responsibility for the nationalization scenario.’’ The three — Ronald Latenstein, the bank’s chief executive, Rob Zwartendijk, the chairman, and Ference Lamp, the chief financial officer — said they had done ‘‘everything in their power’’ to avoid a bailout.

‘‘The persons in question do not advocate the chosen solution, but respect the choice of the Ministry of Finance,’’ according to a statement.

The announcement is the latest in a spate of recent bad news about European banks. On Thursday, Deutsche Bank posted a surprise fourth-quarter loss of 2.2 billion euros, and problems continue at Monti dei Paschi di Siena, which received a bailout from the Italian government last year.

The case of SNS Reaal also adds urgency to efforts to set up procedures to identify and wind down terminally ill banks in a way that does not burden taxpayers.

The move also signaled the transfer of another of the Netherlands’ biggest financial institutions into state hands. The Dutch business of ABN Amro was nationalized in October 2008 after the collapse of Lehman Brothers sent the world financial system into shock.

ABN Amro had been taken over and split up by Royal Bank of Scotland, Fortis and Santander in a 2007 deal that has since come to epitomize the worst excesses of the credit bubble. Both Royal Bank of Scotland and Fortis, once the biggest Belgian financial house, were laid low by the debt burdens they took on for the ABN Amro deal when the credit crisis struck.

The ABN Amro deal also marred SNS Reaal, which needed a bailout in 2008 after it acquired the broken-up lender’s property business. That bailout has not been fully repaid.

As part of the deal announced Friday, the state will forgive 800 million euros of the unpaid bailout loans, inject 2.2 billion euros into SNS and write off 700 million euros from the bank’s property portfolio. ING estimated that its share of the cost of bailing out SNS Reaal would come to 300 million to 350 million euros, but said the impact on its finances would be limited.

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This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 1, 2013

An earlier version of the article incorrectly spelled the name of the nationalized company. It is SNS Reaal, not SNS Reall.

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Hagel to stress opposition to a nuclear Iran in Senate testimony

WASHINGTON -- President Obama’s nominee for secretary of Defense, former Sen. Chuck Hagel, will stress at his confirmation hearing Thursday that he opposes letting Iran acquire nuclear weapons and will focus on developing military options to set back Tehran’s program, according to a U.S. official familiar with his planned testimony.

It will be Hagel’s first chance to explain his views publicly since his selection last month ignited fierce opposition from several former Republican colleagues and pro-Israel groups. They contend Hagel was not tough enough on Iran during his two terms as a GOP senator from Nebraska, and warn he might not push for a U.S. attack on Iran if one is needed.

“He’s going to be very clear that he fully supports the president’s policy of preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapon,” said the U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because Hagel had not yet testified. “His job as secretary of Defense is to ensure that the military is prepared for any contingency, and he believes all options should be on the table, including military options.”

Hagel’s willingness to back the use of force against Iran is likely to be the key area of questioning during what is expected to be a daylong hearing with the Senate Armed Services Committee.

After a shaky start, Hagel’s nomination has picked up increasing support from Democrats, and the first Republican, Sen. Thad Cochran of Mississippi, announced Monday that he would vote for Hagel.

White House officials say they expect more Republicans to back Hagel and predict that when the full Senate votes, he will win more than the 60 votes necessary to avoid the threat of a filibuster.

Some pro-Israel groups have greeted Hagel’s nomination with opposition or lukewarm support. Even Democrats who back Hagel are determined to press him for greater clarity on how long diplomatic pressure and sanctions on Iran should be given to work before a military strike becomes necessary.

Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), chairman of the committee, said “most Democrats are leaning very strongly” for Hagel, including himself. “That doesn’t mean I don’t have questions,” he added.

Many Republicans have not forgiven Hagel for publicly criticizing the George W. Bush administration for its handling of the war in Iraq, and they are likely to be considerably harsher in tone.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), speaking on the Senate floor Wednesday afternoon, said Hagel’s nomination had “already done damage to the United States’ credibility” in dealing with Iran.

“I realize that Sen. Hagel is now repudiating many of his past actions and statements,” he added. “But we’ve seen this before.”

Like Obama, Hagel has long called for a mix of negotiations and international economic sanctions to pressure Iran, insisting that military action should be considered only as a last resort. As he has sought support for his nomination, Hagel has emphasized that unilateral U.S. sanctions and even military action could be required.

“If Iran continues to flout its international obligations, it should continue to face severe and growing consequences,” Hagel said in response to written questions from the committee. ‘‘While there is time and space for diplomacy, backed by pressure, the window is closing. Iran needs to demonstrate it is prepared to negotiate seriously.’’

Ironically, the pressure on Hagel to come out strongly for a possible military strike against Iran comes as some Israeli officials, who have long pressed the Obama administration to consider a preemptive attack, say Iran appears to have backed away, at least for now, from what the West believes is a program to develop a nuclear bomb.

Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), the top Republican on the panel, said last week that he and Hagel were “too philosophically opposed on the issues" for Inhofe to support his nomination, citing Hagel’s support for defense budget cuts and for cutting nuclear stockpiles. Inhofe was one of three Republicans who voted Tuesday against confirming Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) as secretary of State.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Tuesday declined to rule out the possibility that Republicans would require a 60-vote threshold for confirming Hagel.

“Sen. Hagel hasn't had his hearing yet, and I think it's too early to predict the conditions under which his nomination will be considered,” McConnell said.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) has said he would block Hagel’s nomination from coming to a vote unless the current Pentagon chief, Leon E. Panetta, agrees to testify about the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. compound in Benghazi, Libya. A White House official downplayed the possibility that Hagel’s nomination could be blocked, saying negotiations were underway to let Panetta testify.

david.cloud@latimes.com

michael.memoli@latimes.com

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Microsoft, Yahoo Among Open Source 'Rookies of the Year'

Each year, Black Duck unveils what it calls the Rookie Open Source Projects of the Year. The California company sells software for managing open source projects, and its annual list is a way of promoting both itself and the wider open source software community. But the list is also good reading.

This year, Microsoft made a surprise appearance, as did Yahoo, which fell down a bit in terms of developer relations last year, thanks to heavy layoffs and its widely panned patents policy.

Black Duck maintains extensive statistics on open source projects, running a site called Ohloh, which tracks the activity and popularity of just about every open source project the company can find. According to Black Duck, the Rookie of the Year projects were chosen based on a simple weighted scoring system that factored in “project activity, commits pace, project team attributes, and other factors.” Each project was introduced in 2012.

The winners are:

• Ansible –a radically simple configuration management, deployment, and ad-hoc task execution tool.


• Chaplin.js – an architecture for JavaScript applications using the Backbone.js library, it provides a lightweight and flexible structure that features well-proven design patterns and best practices.


• GPUImage –an iOS library that lets you apply GPU-accelerated filters and other effects to images, live camera video, and movies.


• Hammer.js –a JavaScript library for multi-touch gestures, Hammer.js enables gestures for the web on mobile devices.


• InaSAFE – produces realistic natural hazard impact scenarios for better planning, preparedness and response activities.


• Yahoo! Mojito – a JavaScript MVC framework for mobile and Web applications running on client and server.


• Sidekiq – provides simple, efficient message processing for Ruby.


• Syte –simple but powerful packaged personal site that has social integrations like Twitter, GitHub, Tumblr, WordPress, Stack Overflow and more.


• Twitter Bower – a package manager for the web that lets you easily install assets such as images, CSS, JS and manages dependencies for you.


• TypeScript – a language for application-scale JavaScript development, providing a typed superset of JavaScript that compiles to plain JavaScript.


• Honorable Mention: DCPUToolChain – an assembler, compiler, emulator and Integrated Development Environment for the DCPU-16 virtual CPU.

The list reflects the broader trends in modern programming, especially the growing need for mobile and cross-platform development.

Several of the projects deal with extending or enhancing JavaScript. JavaScript was originally as a simple scripting language for the Netscape browser. Now developers are building much larger applications that run both in the browser and on the server using JavaScript, and relying on it to build mobile applications.

For example, Yahoo Mojito is part of a growing family of JavaScript frameworks that help developers to build complex, desktop-like applications. AJAX-heavy web applications like Google Docs have changed user expectations for responsiveness and interactivity on the web. With drameworks like Mojito, Meteor, Derby and Flatiron, developers can create code that runs in both the browser and on the server using the Node.js platform.

Microsoft’s TypeScript was released last October and is a JavaScript-like language that is translated into JavaScript before being run. It adds a few additional features, such as static typing, that are helpful for developers trying to build larger applications. Its goals are similar to Google’s Dart programming language, but is much less of a departure from JavaScript.

Getting outside the tech community bubble, InaSAFE is a project backed by the Indonesian Disaster Management Agency, the Australia-Indonesia Facility for Disaster Reduction and the World Bank. It’s a plugin for the open source GIS application Quantum GIS designed to help prepare for the impacts of floods, earthquakes, or tsunami. It crunches data from several sources, including scientists and local governments to model flooding and other scenarios, allowing governments and NGOs to make evacuation plans and other preparations.

Not all of the winners had big organizations behind them. Syte was created by developer/designer/entrepreneur Rodrigo Neri to fill a gap he saw in site building applications. “I know a lot of people that should have a personal web site but they don’t,” he wrote on his own Syte-based blog. “Some of them are developers and some are designers, both that should be capable of putting one together but they don’t.”

There are already thousands of ways to build a website, open source or otherwise, yet Syte was successful by filling a gap that was still open. “I think what made Syte take off was the ability to integrate with most of your social networks which was a concept only a few were doing at the time,” Neri says. The platform allows users to use existing tools, such as Tumblr or WordPress.com to manage a blog, but brings everything together in a central location, much like the hosted service About.me.

Neri also has some thoughts on how other new open source projects can succeed. “I feel that building good documentation on how to utilize an open source project is the key for a project success,” he says. “You want to make sure that when people go download your project they can quickly recreate it for their needs.”

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Justin Timberlake launches music comeback with Grammy performance

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Justin Timberlake, making his pop music comeback with a new single and album, will perform at next month’s Grammy Awards for the first time in four years, Grammy organizers said on Wednesday.

Timberlake, 31, will take the stage at the music industry‘s biggest night in Los Angeles on February 10, ahead of the scheduled March release of his first album since 2006.

“The 20/20 Experience” marks Timberlake’s return to music after several years in which he has focused more on acting and business ventures, including a clothing line and a partnership in social networking site Myspace.

At the Grammy Awards ceremony and show, Timberlake will join performers and country music nominees Miranda Lambert and Dierks Bentley, singers Taylor Swift and Carrie Underwood, and bands Mumford & Sons and FUN.

Elton John will also duet with rising British singer Ed Sheeran, and the Grammy ceremony will be hosted by rapper LL Cool J. Other performers will be announced in the next 10 days.

(Reporting by Jill Serjeant; Editing by Will Dunham)

Music News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Well: Waiting for Alzheimer's to Begin

My gray matter might be waning. Then again, it might not be. But I swear that I can feel memories — as I’m making them — slide off a neuron and into a tangle of plaque. I steel myself for those moments to come when I won’t remember what just went into my head.

I’m not losing track of my car keys, which is pretty standard in aging minds. Nor have I ever forgotten to turn off the oven after use, common in menopausal women. I can always find my car in the parking lot, although lots of “normal” folk can’t.

Rather, I suddenly can’t remember the name of someone with whom I’ve worked for years. I cover by saying “sir” or “madam” like the Southerner I am, even though I live in Vermont and grown people here don’t use such terms. Better to think I’m quirky than losing my faculties. Sometimes I’ll send myself an e-mail to-do reminder and then, seconds later, find myself thrilled to see a new entry pop into my inbox. Oops, it’s from me. Worse yet, a massage therapist kicked me out of her practice for missing three appointments. I didn’t recall making any of them. There must another Nancy.

Am I losing track of me?

Equally worrisome are the memories increasingly coming to the fore. Magically, these random recollections manage to circumnavigate my imagined build-up of beta-amyloid en route to delivering vivid images of my father’s first steps down his path of forgetting. He was the same age I am now, which is 46.

“How old are you?” I recall him asking me back then. Some years later, he began calling me every Dec. 28 to say, “Happy birthday,” instead of on the correct date, Dec. 27. The 28th had been his grandmother’s birthday.

The chasms were small at first. Explainable. Dismissible. When he crossed the street without looking both ways, we chalked it up to his well-cultivated, absent-minded professor persona. But the chasms grew into sinkholes, and eventually quicksand. When we took him to get new pants one day, he kept trying on the same ones he wore to the store.

“I like these slacks,” he’d say, over and over again, as he repeatedly pulled his pair up and down.

My dad died of Alzheimer’s last April at age 73 — the same age at which his father succumbed to the same disease. My dad ended up choosing neurology as his profession after witnessing the very beginning of his own dad’s forgetting.

Decades later, grandfather’s atrophied brain found its way into a jar on my father’s office desk. Was it meant to be an ever-present reminder of Alzheimer’s effect? Or was it a crystal ball sent to warn of genetic fate? My father the doctor never said, nor did he ever mention, that it was his father’s gray matter floating in that pool of formaldehyde.

Using the jarred brain as a teaching tool, my dad showed my 8-year-old self the difference between frontal and temporal lobes. He also pointed out how brains with Alzheimer’s disease become smaller, and how wide grooves develop in the cerebral cortex. But only after his death — and my mother’s confession about whose brain occupied that jar — did I figure out that my father was quite literally demonstrating how this disease runs through our heads.

Has my forgetting begun?

I called my dad’s neurologist. To find out if I was in the earliest stages of Alzheimer’s, he would have to look for proteins in my blood or spinal fluid and employ expensive neuroimaging tests. If he found any indication of onset, the only option would be experimental trials.

But documented confirmation of a diseased brain would break my still hopeful heart. I’d walk around with the scarlet letter “A” etched on the inside of my forehead — obstructing how I view every situation instead of the intermittent clouding I currently experience.

“You’re still grieving your father,” the doctor said at the end of our call. “Sadness and depression affect the memory, too. Let’s wait and see.”

It certainly didn’t help matters that two people at my father’s funeral made some insensitive remarks.

“Nancy, you must be scared to death.”

“Is it hard knowing the same thing probably will happen to you?”

Maybe the real question is what to do when the forgetting begins. My dad started taking 70 supplements a day in hopes of saving his mind. He begged me to kill him if he wound up like his father. He retired from his practice and spent all day in a chair doing puzzles. He stopped making new memories in an all-out effort to preserve the ones he already had.

Maybe his approach wasn’t the answer.

Just before his death — his brain a fraction of its former self — my father managed to offer up a final lesson. I was visiting him in the memory-care center when he got a strange look on his face. I figured it was gas. But then his eyes lit up and a big grin overtook him, and he looked right at me and said, “Funny how things turn out.”

An unforgettable moment?

I can only hope.

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Nancy Stearns Bercaw is a writer in Vermont. Her book, “Brain in a Jar: A Daughter’s Journey Through Her Father’s Memory,” will be published in April 2013 by Broadstone.

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DealBook: Deutsche Bank Posts Surprise $3 Billion Loss

FRANKFURT – Deutsche Bank, Germany’s largest lender, reported a surprise net loss of 2.2 billion euros ($3 billion) for the fourth quarter of 2012 on Thursday, hurt by the diminished value of some assets as well as costs related to numerous legal proceedings.

The results underline the task ahead for Jürgen Fitschen and Anshu Jain, the co- chief executives who took over the bank less than seven months ago and have declared their intention to deal more severely with the legacy of the financial crisis.

“This is the most comprehensive reconfiguration of Deutsche Bank in recent times,” Mr. Fitschen and Mr. Jain said in a statement. They warned that “deliberate but sometimes uncomfortable change” lay ahead, adding that “this journey will take years not months.”

Deutsche Bank avoided a government bailout during the financial crisis, but has faced numerous lawsuits and official investigations, including a tax-evasion inquiry that led to a raid on company headquarters last month by German police.

“Significant” charges related to legal proceedings contributed to the loss, Deutsche Bank said, without providing specifics.

Analysts consider the bank to be among the most highly leveraged in Europe, and bank management has promised to reduce the number of risky activities, a process that sometimes requires it to recognize the reduced value of assets and book losses.

Despite the loss, Deutsche Bank said fourth-quarter revenue rose 14 percent, to 7.9 billion euros, from the period a year earlier. The bank also said it had increased the amount of capital held as insurance against risk, and reduced the amount of money it needed to set aside to cover possible bad loans. The bank said it had reduced total employee pay to the lowest level in years.

The bank had warned in December that it would incur major charges in the quarter, without saying how much.

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South Korea successfully launches satellite into orbit

SEOUL -- In danger of falling behind in the space race on the Korean peninsula, the South Korean government announced Wednesday that it had successfully launched a rocket into space.

Pressure had been mounting ever since mid-December when communist arch-rival North Korea managed to launch a multi-stage rocket and put a satellite into orbit.

South Korea's Satellite Launch Vehicle-1, also known as Naro, blasted off at 4 p.m. local time from a space center in Jeolla province on the southwestern coast.

"Five hundred forty seconds after the launch, Naro successfully separated the satellite," South Korean Science and Technology Minister Lee Joo-ho said at a news briefing Wednesday. "After analyzing various data, we have confirmed that [the satellite] has been successfully put into orbit." 

Officials said the launch made South Korea the 13th country to get a satellite into orbit from its own territory. Iran on Monday announced that it had launched a monkey into space using its own technology.

The sky was clear and the weather had warmed up on Wednesday afternoon at the space center, where about 3,000 people gathered to observe the latest attempt to launch Naro. The crowd excitedly cheered and waved national flags during the countdown.

Two attempts to launch a space vehicle, in 2009 and 2010, ended in failures. The third attempt was to take place in October but was delayed due to a damaged rubber seal that caused a fuel leak. The next try came in November, but it was canceled 17 minutes before the rocket set to be launched due to a technical glitch.

The failures looked all the more embarrassing after the successful Dec. 12 launch of the Unha-3 rocket by North Korea, which has an economy less than one-twentieth the size of South Korea's. What North Koreans have dubbed a "peaceful satellite launch" was a part of the legacy of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, who died in December 2011.

The international community condemned North Korea as its rocket launch was suspected to be a cover for a test of ballistic missile technology.

Lee Sang-ryul, a South Korean scientist with the Korea Aerospace Research Institute, said the launches seven weeks apart were not comparable because the South Korean objective was purely scientific.

"The exterior of Unha-3 and Naro seems to be very much alike. It is about the same weight, the shapes are similar, and the fact that it puts a satellite in the orbit is the same. However, I believe North Korea's purpose is not to develop a satellite launch vehicle but a weapons development," South Korean television quoted Lee as saying Wednesday.

North Korea said earlier this month it would also conduct a nuclear test and that "the various satellites and long-range rockets that we will fire ... are targeted at the United States, the archenemy of the Korean people."

Independent scientists say the North Korean satellite was not a complete success because its transmitter failed during the launch, but that it achieved a reasonably accurate orbit.

"Most countries when they launch their first satellite don't get too close," Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics said in a recent interview.

He added that South Koreans shouldn't feel that North Korea has beaten them.

"It is difficult, but it is basically high-tech plumbing," McDowell said. "It is not as sophisticated as creating the industrial base to make a Samsung monitor."

South Korea's Naro program began in 2002 with the help of Russian technology. Before Wednesday's launch, the country had sent about 10 satellites into space, but they were all launched from foreign rockets overseas.

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-- Barbara Demick reported from Beijing.

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Even After Lackland Scandal, Military Still Isn't Fixing Its Sexual Abuse Epidemic

The Pentagon has talked a lot about putting a stop to sexual abuse and harassment in the military, including abuse carried out by general officers. Yet a new report from the investigative arm of Congress finds it’s mostly that — talk. It catalogs how the military still hasn’t fixed a host of systemic obstacles that contribute to sexual assault and make it less likely for survivors to get help.

According to a report released Wednesday by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), while the Pentagon has made some progress in recent years at trying to stop sexual abuse, treatment isn’t always available. Medical first-responders are undertrained and not always aware of services available for survivors. Perhaps worse, the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs — which oversees the military’s health resources — hasn’t “established guidance,” required by the Pentagon, “for the treatment of injuries stemming from sexual assault.”

Among those guidelines: standardizing procedures for collecting evidence; providing specialized medical care; and, perhaps most alarming, keeping the identities of survivors private. Instead, sexual assault survivors within the military have to navigate a hodge-podge of different standards between branches — even at individual bases. “These inconsistencies,” the report states, can “erode servicemembers’ confidence. As a consequence, sexual assault victims who want to keep their case confidential may be reluctant to seek medical care.”

All these systemic obstacles to ending sexual abuse persist despite endless pledges from Pentagon officials to finally do away with one of the military’s most glaring sources of injustice. “If we don’t take steps to deal with it — if we don’t exercise better leadership to confront it — it’ll get worse,” Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told NBC News in September. “In a May 2012 letter to military commanders signed by Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the chiefs stated: “As military professionals we must fully understand the destructive nature of these acts, lead our focused efforts to prevent them, and promote positive command climates and environments that reinforce mutual respect, trust and confidence.”

The Pentagon has had an overarching sexual-abuse policy since 2005 which “calls for sexual assault prevention … to be gender-responsive, culturally competent, and recovery-oriented; and for an immediate, trained sexual assault response capability to be available in deployed locations,” according to the report. But the Pentagon has fallen short of establishing and enforcing policies that are more specific, and trained first-responders may not always be available or trained properly to respond.

A huge problem is confidentiality — a reoccurring issue in sexual assault cases where victims may fear retaliation for reporting the crimes. First, sexual assault cases can be reported in the military using two ways: unrestricted reports and restricted reports. For an unrestricted report, a survivor reports an assault to superiors and military law enforcement, who — in theory — begin an investigation, and provide medical care and counseling. A restricted report, on the other hand, allows a survivor to confidentially inform superiors about the assault without sparking a criminal investigation. The survivor, according to military policy, should still receive medical care, but personally identifying information will be kept anonymous.

But that’s not always the case. At one unidentified military installation, the installation’s medical policies “did not … offer health care providers alternative procedures for documenting and reporting medical issues associated with restricted reports of sexual assault,” the GAO finds. And across different bases, medical personnel were being given conflicting instructions about how to report the assaults from different levels of command. These contradictory policies “created confusion for health care providers regarding the extent of their responsibility to maintain the confidentiality of victims who choose to make a restricted report of sexual assault.”

And there’s no single method for victims to access medical and mental health care across the military branches, according to the GAO. The Army requires each brigade “to deploy with a health care provider who is trained to conduct a forensic examination, whereas the Air Force deploys trained health care providers based on the medical needs at specific locations.” The Navy doesn’t require ships to have a sailor aboard who is trained to conduct forensic examinations, instead preferring a policy of transferring victims to ships that do — or onto shore. If a trained examiner is out of reach, the policy is for medical providers to “do their best … using the instructions provided with examination kits.”

Meanwhile, the military’s medical first responders are “still unsure of the health care services available to sexual assault victims at their respective locations.” According to the report, there’s no consistent instructions on where sexual assault survivors should go for examination, even though evidence in such cases is perishable. “Refresher training” for sexual assault cases, which the Pentagon requires military first responders to undergo every year, is also below standards, with thousands of personnel missing annual courses.

The report comes a week after the House Armed Services Committee brought in Gen. Mark Welsh III, the Air Force’s top general, for a grilling about the Lackland Air Force Base sexual abuse scandal. The sprawling base in San Antonio, Texas, where the Air Force sends all its recruits for basic training, has been the focus of an investigation into sexual abuse of at least 59 recruits and airmen by their instructors. Thirty-two instructors have been disciplined — including prison terms — for charges ranging from aggravated sexual assault to rape. There’s also the case of Army Brig. Gen. Jeffrey Sinclair, accused of “forcibly sodomizing” a woman Army captain and threatening her military career “if she ended their sexual relationship,” as stated by military documents acquired by Danger Room in December. On Jan. 22, Sinclair deferred entering a plea at his court-martial.

There’s hope things could be different. On Thursday, Dempsey argued to reporters that sexual abuse in the military is partly owed to how the military treats women: as less than equal. “When you have one part of the population that’s designated as warriors, and another part of the population that’s designated as something else, I think that disparity begins to establish a psychology that, in some cases, led to that environment,” Dempsey said while announcing plans to integrate women in combat roles and units.

Dempsey never said that equality by itself would be a solution, for the simple reason that it’s true. For a start, it means recognizing that talk is talk. It’s quite another thing to step up and do something about it.

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