Jazz world mourns Montreux founder “Funky Claude”

GENEVA (Reuters) – Claude Nobs, who founded the Montreux Jazz Festival nearly 50 years ago, has died after several weeks in a coma following a skiing accident, the festival said on Friday.

The Swiss impresario immortalized by rock group Deep Purple as “Funky Claude” in the song “Smoke on the Water” and who lured the biggest stars of the music world to his festival on the shores of Lake Geneva died on Thursday at the age of 76.

“He died peacefully, surrounded by family and close friends,” said a statement issued by the festival, where Mathieu Jaton assumed his duties as director earlier this week.

Nobs launched the summer festival in 1967 while working as an accountant at the Swiss resort’s tourism office. Over the years, his blend of persistence, patience and charm managed to persuade leading lights such as Miles Davis, Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin and Prince to take the stage at Montreux.

But he often had to meet their whims to coax them along.

“I got Miles a Ferrari for him to drive along the lake, Nina Simone wanted a diamond watch and we found the mineral water that Prince likes in Geneva. We always find a way,” Nobs told Reuters last April during an interview at his beloved chalet.

A former festival employee told Reuters on Friday: “He was a shy man but still managed to negotiate. That was his strength and led him to create something huge.”

Nobs fell while cross-country skiing on Christmas Eve near his chalet in Caux, overlooking Montreux, a property that he shared with his longtime partner Thierry Amsallem, who is in charge of digitalizing the festival’s archives of 5,000 hours.

Last year’s two-week festival, which attracted about 250,000 people, featured sold-out concerts by Bob Dylan, American chanteuse Lana Del Rey and British actor and musician Hugh Laurie.

A musical tribute to the people of Montreux is planned in February, in accordance with his wishes, to be followed by events in New York and London this spring, festival board president Francois Carrard told Reuters.

CHALET PARTIES

Nobs threw legendary parties at his chalet, full of vintage Wurlitzer jukeboxes, flat screen TVs and sophisticated sound equipment. Waiters delivered fine food and champagne around a pool with a breathtaking view of the Alps.

A Japanese kimono worn by Freddie Mercury, a print signed by Ron Wood of the Rolling Stones and a larger-than-life bust of Aretha Franklin were among mementoes on display.

Film director Roman Polanski stopped in on his way to see his wife Emmanuelle Seigner perform at Montreux in 2010. Days earlier he had been freed from house arrest in Gstaad after Swiss authorities said they would not extradite him to the United States to face sentencing for having unlawful sex with a 13-year-old girl in 1977.

Herbie Hancock, Van Morrison, Phil Collins and Gilberto Gil have all been regulars at the festival, whose two venues are the larger Stravinski Auditorium and more intimate Miles Davis Hall.

In the mid-1960s, after his first flight on an airplane, Nobs formed a decisive and lifetime friendship in New York with Atlantic Records executive Nesuhi Ertegun, whose father was a former ambassador of Turkey to Switzerland.

“That first time I met Nesuhi, I had no credentials, nothing, something magical happened,” Nobs recalled in his memoirs “Live! From Montreux”, first published in 2007.

Of the first edition, he wrote: “That first festival was obviously when I had to learn a massive amount extremely quickly – from how you deal with one artist arriving whilst the act from the previous night’s show still hasn’t woken up yet, let alone vacated the suite the incoming band are supposed to be going straight into.”

The Deep Purple anthem which dubbed Nobs “Funky” was written about a fire that burned down Montreux casino during a Frank Zappa concert in 1971.

Despite heart surgery some six years ago, Nobs had stayed on as festival director, a position he shared during the 1990s with American producer Quincy Jones who returns each year from Los Angeles to introduce new talent and refers to Montreux as the “Rolls-Royce of festivals”.

Nobs often joined musicians on stage, playing harmonica, sometimes accompanied by his St. Bernard dogs.

The 47th edition is scheduled for July 5-20.

(Reporting By Katharina Bart and Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Paul Casciato)

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Former Lab Technician Denies Faulty DNA Work in Rape Cases

A former New York City laboratory technician whose work on rape cases is now being scrutinized for serious mistakes said on Friday that she had been unaware there were problems in her work and, disputing an earlier report, denied she had resigned under pressure.

The former lab technician, Serrita Mitchell, said any problems must have been someone else’s.

“My work?” Ms. Mitchell said. “No, no, no, not my work.”

Earlier, the city medical examiner’s office, where Ms. Mitchell said she was employed from 2000 to 2011, said it was reviewing 843 rape cases handled by a lab technician who might have missed critical evidence.

So far, it has finished looking over about half the cases, and found 26 in which the technician had missed biological evidence and 19 in which evidence was commingled with evidence from other cases. In seven cases where evidence was missed, the medical examiner’s office was able to extract a DNA profile, raising the possibility that detectives could have caught some suspects sooner.

The office declined to identify the technician. Documents said she quit in November 2011 after the office moved to fire her, once supervisors had begun to discover deficiencies in her work. A city official who declined to be identified said Ms. Mitchell was the technician.

However, Ms. Mitchell, reached at her home in the Bronx on Friday, said she had never been told there were problems. “It couldn’t be me because your work gets checked,” she said. “You have supervisors.”

She also said that she had resigned because of a rotator cuff injury that impeded her movement. “I loved the job so much that I stayed a little longer,” she said, explaining that she had not expected to stay with the medical examiner’s office so long. “Then it was time to leave.”

Also on Friday, the Legal Aid Society, which provides criminal defense lawyers for most of the city’s poor defendants, said it was demanding that the city turn over information about the cases under review.

If needed, Legal Aid will sue the city to gain access to identifying information about the cases, its chief lawyer, Steven Banks, said, noting that New York was one of only 14 states that did not require routine disclosure of criminal evidence before trial.

Disclosure of the faulty examination of the evidence is prompting questions about outside review of the medical examiner’s office. The City Council on Friday announced plans for an emergency oversight committee, and its members spoke with outrage about the likelihood that missed semen stains and “false negatives” might have enabled rapists to go unpunished.

“The mishandling of rape cases is making double victims of women who have already suffered an indescribably horrific event,” said Christine C. Quinn, the Council speaker.

A few more details emerged Friday about a 2001 case involving the rape of a minor in Brooklyn, in which the technician missed biological evidence, the review found. The victim accused an 18-year-old acquaintance of forcing himself on her, and he was questioned by the police but not charged, according to a law enforcement official.

Unrelated to the rape, he pleaded guilty in 2005 to third-degree robbery and served two years in prison. The DNA sample he gave in the robbery case was matched with the one belatedly developed from evidence the technician had overlooked in the 2001 rape, law enforcement officials said. He was recently indicted in the 2001 rape.

Especially alarming to defense lawyers was the possibility that DNA samples were cross-contaminated and led to false convictions, or could do so in the future.

“Up to this point,” Mr. Banks said, “they have not made information available to us, as the primary defender in New York City, to determine whether there’s an injustice that’s been done in past cases, pending cases, or allowing us to be on the lookout in future cases.” He added, “If it could happen with one analyst, how does anyone know that it stops there?”

The medical examiner’s office has said that the risk of cross-contamination was extremely low and that it does not appear that anyone was wrongly convicted in the cases that have been reviewed so far. And officials in at least two of the city’s district attorneys’ offices — for Brooklyn and Manhattan — said they had not found any erroneous convictions.

But Mr. Banks said the authorities needed to do more, and that their statements thus far were the equivalent of “trust us.”

“Given what’s happened,” he said, “that’s cold comfort.”

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Business Briefing | Retailing: Best Buy Shares Rally on Improved Holiday Sales

The Best Buy Company had better-than-expected holiday sales, setting off a gain of $2, or 16.4 percent, in its stock price, to $14.21 a share on Friday. The holiday quarter accounted for about a third of Best Buy’s revenue last year. The chain said that revenue at stores open at least a year fell 1.4 percent for the nine weeks ended Jan. 5. The company’s performance in the United States was flat. The chief executive, Hubert Joly, said in a statement that the result was better than the last several quarters. A Morningstar analyst, R. J. Hottovy, said the results showed that some of Best Buy’s initiatives, like more employee training and online price matching helped increase sales.

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Nearly one-third of U.S. homeowners have no mortgage

What mortgage meltdown?

While millions of Americans have suffered the angst of lost homes, equity and pride, nearly a third of the nation's homeowners have no mortgage at all, according to an estimate released Thursday by real estate website Zillow.

The free-and-clear class includes, predictably, retirees who have chipped away at their debts for decades, but also a surprisingly high percentage of young people and those who live in relatively affordable regions. In Los Angeles and Orange counties, only 20.7% of homeowners owned their properties outright, reflecting the region's pricey real estate.

Economists and housing analysts said that Zillow's estimates are in line with historical norms. But the proportion of these owners is likely to grow as the nation's baby boomers reach retirement. The fact that they can pay cash when they move will make them increasingly important players in a recovering housing market.

"Those are the people who have the greatest flexibility," said Svenja Gudell, a senior economist with Zillow.

As the economy picks up, regions with high percentages of free-and-clear owners probably will get a boost.

"That means there is a lot more disposable income," said Celia Chen, a housing economist with Moody's Economy.com. "That is positive for the local economy."

Out of the nation's largest metro areas, Pittsburgh, Tampa, New York, Cleveland and Miami had the highest percentages of mortgage-free homeowners. Washington, Atlanta, Las Vegas, Denver and Charlotte, N.C., had the lowest.

Throughout the Southland, the percentage of mortgage-free homeowners varied little by county. San Bernardino had the lowest percentage of free-and-clear homeowners, at 19.7%, and San Diego had the highest, at 21.5%. That compares with 29.3% nationally — or nearly 21 million homeowners.

A big factor in regional variation is median home values, with lower-priced areas not surprisingly having higher outright ownership rates.

Zillow also found that the nation's most elderly were the most likely to own their homes, with 77.6% of those 85 and older owning their homes outright, followed by those ages 74 to 84, at about 62.7%. One outlier was those homeowners ages 20 to 24. Out of that relatively young demographic, about 34.5% owned their homes outright. These homeowners could be young millionaires, those with trust funds or those who received help from their parents.

People who own their homes outright have always been a significant part of the housing market, said Guy Cecala, publisher of Inside Mortgage Finance. But the recent financial crisis may drive more people toward the financial security of having no house note.

"Clearly that is going to be a growing trend as our population ages," Cecala said. "The credit crisis has pushed more and more people to think that the best way they can prepare for retirement is with no mortgage at all."

Delia Fernandez, a certified financial planner in Los Alamitos, said that even with interest rates so low, those seeking her guidance for retirement often want to pay off debts. And that makes sense, particularly for those nearing retirement.

"The financial argument has always been to borrow other people's money and invest the rest," she said. But "that higher rate of return is not always guaranteed.… In the meantime, as you get closer and closer to retirement, people want to take on less and less risk."

Victor Robinette, a certified financial planner with Raymond James Financial Services Inc. in South Pasadena, said customers have been asking him more often these days about paying off the mortgage.

"During the boom days, and before, there was hardly any interest in paying off debt because people were so confident that the value of their home was going to go up," Robinette said. "Nowadays, after four or five years of being bruised, people really appreciate the comfort of having the house paid off. And so many people still have concerns about possibly losing their livelihood."

alejandro.lazo@latimes.com

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The Internet of Things Has Arrived — And So Have Massive Security Issues

Internet. Things. Add the “Of” and suddenly these three simple words become a magic meme — the theme we’ve been hearing all week at CES, the oft-heralded prediction that may have finally arrived in 2013.

While not devoid of hype and hyperbole, the Internet of Things (IoT) does represent a revolution happening right now. Companies of all kinds – not just technology and telecommunications firms – are linking “things” as diverse as smartphones, cars and household appliances to industrial-strength sensors, each other and the internet. The technical result may be mundane features such as intercommunication and autonomous machine-to-machine (M2M) data transfer, but the potential benefits to lifestyles and business opportunities are huge.

But … with great opportunity comes great responsibility. Along with its conveniences, the IoT will unveil unprecedented security challenges: in data privacy, safety, governance and trust.

It’s scary how few people are preparing for it. Most security and risk professionals are so preoccupied with putting last week’s vulnerability-malware-hacktivist genie back into the bottle, that they’re too distracted to notice their R&D colleagues have conjured up even more unpredictable spirits. Spirits in the form of automated systems that can reach beyond the digital plane to influence and adjust the physical world … all without human interfacing.

The Loopholes

Security loopholes can occur anywhere in the IoT, but let’s look at the most basic level: the route data takes to the provider.

Many smart meters, for example, don’t push their data to an internet service gateway directly or immediately. Instead, they send collected information to a local data collation hub – often another smart meter in a neighbor’s house – where the data is stored until it’s later uploaded in bulk.

Placing sensitive data in insecure locations is never a good idea, and the loss of physical security has long been considered tantamount to a breach. Yet some early elements of the IoT incorporate this very flaw into their designs. It’s often an attempt to compensate for a lack of technological maturity where always-on network connectivity is unavailable or too expensive, or the central infrastructure does not scale to accommodate the vast number of input devices.

So as the IoT crawls through its early stages, we can expect to see more such compromises as developers have to accommodate technical constraints — by either limiting functionality or compromising security. In a highly competitive tech marketplace, I think we all know which of these will be the first casualty.

And it’s not just security: it’s privacy, too. As the objects within the IoT collect seemingly inconsequential fragments of data to fulfill their service, think about what happens when that information is collated, correlated, and reviewed.

Because even tiny items of data, in aggregate, can identify, define, and label us without our knowledge. Just consider the scenario of the IoT tracking our food purchases. At the innocuous end of the privacy spectrum, the frequency and timing of these purchases can easily reveal we’re on a diet; at the other end of the spectrum, the times and dates of those purchases could even reveal our religion (Jewish fasts, Muslim holidays).

Bottom line: As technology becomes more entwined with the physical world, the consequences of security failures escalate. Like a game of chess – where simple rules can lead to almost limitless possibilities – the complexity of IoT interconnections rapidly outstrips our ability to unravel them.

By accident or by design, useful IoT solutions could mash together, introducing or accelerating black swan events: catastrophic failures that are unexpected but obvious in hindsight. The key to addressing these is to plan for and address these scenarios, now.

With great opportunity comes great responsibility. Along with its conveniences, the IoT will unveil unprecedented security challenges.

The Evolutions

The Internet of Things will mature in three main stages.

Stage 1: Personification of Dumb Objects

In the initial stages of the IoT, identity is provided to selected objects through QR codes, for example. Value to users here comes from the interaction of these identities with other intelligent systems, such as smartphones or web services. Think about “smart” car keys that don’t have to be taken out of the pocket to allow the car to start. Unfortunately, these devices can and have already been subverted.

Stage 2: Partially Autonomous Sensor Networks

In this intermediary stage, the “things” in the IoT develop the ability to sense their surroundings, including the environment, location, and other devices. Value to users here comes from those things taking action, albeit limited in scope, based on that information. Think about a residential thermostat that can be adjusted via a smartphone and authenticated web service, or that may self-adjust based on its awareness of the homeowner’s location (e.g., switching on the heating/cooling as it detects the owner nearing home). While a centralized failure here leaving vast numbers of people without heating may be tolerable, imagine the scenario where a hacktivist collective or state-sponsored attacker switches off a country’s electrical supply as an act of punishment.

Stage 3: Autonomous Independent Devices

In this final stage of maturity for the IoT, technology availability, capacity, and standardization will have reached a level that doesn’t require another device (such as a smartphone or web service) to function. Not only will the “things” be able to sense context, but they will be able to autonomously interact with other things, sensors, and services. Think about drug dispensers that can issue medication in response to sensing conditions in the human body through a set of apps, sensors, and other monitoring/feedback tools. It requires little imagination to consider the potential disaster scenarios that could originate from system failures or malicious threats in this scenario.

Now, let’s take one popular and heatedly discussed example from CES to sum up these stages of maturity: the smart refrigerator. In the personification stage (1), the refrigerator owner scans cartons of milk with his smartphone, which triggers a reminder when the milk expires. In the semi-autonomous sensor network stage (2), the refrigerator detects the milk on its own and issues reminders across a broader range of connected apps. In the autonomous and independent stage (3), the refrigerator orders replacement milk just before it’s empty or expires — entirely on its own.

I am hard-pressed to find a catastrophic scenario associated with the refrigerator – other than the refrigerator spending your entire month’s pay on milk or becoming self-aware like Skynet – but the fact remains we can’t predict how things will look. That makes regulation and legislation difficult.

Even the European Union Commission, with its strong track record on privacy issues, acknowledged that its well-regarded Data Protection Directive law would be unable to cope with the Internet of Things:

The technology will have moved on by leaps and bounds by that stage; the legislation simply cannot keep up with the pace of technology.

It’s therefore possible that frameworks around regulating the IoT will parallel the PCI Data Security Standard, where an industry recognized the need for regulation and introduced its own rather than wait for government intervention.

Either way: Given the wide-reaching impact of the IoT, formal legislation and government involvement is almost certain. Especially when we consider the safety risks of automated systems interacting in the physical world – governments won’t be able to stand by silently if autonomous decisions endanger lives.

People can somehow take other people doing bad things, but they won’t allow their machines to make such mistakes.

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‘Argo,’ ‘Silver Linings Playbook’ win at Critics Choice

(Reuters) – Ben Affleck’s Iran hostage drama “Argo,” “Lincoln” star Daniel Day-Lewis and “Zero Dark Thirty”‘s Jessica Chastain were among big winners at the Critics Choice Movie Awards on Thursday, taking honors for best picture, actor and actress, with Affleck nabbing the prize for best director.

The all-star “Silver Linings Playbook” swept the comedy awards, winning best comedy film, best comedy actor for Bradley Cooper and best comedy actress, which went to Jennifer Lawrence.

The 250-member Broadcast Film Critics Association, the largest film critics organization in the United States and Canada, also gave the film its best acting ensemble prize at the event in Santa Monica, California.

Affleck, known mostly as actor and who was overlooked for directing “Argo” earlier on Thursday when the Academy Award nominations were announced, began his acceptance with the quip: “I would like to thank the academy,” before adding “I’m kidding. This is the one that counts.”

Day-Lewis won for his acclaimed performance in the title role of Steven Spielberg’s historical drama “Lincoln,” while Chastain took the prize for “Zero Dark Thirty,” about the hunt for Osama Bin Laden.

It was one of only two awards for “Lincoln,” which led the Oscar nominations with 12. The Oscar runner-up, “Life of Pi,” won only two technical awards.

Lawrence took home two awards, also winning best actress in an action movie for “The Hunger Games.”

“Critics aren’t so bad,” she said as she accepted the award, later riffing on the line when she won her second award, for “Silver Linings Playbook,” saying “Seriously, I love critics.”

Many stars who were nominated just hours earlier for Oscars, Hollywood’s top honors, were on hand, including “Les Miserables” star Hugh Jackman, Robert De Niro and Anne Hathaway, who won the award for best supporting actress for “Les Miserables.”

Best supporting actor went to Philip Seymour Hoffman for “The Master.”

Director David O. Russell dedicated the “Silver Linings” award to his son, saying “I made it to give him hope,” adding, “That’s my silver lining.”

European director Michael Haneke’s drama “Amour,” about an aging couple struggling with failing health and mortality and which scored several major Oscar nominations on Thursday, won the award for best foreign language film.

The prize for best sci-fi/horror film went to “Looper,” while “Searching for Sugarman” won best documentary.

The screenwriting awards were won by Quentin Tarantino for his original screenplay for “Django Unchained” and Tony Kushner who adapted the screenplay for “Lincoln.”

British singer Adele’s song “Skyfall” from the James Bond film of the same name won best song, and star Daniel Craig was named best actor in a action film. The film also won best action movie.

Nine-year old Quvenzhane Wallis, star of “Beasts of the Southern Wild” who became the youngest best actress Oscar nominee in history on Thursday, was named best young actor or actress. She accepted her award clutching a pink-cased electronic device, from which she read her speech as she grinned broadly.

The awards were handed out ahead of Sunday’s Golden Globes and a slew of other award shows that narrow the field for the Oscars, which will be held on February 24.

Writer-producer-director Judd Apatow received a special “genius” award created to honor “an unprecedented demonstration of excellence in the cinematic arts.”

(Reporting by Chris Michaud; Editing by Eric Walsh)

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The New Old Age Blog: Taking a Zen Approach to Caregiving

You try to help your elderly father. Irritated and defensive, he snaps at you instead of going along with your suggestion. And you think “this is so unfair” and feel a rising tide of anger.

How to handle situations like this, which arise often and create so much angst for caregivers?

Jennifer Block finds the answer in what she calls “contemplative caregiving” — the application of Buddhist principles to caregiving and the subject of a year-long course that starts at the San Francisco Zen Center in a few weeks.

This approach aims to cultivate compassion, both for older people and the people they depend on, said Ms. Block, 49, a Buddhist chaplain and the course’s lead instructor. She’s also the former director of education at the Zen Hospice project in San Francisco and founder of the Beyond Measure School for Contemplative Care, which is helping develop a new, Zen-inspired senior living community in the area.

I caught up with Ms. Block recently, and what follows is an edited transcript of our conversation.

Let’s start with your experience. Have you been a caregiver?

My experience in caregiving is as a professional providing spiritual care to individuals and families when they are facing and coping with aging and sickness and loss and dying, particularly in hospital and hospice settings.

What kinds of challenges have you witnessed?

People are for the most part unprepared for caregiving. They’re either untrained or unable to trust their own instincts. They lack confidence as well as knowledge. By confidence, I mean understanding and accepting that we don’t know all the answers – what to do, how to fix things.

This past weekend, I was on the phone with a woman who’d brought her mom to live near her in assisted living. The mom had been to the hospital the day before. My conversation with the daughter was about helping her see the truth that her mother needed more care and that was going to change the daughter’s responsibilities and her life. And also, her mother was frail, elderly, and coming nearer to death.

That’s hard, isn’t it?

Yes, because we live in a death-denying society. Also, we live in a fast-paced, demanding world that says don’t sit still — do something. But people receiving care often need most of all for us to spend time with them. When we do that, their mortality and our grief and our helplessness becomes closer to us and more apparent.

How can contemplative caregiving help?

We teach people to cultivate a relationship with aging, sickness and dying. To turn toward it rather than turning away, and to pay close attention. Most people don’t want to do this.

A person needs training to face what is difficult in oneself and in others. There are spiritual muscles we need to develop, just like we develop physical muscles in a gym. Also, the mind needs to be trained to be responsive instead of reactive.

What does that mean?

Here’s an example. Let’s say you’re trying to help your mother, and she says something off-putting to you like “you’ve always been terrible at keeping house. It’s no wonder you lost my pajamas.”

The first thing is to notice your experience. To become aware of that feeling, almost like being slapped emotionally. To notice your chest tightening.

Then I tell people to take a deep breath. And say something to themselves like “soften” to address that tightness. That’s how you can stay facing something uncomfortable rather than turning away.

If I were in this position, I might say something to myself like “hello unhappiness” or “hello suffering” or “hello aging” to tether myself.

The second step would be curiosity about that experience. Like, wow, where do I feel that anger that rose up in me, or that fear? Oh, it’s in my chest. I’m going to feel that, stay with it, investigate it.

Why is that important?

Because as we investigate something we come to understand it. And, paradoxically, when we pay attention to pain it changes. It softens. It moves. It lessens. It deepens. And we get to know it and learn not to be afraid of it or change it or fix it but just come alongside of it.

Over hours, days, months, years, the mind and heart come to know pain. And the response to pain is compassion — the wish for the alleviation of pain.

Let’s go back to what mother said about your housekeeping and the pajamas. Maybe you leave the room for five minutes so you can pay attention to your reaction and remember your training. Then, you can go back in and have a response rather than a reaction. Maybe something like “Mom, I think you’re right. I may not be the world’s best housekeeper. I’m sorry I lost your pajamas. It seems like you’re having a pretty strong response to that, and I’d like to know why it matters so much to you. What’s happening with you today?”

Are other skills important?

Another skill is to become aware of how much we receive as well as give in caregiving. Caregiving can be really gratifying. It’s an expression of our values and identity: the way we want the world to be. So, I try to teach people how this role benefits them. Such as learning what it’s like to be old. Or having a close, intimate relationship with an older parent for the first time in decades. It isn’t necessarily pleasant or easy. But the alternative is missing someone’s final chapter, and that can be a real loss.

What will you do in your course?

We’ll teach the principles of contemplative care and discuss them. We’ll have homework, such as ‘Bring me three examples of someone you were caring for who was caring toward you in return.’ That’s one way of practicing attention. And people will train in meditation.

We’ll also explore our own relationship to aging, sickness, dying and loss. We’ll tell our stories: this is the situation I was in, this is where I felt myself shut down, this was the edge of my comfort or knowledge. And we’ll teach principles from Buddhism. Equanimity. Compassion. Deep inner connectedness.

What can people do on their own?

Mindfulness training is offered in almost every city. That’s one of the core components of this approach.

I think every caregiver needs to have their own caregiver — a therapist or a colleague or a friend, someone who is there for them and with whom they can unburden themselves. I think of caregiving as drawing water from a well. We need to make sure that we have whatever nurtures us, whatever supplies that well. And often, that’s connecting with others.

Are other groups doing this kind of work?

In New York City, the New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care educates the public and professionals about contemplative care. And in New Mexico, the Upaya Zen Center does similar work, much of it centered around death and dying.

People who want to read about this might want to look at a new book of essays, “The Arts of Contemplative Care: Pioneering Voices in Buddhist Chaplaincy and Pastoral Work” (Wisdom Publications, 2012).

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Official Urges Greater Accountability by Euro Members

BRUSSELS — Olli Rehn, the European Union commissioner in charge of the euro currency, on Friday defended the bloc’s austerity policies and urged legislators to pass a law that would let him push countries even harder to shore up their finances.

Signaling little let-up in the need for wrenching adjustments in Europe, Mr. Rehn also issued warnings to a wide range of countries — including some with the region’s largest economies — to keep to the reform path and contribute to overall growth.

France and Finland need to address their declining competitiveness while Germany should do more to open up its services market, Mr. Rehn told a meeting organized by the European Policy Center, a research group.

Meanwhile Cyprus, which is negotiating a European bailout, needs to ease suspicions its financial sector is a hub for money-laundering, he said.

Mr. Rehn acknowledged the value of recent studies by economists at the International Monetary Fund suggesting that damage created by austerity was up to three times more severe than previously thought. But Mr. Rehn also warned those studies may not take sufficient account of the need to restore faith in countries blocked from borrowing money on international markets.

“We have not only the quantifiable effect, which is something that the economists like to emphasize, but we also have the confidence effect,” said Mr. Rehn.

“What would have happened if Italy would have loosened its fiscal policy in November 2011?” he asked, referring to a period when Italy's borrowing costs were rocketing upwards. That situation threatened “both an economic crisis and political dead-end,” but recent reforms and belt-tightening had helped Italy’s economy to stabilize, he said.

Mr. Rehn said efforts were underway among the European Commission, the I.M.F. and the European Central Bank to reach a consensus on the impact of austerity policies.

Mr. Rehn also highlighted evidence showing that public debt levels in excess of 90 percent of Gross Domestic Product — a level in many parts of Europe — meant that economies were more likely to lack dynamism and to experience low growth lasting many years.

Underscoring the plight of Cyprus, the ratings agency Moody’s on Friday cut the country’s debt rating by three notches because of the capital needs of its banks that were heavily afflicted by an earlier debt write-down in Greece. Cypriot banks had invested heavily in Greek bonds, in large part to make use of money that had flooded into the banks by Russian depositors seeking a non-ruble haven.

In a sign of how difficult it will be to help Cyprus out of its financial black hole, Mr. Rehn gave no indications of when an assistance package would be finished. That package was still “very much a work in progress” and any decision would be made “in due course,” he said.

Cyprus still needed to implement "new laws against money laundering” as a precondition for aid, he said. Once “Cyprus reforms its financial sector in line with European principles, we will work alongside Cyprus as we did in Spain,” said Mr. Rehn. He was apparently referring to an agreement reached last year with the government in Madrid to extend tens of billions of euros in loans to restructure and recapitalize its banking sector.

Mr. Rehn also urged members of the European Parliament to speed up an agreement on fiscal legislation.

Those rules would require member states to present their public finance plans to the European Commission in greater detail, and sooner, than is currently required. The commission could then demand revisions, as deemed necessary. For member states that are already in financial trouble, those rules would let the commission conduct regularly scheduled reviews and require more information about a country’s financial sector than is currently the case.

The rules would give “stronger possibilities of pre-emptive oversight as to national budgets before they are finally presented to national parliaments” in order “to ensure that the member states practice what they preach,” said Mr. Rehn.

Failing to pass the law could invite a rerun of events in the middle of the past decade, when Germany and France essentially ignored their deficit-cap provisions, contributing to the current debt-crisis in Europe, warned Mr. Rehn.

“It’s a very serious issue,” he said.

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Irvine City Council overhauls oversight, spending on Great Park

Capping a raucous eight-hour-plus meeting, the Irvine City Council early Wednesday voted to overhaul the oversight and spending on the beleaguered Orange County Great Park while authorizing an audit of the more than $220 million that so far has been spent on the ambitious project.

A newly elected City Council majority voted 3 to 2 to terminate contracts with two firms that had been paid a combined $1.1 million a year for consulting, lobbying, marketing and public relations. One of those firms — Forde & Mollrich public relations — has been paid $12.4 million since county voters approved the Great Park plan in 2002.

"We need to stop talking about building a Great Park and actually start building a Great Park," council member Jeff Lalloway said.

The council, by the same split vote, also changed the composition of the Great Park's board of directors, shedding four non-elected members and handing control to Irvine's five council members.

The actions mark a significant turning point in the decade-long effort to turn the former El Toro Marine base into a 1,447-acre municipal park with man-made canyons, rivers, forests and gardens that planners hoped would rival New York's Central Park.

The city hoped to finish and maintain the park for years to come with $1.4 billion in state redevelopment funds. But that money vanished last year as part of the cutbacks to deal with California's massive budget deficit.

"We've gone through $220 million, but where has it gone?" council member Christina Shea said of the project's initial funding from developers in exchange for the right to build around the site. "The fact of the matter is the money is almost gone. It can't be business as usual."

The council majority said the changes will bring accountability and efficiencies to a project that critics say has been larded with wasteful spending and no-bid contracts. For all that has been spent, only about 200 acres of the park has been developed and half of that is leased to farmers.

But council members Larry Agran and Beth Krom, who have steered the course of the project since its inception, voted against reconfiguring the Great Park's board of directors and canceling the contracts with the two firms.

Krom has called the move a "witch hunt" against her and Agran. Feuding between liberal and conservative factions on the council has long shaped Irvine politics.

"This is a power play," she said. "There's a new sheriff in town."

The council meeting stretched long into the night, with the final vote coming Wednesday at 1:34 a.m. Tensions were high in the packed chambers with cheering, clapping and heckling coming from the crowd.

At one point council member Lalloway lamented that he "couldn't hear himself think."

During public comments, newly elected Orange County Supervisor Todd Spitzer chastised the council for "fighting like schoolchildren." Earlier this week he said that if the Irvine's new council majority can't make progress on the Great Park, he would seek a ballot initiative to have the county take over.

And Spitzer angrily told Agran that his stewardship of the project had been a failure.

"You know what?" he said. "It's their vision now. You're in the minority."

mike.anton@latimes.com

rhea.mahbubani@latimes.com

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Disk Jockey: Hear Your Favorite Theme Songs Played by a Floppy-Drive Orchestra

While making music with computers is nothing new, it’s rarely quite so literal as the melodies of Youtube user MrSolidSnake74, who transformed eight floppy disk drives into an orchestra of MIDI magic. In the gallery above, you can hear his arrangements based on popular themes from Super Mario Bros, Doctor Who, Ghostbusters, Mega Man, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Game of Thrones and more, as performed by his floppy disk “instruments.”

“The concept behind this is basically getting the stepper motor to operate a certain frequency (getting the motor to step a certain amount of times in a second) which generates a pitch. Then we arrange those pitches together and we get a song,” he explained.

After creating his own arrangements of songs, he uses code written by a Youtube user named Sammy1Am to transform MIDI files into serial data packets, and sends them to an Arduino — an open-source microcontroller board – which routes the information to the floppy drives.

Want to make your own musical disk drives? Check out the Sammy1A how-to video:

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