Mary Wells, singer of ‘My Guy,’ gets posthumous Rock Hall push

(Reuters) – Mary Wells, Motown Records‘ first female star who paved the way for the success of Diana Ross and The Supremes, shot to fame in the early 1960s only to fade away as a footnote of the longtime Detroit record label.

Now, some two decades after Wells’ death in 1992 at age 49, the singer who scored a No. 1 hit with “My Guy,” is receiving a push for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Peter Benjaminson, the author of the first Wells biography, “Mary Wells: The Tumultuous Story of Motown’s First Superstar,” has spearheaded the campaign for the singer, who he said has not received the recognition afforded to the likes of The Supremes or Martha and the Vandellas.

Benjaminson, 67, believes that aside from Wells’ merits as an R&B singer and as Motown’s first big female star, she deserves consideration as a pioneer who crossed the black-and-white racial divide in the United States.

“I think it’s unfair to have Mary, who set the path for so many superstars today, be excluded from an honor like this, which she should’ve gotten a long time ago,” Benjaminson told Reuters by phone from his home in New York’s Harlem neighborhood.

Wells was born into a broken household in Detroit in 1943 and contracted spinal meningitis and tuberculosis at a young age, which left her partially blind and deaf.

After graduating high school Wells set her sights on Berry Gordy, the founder of Motown, with a song she wrote herself, “Bye Bye Baby.”

“Gordy kept refusing (a meeting), but she kept persisting,” Benjaminson said. “Finally, he got so annoyed that he asked her to sing it right there … He was so impressed he signed her up the next day as a Motown singer.”

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“Bye Bye Baby,” rose to No. 45 on the Billboard Top 100 chart in 1960, a rare feat for a black, female singer, Benjaminson said.

“She really paved the way for the other women who came after, including Diana Ross,” Benjaminson said. “She showed how quickly a woman could rise on the charts with Motown.”

Wells was nominated for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1986 and 1987, but never made the cut for induction.

“I don’t know what happened in 1986 and 1987, but she’s certainly due the honor this late in the game,” he said.

Benjaminson is hoping first to get Wells inducted into the Legends Hall of Fame at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, a prominent historical venue for African-American musicians.

“I think that would help in getting her into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame,” said Benjaminson, who hopes his book may play a role in resurrecting Wells’ reputation.

Benjaminson has set up a Facebook page called “Induct Mary Wells into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame,” that urges fans to send letters to the foundation that runs the Cleveland, Ohio-based Hall of Fame (http://www.rockhall.com/).

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum was established in 1983 and has inducted some 700 performers, songwriters and record producers, chosen by some 600 artists, music historians and industry members.

After scoring other hits such as “You Beat Me to the Punch,” in 1962, Wells landed atop the chart for two weeks in 1964 with “My Guy,” her final Motown hit.

Wells left Motown at the height of her popularity over compensation issues and never found the same success again. She died in 1992 after a battle with throat cancer.

Benjaminson’s biography of Wells, published in November 2012, is his third book on Motown.

(Reporting by Kurt Anthony Krug in Detroit,; editing by Eric Kelsey, desking by G Crosse)

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Ferrol Sams, Doctor Turned Novelist, Dies at 90

Ferrol Sams, a country doctor who started writing fiction in his late 50s and went on to win critical praise and a devoted readership for his humorous and perceptive novels and stories that drew on his medical practice and his rural Southern roots, died on Tuesday at his home in Fayetteville, Ga. He was 90.

The cause, said his son Ferrol Sams III, also a doctor, was that he was “slap wore out.”

“He lived a full life,” his son said. “He didn’t leave anything in the tank.”

Dr. Sams grew up on a farm in the rural Piedmont area of Georgia, seven mud-road miles from the nearest town. He was a boy during the Depression; books meant escape and discovery. He read “Robinson Crusoe,” then Mark Twain and Charles Dickens. One of his English professors at Mercer University, in Macon, suggested he consider a career in writing, but he chose another route to examining the human condition: medical school.

When he was 58 — after he had served in World War II, started a medical practice with his wife, raised his four children and stopped devoting so much of his mornings to preparing lessons for Sunday school at the Methodist church — he began writing “Run With the Horsemen,” a novel based on his youth. It was published in 1982.

“In the beginning was the land,” the book begins. “Shortly thereafter was the father.”

In The New York Times Book Review, the novelist Robert Miner wrote, “Mr. Sams’s approach to his hero’s experiences is nicely signaled in these two opening sentences.”

He added: “I couldn’t help associating the gentility, good-humored common sense and pace of this novel with my image of a country doctor spinning yarns. The writing is elegant, reflective and amused. Mr. Sams is a storyteller sure of his audience, in no particular hurry, and gifted with perfect timing.”

Dr. Sams modeled the lead character in “Run With the Horsemen,” Porter Osborne Jr., on himself, and featured him in two more novels, “The Whisper of the River” and “When All the World Was Young,” which followed him into World War II.

Dr. Sams also wrote thinly disguised stories about his life as a physician. In “Epiphany,” he captures the friendship that develops between a literary-minded doctor frustrated by bureaucracy and a patient angry over past racism and injustice.

Ferrol Sams Jr. was born Sept. 26, 1922, in Woolsey, Ga. He received a bachelor’s degree from Mercer in 1942 and his medical degree from Emory University in 1949. In his addition to his namesake, survivors include his wife, Dr. Helen Fletcher Sams; his sons Jim and Fletcher; a daughter, Ellen Nichol; eight grandchildren; and nine great-grandchildren.

Some critics tired of what they called the “folksiness” in Dr. Sams’s books. But he did not write for the critics, he said. In an interview with the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame, Dr. Sams was asked what audience he wrote for. Himself, he said.

“If you lose your sense of awe, or if you lose your sense of the ridiculous, you’ve fallen into a terrible pit,” he added. “The only thing that’s worse is never to have had either.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 2, 2013

An earlier version of this obituary misstated the town in which Mr. Sams died. It was Fayetteville, Ga., not Lafayette, Ga.

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Chicago beer firm Crown Imports is caught in antitrust fight

An antitrust brouhaha in Washington has thrown the future of Crown Imports, a Chicago-based beer importer, into question.

The company, which ranks third in U.S. beer sales volume, is a joint venture between New York-based Constellation Brands Inc. and Mexico's Grupo Modelo, which makes Corona Extra, the leading imported beer in the U.S., and other brands. Crown sells Modelo brands as well as China's Tsingtao.

As part of its proposed sale to Anheuser-Busch InBev, Grupo Modelo agreed to sell its 50 percent stake in Crown to Constellation Brands for $1.85 billion. The separate transaction was meant to ease possible antitrust concerns that the merger would eliminate Crown Imports as a competitor.

But on Thursday the U.S. Department of Justice filed an antitrust suit against AB InBev to block its acquisition of Grupo Modelo. Antitrust officials said the merger would further increase the concentration of the U.S. beer market, leading to higher prices for American consumers.

The lawsuit said the sale of Modelo's interest in Crown Imports to its partner would only create "a facade of competition" between AB InBev and the importer.

"In reality, Defendants' proposed 'remedy' eliminates from the market Modelo — a particularly aggressive competitor — and replaces it with an entity wholly dependent on ABI," the Justice Department said in the lawsuit.

The suits cites as evidence part of an internal memo that Crown's chief executive, Bill Hackett, wrote to employees after the transactions were announced in June. According to the suit, Hackett wrote, "Our #1 competitor will now be our supplier ... it is not currently or will not, going forward, be 'business as usual.'"

Under the terms of the proposed merger with Modelo, AB InBev also had the option to terminate its agreement with Crown Imports after 10 years, giving it full control of Corona distribution.

Constellation Brands on Friday attacked the Justice Department, saying in a statement that the suit "demonstrates its incomplete understanding" of the proposed merger. Constellation and AB InBev have indicated that they plan to challenge the suit.

In a detailed defense, Constellation said its full control of Crown would improve competition, not harm it. According to the lawsuit, Modelo controls about 7 percent of U.S. beer sales, far behind AB InBev's market-leading 39 percent.

Constellation attempted to ease concerns that AB InBev's merger with Modelo would lead to higher prices. Hackett said in a statement: "Our Crown team independently develops, implements and refines pricing, promotional and sales strategies for each of our brands in the U.S."

The proposed beer merger had reduced uncertainty hanging over Crown Imports because the Modelo-Constellation joint venture was set to expire at the end of 2016. The Justice Department action creates a new level of uncertainty, said Benj Steinman, president of Beer Marketer's Insights, a beer industry trade publication.

"Crown's fate is hanging in the balance," Steinman said.

asachdev@tribune.com

Twitter@ameetsachdev

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Murderer released despite warnings in court documents

A convicted murderer from Indiana is on the loose because of some bad paperwork in Cook County. (WGN - Chicago)

Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart took responsibility today for mistakenly letting a man serving 60 years in Indiana for murder walk out of County Jail after a local charge against him was dismissed.

“We let people down, no mistake about it,” Dart said in an interview at sheriff’s offices in Maywood. “Our office did not operate the way it should have, clearly.”

Dart said Steven Robbins remains at large but that authorities are pursuing some promising leads about his whereabouts.

The FBI, the U.S. Marshals Service and Cook County Crimestoppers have raised $12,000 as a reward for information leading to Robbins’ capture, he said.

Dart said his office is still looking at where and how the system broke down to allow Robbins’ mistaken release from the jail,  but he said that officials at the  jail had no paperwork showing he was serving time in an Indiana prison for murder.

Like other indigent people, Robbins was outfitted with clothing from Goodwill – a long-sleeve brown shirt and brown pants – before being released out the front entrance, Dart said. He also likely was given bus fare.

Dart said the sheriff’s office uses an archaic system – entirely paper-driven – in handling the movement of an average of about 1,500 inmates every day. Some are entering the jail after their arrest and others are being bused to courthouses around the county for court appearances.

The sheriff said the warrant for Robbins’ arrest should have been quashed by prosecutors when armed violence charges were dismissed against him in 2007. In addition, he said prosecutors signed off on the sheriff’s office traveling to Indiana to pick up Robbins at the prison in Michigan City and bring him back on the outstanding warrant.

“We were able to get an extradition warrant on a case that didn’t exist,” Dart said. “That’s the first problem.”

Earlier, documents reviewed by the Tribune showed that paperwork filled out by Cook County sheriff’s officers this week made it clear that Robbins was serving a 60-year sentence for murder in Indiana and was to be returned to authorities there after being brought to Chicago to dispose of an old case against him.

“Please be advised that this subject is in our custody under the temporary custody provision of the interstate agreement on detainers,” a sheriff’s order accompanying Robbins’ paperwork read. The order noted Robbins’ murder conviction and 60-year sentence and then stated he “must be returned to the custody of Indiana DOC.”

In addition, Judge Rickey Jones, assigned to the Leighton Criminal Court Building, ordered the Illinois case dismissed on Wednesday and wrote on paperwork that Robbins was to be released for “this case only,” the records show.
 
Yet Robbins was allowed to walk free out of the Cook County Jail Wednesday evening after his court appearance. Authorities today were reviewing the paperwork in Robbins’ file to see how the mistake was made and who was responsible, sources told the Tribune.

Also under investigation was why Robbins – whose 1992 charges of armed violence and drug possession had been dismissed by prosecutors nearly six years ago – was even brought to Chicago in the first place.

Robbins spent the night in the Cook County Jail on Tuesday to attend a court date Wednesday on a warrant issued when he skipped bail in his 1992 case, Frank Bilecki, a spokesman for the Cook County sheriff’s office, said on Thursday.

Cook County authorities picked up Robbins on Tuesday at a prison in Michigan City, Ind., explaining he needed to answer to pending charges in Chicago, said Doug Garrison, a spokesman for the Indiana Department of Corrections. The requisite paperwork spelled out the terms of his release and return, Garrison said.

“It sounds almost too simple to say, but when someone comes and picks up a prisoner, they acknowledge they will bring him back,” Garrison said. “There are certain things they have to provide us, they do their business with him and then they give him back.  Obviously in this case, for whatever reason, they didn’t give him back.”

One document in the Indiana prison paperwork was stamped “do not release this offender from court before contacting” Indiana authorities, Garrison said.

Garrison said Cook County authorities had contacted Indiana prison officials to review who had contact with Robbins in the prison and the identities of any visitors since his incarceration in 2004.

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Coming soon to Facebook- more action, battle games

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – When nWay began a trial of its dark, sci-fi combat game “ChronoBlade” on Facebook last year, the San Francisco-based startup felt sure it had a hit on its hands.

“First of all, what comes is, ‘Wow, I had no idea you could actually do a game of this quality on Facebook,’” said Dave Jones, Chief Creative Officer of nWay, who has worked on “Grand Theft Auto.”

Then came some resistance: Jones admits some potential investors and partners questioned how an action-focused game with slick graphics can play to a Facebook audience more accustomed to “Farmville” and other less time-consuming casual games. Others wondered how the game — which launches this spring — would gain significant users and revenue on the social network.

But Facebook Inc is betting nWay and a clutch of other developers this year can extend console-style action games beyond Microsoft Corp‘s Xbox or Sony Corp’s PlayStation onto the world’s largest social network.

Facebook is spearheading the launch of 10 high-quality games created by third-party developers in 2013 that squarely target so-called hardcore gamers, an atypical audience overlooked thus far against the wealth of family-friendly offerings like Zynga Inc’s “Farmville” that now dominate the social network’s gaming landscape.

The effort, which began late last year but will accelerate in 2013, is part of Facebook’s ongoing objective of making sure its 1 billion-plus users log in and spend more time on the network, which in turn boosts ad revenue. Facebook also takes a cut of its applications’ revenue.

Facebook’s push into action and battle games follows a meeting in January between companies that make games like “first-person shooters” and Vice President Joe Biden to look for ways to curb gun violence in the wake of the Connecticut school shootings.

Based on the console gaming industry experience, hardcore gamers — typically men 18 to 30 years old — spend more time and effort to master fast-paced games such as first-person shooters (Microsoft’s “Halo”) or real-time strategy games (Activision Blizzard’s “StarCraft”).

“You’ll see a whole set of games hitting in the next two quarters in particular and throughout the year that really start to redefine what people think of Facebook games,” Sean Ryan, head of game partnerships at Facebook said in an interview.

Facebook will embrace games from “casual all the way up through first-person shooters, massively multiplayer online games, real-time strategy games – all those types of more core player-versus-player games.”

Just as hardcore gamers interact online and form clans in multiplayer games on console game networks like Xbox LIVE, Facebook can be that social layer needed to foster such gaming communities that help popularize titles, Jones said.

GAMING POPULATION

Over a quarter of Facebook’s 1.06 billion monthly active users play games, one of the largest gaming communities in the industry, and the social network hopes that can grow.

Facebook also aims to make more revenue from games. Revenue from the area was flat in the fourth quarter from a year ago, the company said on Wednesday without providing details.

The 8-year-old social network takes a 30 percent revenue share from game developers who offer their product free but then charge for virtual goods — like ammunition and power boosts.

On Wednesday, Facebook’s Chief Financial Officer David Ebersman told analysts on a post-earnings conference call that its “games ecosystem continues to show healthy signs of diversification” and suggested that games revenue would grow with increasing user engagement.

To grow its gaming business, Facebook has invested time and resources to work with developers since the summer to bring titles like u4iA’s first-person shooter “Offensive Combat” and Plaruim’s real-time strategy game “Stormfall: Age of War” alive, Ryan said.

“It doesn’t mean we’re walking away from other games, but there’s no question our focus for 2013 much of it will be about becoming a better platform for core gamers and developers who make those games.”

To help users discover them, Facebook added new action and strategy games categories on its App Center that also shows you friends from your list playing those games. It brought back notification messages from game apps — a feature that had been removed because users found the annoying — with certain restrictions that stop developers from spamming a gamer.

Developers also rely on word-of-mouth publicity and ads on Facebook’s advertising platform to draw in prospective gamers.

“Stormfall” has a player base of 4.5 million and hardcore games were proving to be far more lucrative, said Gabi Shalel, chief marketing officer Of Tel Aviv, Israel-based Plarium.

“Hardcore gamers pay more, play more and generate higher average revenue per user than traditional casual games.”

Kixeye, which makes the warfare-strategy game “War Commander,” said its gamers spend 20 times more than players of social games, helping it stay profitable over the past three years.

Going forward, nWay’s Jones says Facebook must have a defining title that comes along that establishes it as a hardcore gaming spot for gamers.

“Like ‘Super Mario’ did for Nintendo or ‘Halo’ on Microsoft, I think it just takes one title to come along, sort of as a benchmark to legitimize the whole thing,” he said.

(Reporting By Malathi Nayak; editing by Andrew Hay)

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Wispelwey: Loneliness of the long-distance cellist

LEIDEN, Netherlands (Reuters) – Dutch cellist Peter Wispelwey has recorded the haunting, delightful and soul-uplifting Bach Six Suites for Solo Cello three times and still he’s not finished.

His next, he says, is his “Lost in Translation” version, referring to the Bill Murray movie about an actor coming to terms with an alien culture in Tokyo.

Wispelwey is doing the same, flying into the Japanese capital for recording sessions in the early morning hours.

When it is released, he wants to strew CDs of portions of the Bach suites around Tokyo for people to find them, he told Reuters over a three-course dinner served during intervals as he performed in this Dutch university town.

“That’s my ideal,” he said. “I want the Tokyo preludes, the Tokyo gigues, the Tokyo allemandes.”

At this stage in his career, the 50-year-old Wispelwey who first fell in love with the cello’s growling sound at the age of two while listening to an amateur quartet in which his father played violin, can be indulged.

Growing up in a small country at a time when it did not have much of an established conservatory tradition, he more or less is a self-made cellist, though he has had several of the world’s best teachers, among them compatriot Anner Bylsma.

He made his name in the Netherlands by putting on recitals in his late teens of all the mainstream repertoire for solo cello, renting the hall himself, getting the tickets distributed and playing it all from memory.

He got his international credentials with his first 1990 recording of the Bach suites, for the Channel Classics label, which became one of the gold-standard versions.

His latest, and third version, is unique for tuning his baroque cello, with gut rather than modern steel strings, to a much lower pitch than A at 440 hertz, or slightly higher, which is the standard for modern orchestras, pianos, wind instruments and pretty much everything.

Wispelwey has done it at 397 hertz, a full tone below the modern A tuning, and a semitone, or half tone, below the usual baroque A which is 415 hertz.

There are theoretical reasons, including evidence it was the pitch Bach would have known. But more importantly, the sound world is different.

“If the general public comes in to hear the Bach suites on a baroque cello they need almost an hour just to adjust to that sound world and it’s not surprising,” he said, between gulps of food and before taking a shower to refresh for the continuation of one of the most demanding recital programs, for soloist and audience alike.

“We’re used to a steely, projecting laser beam of a sound and this has shades, it has color and it has the overtones. That’s why we can hear it. It has this very particular shine. but it’s a shine of nobility.”

Here’s what else he had to say about Bach’s appeal today, the mystical “Black Sarabande” and why it can sometimes seem a bit lonely being a cello soloist:

Q: What is it about Bach’s music, written in the early 18th century, that speaks to us three centuries later with such power, if not to say God-like authority?

A: “One is the magic of Bach. Even in the sparse notes of the cellos suites there is a narrative and it becomes more hypnotic the less you hear and the less you hear it filled in. It’s the hypnotic element of being carried away by so little. That said, the concentration of the listener is tunneled and first there’s an emotion of being narrowed but then the opposite happens.

“After an hour that tunnel gives suddenly way to the biggest panorama you’d ever want to see. It starts meaning everything, the small world becomes the big world and everything starts shining and becoming meaningful…Bach’s brain was all over the place all the time. That’s why we’re so eternally intrigued at what kind of creativity was at work there.”

Q: In the Suite No. 5, there’s a movement you call the “Black Sarabande”. Why?

A: “It’s painful, not nice. There is comfort in it but death is there. It’s about blackness, about dust and with the gut C string it sounds like dust, it sounds like throwing something into the grave or a last breath – it’s all there. The first four bars are a sort of solar system, all those notes hanging in space but they are somehow related…It’s dark and light and death and life. It’s so simple that its meaning expands in space. The simpler it is the more meaningful it seems to be.”

Q: Of course you don’t play only Bach – though you play these suites a lot. Two days from now you are doing a Schubert program and you also play modern composers like Ligeti and Crumb. Is it hard finding sufficient repertoire for an instrument which, let’s face it, has never been as big a crowd pleaser as the violin?

A: “It (Bach) does sound like you are playing really serious, profound music, so that’s good, and the other thing of course is the cello repertoire is so small that when we have six pieces by the greatest composer of all time, well, then, of course… There are 15 great cello concertos against 40 great violin concertos. The cello was emancipated (from its accompaniment role) late. Then look at the 20th century. We have Mstislav Rostropovich and suddenly we get this tsunami by the great composers…”

(Editing by Paul Casciato)

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Auvi-Q Challenges EpiPen With a New Shape and Size

Twin brothers Eric and Evan Edwards grew up with serious food allergies and were under doctor’s orders to carry their medicine everywhere they went.

But as they entered their teenage years in suburban Virginia, they found the advice increasingly hard to follow. The device they carried to inject the medicine, known as an EpiPen, was shaped like a large felt-tip marker and they would frequently forget it. As the twins entered college, they found themselves thinking there had to be a better way.

This week, the brothers’ invention — a slimmer device shaped like a smartphone — hit pharmacy shelves nationwide, the culmination of a single-minded quest that began 15 years ago and ended in a $230 million licensing deal with the French pharmaceutical giant Sanofi.

The product, called the Auvi-Q, boldly challenges the superiority of the EpiPen at a time when food allergies among children and teenagers are on the rise. Sanofi and the Edwards brothers clearly hope it will appeal to a gadget-hungry generation with its compact, rectangular design and automated voice instructions that guide a user through the injection process. Both the Auvi-Q and EpiPen contain the drug epinephrine, which can halt a severe allergic reaction, known as anaphylaxis.

Evan Edwards said the device was special because it was designed by people who were intimately familiar with patients’ needs. “This wasn’t just an invention,” he said. “This was something that I knew I was going to carry with me every single day.”

Mylan Inc., which sells the EpiPen, has recently stepped up its marketing of the device and this week showed no signs of backing down. In an interview this week, Mylan’s chief executive took issue with claims that up to two-thirds of EpiPen users do not carry their devices, saying the company would take “appropriate action” to challenge the claims.

Heather Bresch, the chief executive, said she welcomed efforts by Sanofi to raise awareness about the dangers of severe allergic reactions. “However, we certainly don’t condone or find it acceptable to do it in a misleading way, and that’s what we believe they’re doing,” she said.

A spokeswoman for Sanofi said the company stood by its claims.

Energized by their idea to create a new epinephrine device, the twins split up to attend college but geared their studies to their single-minded goal. Evan chose engineering, studying at the University of Virginia. Eric pursued a medical path, eventually earning a doctorate in pharmaceutical sciences from Virginia Commonwealth University.

“We would choose our courses out of the undergraduate bulletin,” Eric said. “You take this; I’ll take that.”

One of the courses Evan chose was an invention and design class taught by Larry G. Richards, an engineering professor at the University of Virginia, where students were encouraged to share their ideas with each other. “Evan came to us early in the semester and said, ‘I’ve got this really great idea,’ ” Mr. Richards recalled. “He told us the idea and I said, ‘Evan, this is too good to share with the students in the class. You want to protect your intellectual property here.’ ”

Working with Mr. Richards and another professor, Evan continued to refine the idea, earning a grant for college inventors that provided initial start-up financing for their project. After college, the brothers founded a company, Intelliject, to bring their idea to market, relying on early investments from family and friends.

The product evolved as the years passed, retaining its rectangular profile but picking up other features along the way. Eric had the idea of adding voice instructions to help others use the device in situations where they might be too panicked to read written instructions. A retractable needle was also added later, with the thought that patients would be more comfortable if they didn’t have to see it.

Intelliject licensed the product to Sanofi in 2009, a deal that included an initial payment of $25 million and up to $205 million in future milestone payments and royalties. The Food and Drug Administration approved the Auvi-Q last summer.

The Auvi-Q has created a stir among allergy sufferers, including bloggers and others who have praised its compact design and “cool” factor. Sanofi also cited internal market surveys that show up to two-thirds of patients do not regularly carry their epinephrine injectors, and about half of parents said they feared others would not be able to properly use their child’s injector in the event of an emergency.

“Anaphylaxis is scary enough,” Evan Edwards said, referring to the severe reaction that can be set off by allergens. “But the treatment shouldn’t be.”

Ms. Bresch, the Mylan chief executive, noted that Sanofi did not provide studies showing users would be any more likely to carry the Auvi-Q. She also cited a marketing study conducted in Canada on Sanofi’s behalf that found 84 percent of participants knew how to use an auto-injector.

“EpiPen has been tried and true for 25 years,” Ms. Bresch said, and argued that her product’s distinctive shape worked to its advantage. “It’s not easily confused with a BlackBerry or your phone in your purse or your backpack.”

Other online commenters wondered if younger children might lose the Auvi-Q because of its size. It is smaller than a deck of cards.

Sanofi has set a price for the Auvi-Q that is comparable to the EpiPen, charging $240 for two auto-injectors and a training device. Lori Lukus, a Sanofi spokeswoman, said the company’s market research indicated that a “large percentage” of insurers would cover the product.

Still, the Auvi-Q faces long odds: several other companies have tried and failed to challenge the dominance of the EpiPen. Last year, the manufacturer of the only competing products on the market, the Adrenaclick and Twinject, announced it would stop making them.

One allergy specialist, Dr. Scott H. Sicherer, said the Auvi-Q could provide an alternative for patients who have complained over the years about the EpiPen’s bulky size. He said some have already asked about it.

“People might find it easier to have that in a pocket compared to carrying a giant Magic Marker,” said Dr. Sicherer, a researcher at the Jaffe Food Allergy Institute at Mount Sinai Medical Center in Manhattan.

Still, he noted that he had seen several EpiPen competitors come and go. In the past, when he presented patients with alternatives, “the patients have mostly been more comfortable taking the EpiPen.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 1, 2013

An earlier version of this article used an outdated company name on first reference. It is Sanofi, not Sanofi-Aventis. The company changed its name in 2011.

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Apple phones outsell Samsung in the U.S. in the fourth quarter

Bolstered by sales of its iPhone 5, Apple sold more mobile phones in the U.S. in the fourth quarter than any other maker, including its rival Samsung.

It marks the first time since 2008 that Samsung was not the top phone seller in a quarter.

Still, Samsung retained its crown for all of 2012, selling 53 million devices. Apple was second with 43.7 million phones sold.

For the fourth quarter, Apple sold 17.7 million units, or 34% of the phones sold in the quarter, according to a report released Friday morning by Strategy Analytics. That was up from 12.8 million devices sold in the year-earlier period.

Samsung was next with 16.8 million phones, or 32% of all phones sold in the quarter. Total sales  represented an increase for Samsung, which sold 13.5 million phones a year earlier. 

QUIZ: Test your Apple knowledge

"This was a good performance from Samsung, as its market share (of phones sold in the fourth quarter) rose 5 points from 27% a year earlier, but it was not enough to hold off a surging Apple," the report says.

Samsung "will surely be keen to recapture that title in 2013 by launching improved new models such as the rumored Galaxy S4," the report says. 

Third place in the U.S. was LG, which sold 6.9 million phones, 9% of all phones sold during the fourth quarter.

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Hadiya Pendleton: Slain girl made anti-gang video

Four years ago Hadiya Pendleton, then in sixth grade at Carter G. Woodson Elementary School, made an anti-gang video with fellow students. She was fatally shot this week.

The sixth-grader can barely keep from smiling, self-conscious in front of the camera as she delivers a very serious message.

"Hi, my name is Hadiya. This commercial is informational for you and your future children," she begins. "So many children out there are in gangs and it's your job as students to say no to gangs and yes to a great future."

The video then shows shots of a boy slumped in a stairwell, another boy sprawled against a locker, a girl lying on the floor against a wall as a classmate next to Hadiya says, "So many children in the world have died from gang violence. More than 500 children have died from being in the wrong place at the wrong time."

Four years after Hadiya Pendleton made that public service video at Carter G. Woodson Elementary School, police are saying the same thing about her.

Hadiya had just finished her final exams at King Prep High School, where she was a sophomore, and was hanging out with friends from the school's volleyball team when she was gunned down in a park in the 4400 block of South Oakenwald Avenue. Thursday afternoon, police announced the reward for information leading to an arrest in the shooting had increased to $24,000, up from $11,000 announced Wednesday.

Hadiya and the others had sought shelter from a rainstorm under a canopy at the park around 2:20 p.m. Tuesday when a gunman jumped a fence, ran toward them and opened fire, police said.

As the teens scattered, Hadiya and two teenage boys were shot. Hadiya was hit in the back and pronounced dead at Comer Children's Hospital less than an hour after the shooting. The wounds suffered by the boys were not life-threatening.

Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy stressed that neither Hadiya nor anyone in the group she was with were involved with gangs. But it appears the gunman mistook the students for members of a rival gang, he said. The shooter was last seen fleeing in a white Nissan.

“These were good kids by everything that I learned," McCarthy said at a Wednesday news conference, where a reward of $11,000 was announced. "Wrong place at the wrong time.”

Hadiya was shot a little more than a week after performing with the King College Prep band in Washington during President Barack Obama's inauguration festivities. The shooting occurred in a park about a mile north of Obama's Kenwood home.

The shooting has drawn the attention of both the White House, which is pushing for national gun control, and City Hall as Chicago closes on a violent January. Hadiya was the 42nd homicide victim this year in the city, where killings last year climbed above 500.

Hadiya's father, Nathaniel Pendleton, pleaded for someone to step forward and bring the 15-year-old's killer to justice.

"She was destined for great things," he said.

Hadiya was a majorette with the band at King, one of the city's elite selective-enrollment schools. She dreamed of going to Northwestern University and talked about becoming a pharmacist or a journalist, maybe a lawyer.

Police have reported no arrests.

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U.S. tablet shipments soar during holidays, threaten to surpass PCs

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Apple Inc Chief Executive Tim Cook’s prediction that tablets would one day outsell personal computers appears to be coming true.

Holiday season shipments of tablet computers touched a record 52.5 million, up 75 percent from a year ago, as consumers snapped up a wide range of the touch-enabled mobile devices and lower priced offerings, according to International Data Corp (IDC), which tracks both markets.

Growth of the tablet market handily outpaced that of personal computers, with PC shipments sliding 6.4 percent to 89.8 million in the October-December period.

In another sign of the rise of tablets, Apple, the No. 1 seller of tablets, shipped 22 million of them in the fourth quarter, compared with 15 million personal computers shipped by No. 1 PC seller Hewlett-Packard Co during the same period.

But increasing competition means that Apple’s one-time stranglehold on the tablet market continues to loosen. The market share of its iPad fell to 43.1 percent in the fourth quarter from 51.7 percent the previous year, IDC said.

Samsung Electronics, the No. 2 seller of tablets with its flagship Galaxy brand, captured 15.1 percent of the market, more than double its 7.3 percent share a year earlier.

Software maker Microsoft Corp, which launched its Surface with Windows RT tablet during the holidays, shipped about 900,000 units, IDC said.

Microsoft has been banking on Surface to showcase its new Windows 8 software to compete with Google Inc‘s Android-based tablets and the iPad.

Amazon.com Inc, despite having a wider range of products for the holidays, saw its share slip to 11.5 percent from 15.9 percent. Asian manufacturer Asus, which makes the Google-branded Nexus 7 tablet, saw a its share increase to 5.8 percent from 2 percent, IDC said.

IDC’s figures underscore the sliding fortunes of PC makers such as HP and Dell Inc, which is now in the process of taking itself private.

“New product launches from the category’s top vendors, as well as new entrant Microsoft, led to a surge in consumer interest and very robust shipments totals during the holiday season,” said Tom Mainelli, research director, tablets, at IDC.

“The record-breaking quarter stands in stark contrast to the PC market, which saw shipments decline during the quarter for the first time in more than five years,” Mainelli said.

(Reporting By Poornima Gupta; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)

Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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