Leads, director of Motown musical visit Hitsville

DETROIT (AP) — The stars of the upcoming Broadway musical about Motown Records have read pretty much every book about and listened to every song from that golden era of American music.

The research only took them so far, so they decided to come and see Hitsville, U.S.A., for themselves.

Brandon Victor Dixon, who portrays the label’s founder, Berry Gordy, and Valisia LeKae, who plays its signature songstress, Diana Ross, visited the Motown Museum on Tuesday, taking a lengthy tour of the two-level home that produced the soundtrack of a generation.

“I’m trying not to get emotional,” LeKae said as she methodically inspected the hundreds of mementos — posters, gold records, clothing and more — on display at the Motown Museum.

LeKae, a Broadway veteran who has appeared in “The Book of Mormon” and “Ragtime” among others, worried about losing her composure when it came time to visit Studio A, the famed space in which Gordy and his army of artists, writers, producers and engineers signed, sealed and delivered hit after hit throughout the 1960s.

And she succeeded, descending a small flight of stairs into the square, smallish room and calmly checking out the famed studio affectionately called the “Snake Pit.” LeKae marveled at an oversized black-and-white snapshot on the wall of Ross singing with a smiling Gordy looking on.

It wasn’t until later, while visiting the home’s upstairs, that LeKae’s emotions kicked in.

Standing underneath the “echo chamber,” a hole cut in the upper level’s ceiling designed to create unique sounds for the recording process, LeKae belted out the first few lines of the Supremes’ “Where Did Our Love Go.”

“Baby, baby / Baby, don’t leave me,” she wailed, before the tears began to well up and she had to stop singing.

“This is, like, amazing,” she said.

LeKae and Dixon, who earned a Tony nomination for his work in “The Color Purple” and bears more than a passing resemblance to a Motown-era Gordy, will be front and center when the show debuts this spring.

“Motown: The Musical” begins its run of preview performances March 11 ahead of the official opening on April 14 at New York’s Lunt-Fontanne Theatre.

That gives Dixon, LeKae, Gordy (who’s producing and writing the book) and director Charles Randolph-Wright four months to bring the show to the stage.

To that end, Randolph-Wright also was at Hitsville on Tuesday, seeing prospective actors during a callback session in Studio A. He’s still looking for understudies and others to play smaller parts.

It wasn’t Randolph-Wright’s first visit to Motown’s birthplace as it was for his two leads, but for the 56-year-old who proclaims that “Motown’s in my DNA,” it was no less special.

“What a joy to be a part of (the Motown) movement and what a responsibility to try and place that in the world,” Randolph-Wright said, sitting on a piano bench in Studio A. “So, I’ve been very careful about trying to do that the right way.”

And he has, working for the past three years on “Motown: The Musical,” holding a nationwide casting call and working with Gordy and the other producers to identify which of the overwhelming number of songs from the Motown catalog to include on stage.

“The show is 15 hours,” Randolph-Wright joked.

The first version had 100 songs in it, he said, and “I wanted every song.”

While he said the show’s decision-makers are still deliberating about which songs make the final cut, one thing is certain about the musical selections: A few numbers in the show will be Gordy originals, written specifically for it.

“It’s so interesting to see him go back to being a songwriter after all these years,” said Randolph-Wright, who described one Gordy-penned song as having “all the textures of what Motown is and was, but it’s new.”

As for the man playing the man, Dixon spent his Tuesday walking through the halls of the Motown Museum, taking in every word tour guide Eric Harp and the other docents offered and, as he put it, “soaking it all in.”

At one point, he kneeled down and softly touched the cushion of a red-orange couch upstairs on which Marvin Gaye would take the occasional slumber.

Dixon burst out laughing, then leaped up and continued the tour.

Asked what was so funny, he quickly responded: “Because Marvin Gaye slept on this couch!”

All three of the Hitsville visitors spoke of their great respect and admiration for Gordy and the history of Motown and how important they felt it was to do it justice on stage.

“There’s an energy here that is palpable still,” Randolph-Wright said. “And it remains in this space. I think more than anything, the second I walked in here, it told me that I have to be honest” in telling the Motown story.

The first time he visited the museum, Randolph-Wright remembered walking into the gift shop, where he “bought everything,” including a Temptations T-shirt that read: “Live It Again.”

“I love that, because that’s what we’re doing,” he said.

___

Online:

http://www.motownthemusical.com

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The New Old Age Blog: Doctor's Orders? Another Test

It is no longer news that Americans, and older Americans in particular, get more routine screening tests than they need, more than are useful. Prostate tests for men over 75, annual Pap smears for women over 65 and colonoscopies for anyone over 75 — all are overused, large-scale studies have shown.

Now it appears that many older patients are also subjected to too-frequent use of the other kind of testing, diagnostic tests.

The difference, in brief: Screening tests are performed on people who are asymptomatic, who aren’t complaining of a health problem, as a way to detect incipient disease. We have heard for years that it is best to “catch it early” — “it” frequently being cancer — and though that turns out to be only sometimes true, we and our doctors often ignore medical guidelines and ongoing campaigns to limit and target screening tests.

Diagnostic tests, on the other hand, are meant to help doctors evaluate some symptom or problem. “You’re trying to figure out what’s wrong,” explained Gilbert Welch, a veteran researcher at the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice.

For these tests, medical groups and task forces offer many fewer guidelines on who should get them and how often — there is not much evidence to go on — but there is general agreement that they are not intended for routine surveillance.

But a study using a random 5 percent sample of Medicare beneficiaries — nearly 750,000 of them — suggests that often, that is what’s happening.

“It begins to look like some of these tests are being routinely repeated, and it’s worrisome,” said Dr. Welch, lead author of the study just published in The Archives of Internal Medicine. “Some physicians are just doing them every year.”

He is talking about tests like echocardiography, or a sonogram of the heart. More than a quarter of the sample (28.5 percent) underwent this test between 2004 and 2006, and more than half of those patients (55 percent) had a repeat echocardiogram within three years, most commonly within a year of the first.

Other common tests were frequently repeated as well. Of patients who underwent an imaging stress test, using a treadmill or stationery bike (or receiving a drug) to make the heart work harder, nearly 44 percent had a repeat test within three years. So did about half of those undergoing pulmonary function tests and chest tomography, a CAT scan of the chest.

Cytoscopy (a procedure in which a viewing tube is inserted into the bladder) was repeated for about 41 percent of the patients, and endoscopy (a swallowed tube enters the esophagus and stomach) for more than a third.

Is this too much testing? Without evidence of how much it harms or helps patients, it is hard to say — but the researchers were startled by the extent of repetition. “It’s inconceivable that it’s all important,” Dr. Welch said. “Unfortunately, it looks like it’s important for doctors.”

The evidence for that? The study revealed big geographic differences in diagnostic testing. Looking at the country’s 50 largest metropolitan areas, it found that nearly half the sample’s patients in Miami had an echocardiogram between 2004 and 2006, and two thirds of them had another echocardiogram within three years — the highest rate in the nation.

In fact, for the six tests the study included, five were performed and repeated most often in Florida cities: Miami, Jacksonville and Orlando. “They’re heavily populated by physicians and they have a long history of being at the top of the list” of areas that do a lot of medical procedures and hospitalizations, Dr. Welch said.

But in Portland, Ore., where “the physician culture is very different,” only 17.5 percent of patients had an echocardiogram. The places most prone to testing were also the places with high rates of repeat testing. Portland, San Francisco and Sacramento had the lowest rates.

We often don’t think of tests as having a downside, but they do. “This is the way whole cascades can start that are hard to stop,” Dr. Welch said. “The more we subject ourselves, the more likely some abnormality shows up that may require more testing, some of which has unwanted consequences.”

Properly used, of course, diagnostic tests can provide crucial information for sick people. “But used without a good indication, they can stir up a hornet’s nest,” he said. And of course they cost Medicare a bundle.

An accompanying commentary, sounding distinctly exasperated, pointed out that efforts to restrain overtesting and overtreatment have continued for decades. The commentary called it “discouraging to contemplate fresh evidence by Welch et al of our failure to curb waste of health care resources.”

It is hard for laypeople to know when tests make sense, but clearly we need to keep track of those we and our family members have. That way, if the cardiologist suggests another echocardiogram, we can at least ask a few pointed questions:

“My father just had one six months ago. Is it necessary to have another so soon? What information do you hope to gain that you didn’t have last time? Will the results change the way we manage his condition?”

Questions are always a good idea. Especially in Florida.

Paula Span is the author of “When the Time Comes: Families With Aging Parents Share Their Struggles and Solutions.”

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Grim recovery forecast for U.S., global economies

WASHINGTON — In a grim new forecast, a leading international economic group sharply cut its outlook for U.S. and global growth next year and warned that the debt crisis in Europe and fiscal policy risks in America could plunge the world back into recession.

As it stands now, the industrialized world is looking at a muted and uneven recovery over the next two years, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

The Paris-based OECD projected gross domestic product across its 34 member nations — which include the U.S., Japan and the 17-nation Eurozone — to grow a sluggish 1.4% next year. That is down from 2.2% that the group had forecasted six months earlier.

Growth prospects in the U.S. also were slashed for next year. Experts at the OECD now see inflation-adjusted GDP, the broadest measure of economic activity, rising 2% next year in the U.S., roughly equivalent to this year and down from its earlier forecast of an increase of 2.6%.

The new projections are all the more sobering in that they are based on assumptions that Europe's debt crisis won't get much worse and that the U.S. won't go over the so-called fiscal cliff — a combination of more than $500 billion in automatic tax hikes and federal spending cuts slated to begin at the start of next year.

Quiz: How much do you know about the 'fiscal cliff'?

"If key adverse risks cannot be averted, and especially if the Eurozone crisis were to intensify significantly, the likely outcome would be considerably weaker, potentially plunging the global economy into deep recession and deflation, with large additional rises in unemployment," the OECD said.

The report, released Tuesday, is on the pessimistic side.

Although economists widely agree on the recession risks in the event that the U.S. isn't able to solve the fiscal impasse, a number of experts now say that the U.S. and global economies could see considerably stronger growth next year if Washington can reach agreement on tax and spending policies that avoid a big fiscal contraction in 2013.

"The economy in the U.S. is really poised to grow," said Bernard Baumohl, chief global economist at the Economic Outlook Group, noting that GDP growth in the U.S. could surge to a solid 3.5% or higher next year if the budget issues are resolved.

The latest forecast from the Federal Reserve, compiled in mid-September, sees U.S. GDP increasing 2.5% to 3% next year.

Baumohl's reasons for greater optimism include a recovering housing market, improving job growth and healthier personal finances, all of which should help drive stronger consumer spending.

Total consumer debt, which has fallen for four years, dropped by $74 billion to $11.31 trillion in the third quarter from the previous quarter, and it is now down $1.37 trillion from the peak in September 2008, according to a report Tuesday from the New York Fed.

Reflecting these trends, the Conference Board said Tuesday that its latest survey showed consumer confidence at its highest level since early 2008, results similar to a survey by the University of Michigan.

American business sentiments, however, have been more cautious of late, and many companies have held back on making investments in recent months. But banks are generally in good shape, and big companies are sitting on mountains of cash and are expected to ramp up investments once the fiscal and tax pictures become clearer.

The OECD report nodded to these factors, but noted that the global recovery slowed markedly over the last year amid faltering confidence and weakening world trade, in part because of problems in the Eurozone, which contributed to an unexpectedly strong slowdown in developing countries such as China.

The 17-nation Eurozone will probably remain in recession well into next year, the OECD said.

Meanwhile, Japan, the world's third-largest economy, has fallen back into a downturn after a growth spurt last year aided by massive reconstruction spending following the earthquake and tsunami in March 2011. The Japanese economy is expected to move at a lumbering pace over the next two years.

The outlook for China, Brazil and India — three of the biggest developing economies, none of which is a member of the OECD — looks comparatively brighter:  Growth will probably accelerate next year and in 2014, with China, the world's second-largest economy, again leading the pack.

The OECD forecast sees China's GDP expanding 8.5% next year and nearly 9% in 2014 after slowing this year to about 7.5%.

Although far from immune from the troubles in the U.S. and Europe, which still account for much of the global demand for goods, China and other major emerging economies have more wherewithal to boost growth than their more-indebted developed counterparts by ramping up government spending and lowering interest rates.

The report notes that spending cuts throughout OECD member countries have taken a toll on economic growth, particularly in the Eurozone, where GDP growth for next year was slashed to -0.1% from a positive rate of 0.9%.

Many developed countries are now struggling with financial and economic challenges related to an aging population, large public debts and high unemployment.

Assuming Europe's debt crisis stabilizes, the Eurozone is forecast to recover in 2014. For OECD countries overall, GDP growth is projected to pick up in 2014 to 2.3%.

The U.S. economy is expected to outperform most other OECD nations in 2014, with its GDP stepping up to a more sturdy growth of 2.8%. That compares with the Fed's forecast of 3% to 3.8% growth in 2014.

Either way, U.S. economic growth isn't likely to come close to keeping up with the rapid advance of developing countries, notably China.

Last year, the U.S. accounted for 23% of the global economy, with the Eurozone and China tied for second, each with a 17% share each.

But by 2030, the OECD estimates, China's share of the global economy will rise to 28%, while the U.S. will slip to No. 2 with 18% of world GDP, and the Eurozone's share will fall to 12%.

don.lee@latimes.com

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Girl, 15, fatally shot in South Side backyard

A 15-year-old girl died Monday night after being shot in the back in the Lithuanian Plaza neighborhood on the South Side, officials said.

The shooting happened about 9:20 p.m., as the girl was standing with other people in a backyard in the 6900 block of South Campbell Avenue, Chicago Police Department News Affairs Officer Hector Alfaro said.

A male shooter approached on foot and opened fire, Alfaro said, citing preliminary information.

A bullet struck the girl in the back, and she was taken to Advocate Christ Medical Center in critical condition, said Chicago Fire Department Spokesman Larry Langford.

The girl was pronounced dead at Advocate Christ at 10:06 p.m., according to the Cook County medical examiner's office.

The medical examiner's office identified her as Porshe Foster, of the 7800 block of South Marshfield Avenue.

Police said the girl had been standing with two male teens, ages 16 and 18, and that she did not appear to be the intended target. The shooting appeared to be gang-related, police said.

A red vehicle was seen driving around the block several times before the shooting, but authorities have not determined whether it was related to the shooting, police said.

No suspects are in custody as Area Central detectives investigate the shooting.

Check back for more information.

asege@tribune.com

Twitter: @AdamSege

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New Zealand becomes Middle Earth as Hobbit mania takes hold

WELLINGTON (Reuters) – New Zealand‘s capital city was rushing to complete its transformation into a haven for hairy feet and pointed ears on Tuesday as stars jetted in for the long-awaited world premiere of the first movie of the Hobbit trilogy.

Wellington, where director Peter Jackson and much of the post production is based, has renamed itself “the Middle of Middle Earth“, as fans held costume parties and city workers prepared to lay 500 m (550 yards) of red carpet.

A specially Hobbit-decorated Air New Zealand jet brought in cast, crew and studio officials for the premiere.

Jackson, a one-time printer at a local newspaper and a hometown hero, said he was still editing the final version of the “Hobbit, an Unexpected Journey” ahead of Wednesday’s premiere screening.

The Hobbit movies are based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s book and tell the story that leads up to his epic fantasy “The Lord of the Rings“, which Jackson made into three Oscar-winning films about 10 years ago.

It is set 60 years before “The Lord of The Rings” and was originally planned as only two movies before it was decided that there was enough material to justify a third.

New Zealand fans were getting ready to claim the best spots to see the film’s stars, including British actor Martin Freeman, who plays the Hobbit Bilbo Baggins, Hugo Weaving, Cate Blanchett, and Elijah Wood.

“It’s been a 10-year wait for these movies, New Zealand is Tolkien’s spiritual home, so there’s no way we’re going to miss out,” said office worker Alan Craig, a self-confessed Lord of the Rings “nut”.

The production has been at the centre of several controversies, including a dispute with unions in 2010 over labor contracts that resulted in the government stepping in to change employment laws, and giving Warner Brothers increased incentives to keep the production in New Zealand.

“The Hobbit did come very close to not being filmed here,” Jackson told Radio New Zealand.

He said Warners had sent scouts to Britain to look at possible locations and also matched parts of the script to shots of the Scottish Highlands and English forests.

“That was to convince us we could easily go over there and shoot the film … and I would have had to gone over there to do it but I was desperately fighting to have it stay here,” Jackson said.

Last week, an animal rights group said more than 20 animals, including horses, pigs and chickens, had been killed during the making of the film. Jackson has said some animals used in the film died on the farm where they were being housed, but that none had been hurt during filming.

The films are also notable for being the first filmed at 48 frames per second (fps), compared with the 24 fps that has been the industry standard since the 1920s.

The second film “The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug” will be released in December next year, with the third “The Hobbit: There and Back Again” due in mid-July 2014.

(Editing by Paul Tait)

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Clearing the Fog Around Personality Disorders

For years they have lived as orphans and outliers, a colony of misfit characters on their own island: the bizarre one and the needy one, the untrusting and the crooked, the grandiose and the cowardly.

Their customs and rituals are as captivating as any tribe’s, and at least as mystifying. Every mental anthropologist who has visited their world seems to walk away with a different story, a new model to explain those strange behaviors.

This weekend the Board of Trustees of the American Psychiatric Association will vote on whether to adopt a new diagnostic system for some of the most serious, and striking, syndromes in medicine: personality disorders.

Personality disorders occupy a troublesome niche in psychiatry. The 10 recognized syndromes are fairly well represented on the self-help shelves of bookstores and include such well-known types as narcissistic personality disorder, avoidant personality disorder, as well as dependent and histrionic personalities.

But when full-blown, the disorders are difficult to characterize and treat, and doctors seldom do careful evaluations, missing or downplaying behavior patterns that underlie problems like depression and anxiety in millions of people.

The new proposal — part of the psychiatric association’s effort of many years to update its influential diagnostic manual — is intended to clarify these diagnoses and better integrate them into clinical practice, to extend and improve treatment. But the effort has run into so much opposition that it will probably be relegated to the back of the manual, if it’s allowed in at all.

Dr. David J. Kupfer, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh and chairman of the task force updating the manual, would not speculate on which way the vote might go: “All I can say is that personality disorders were one of the first things we tackled, but that doesn’t make it the easiest.”

The entire exercise has forced psychiatrists to confront one of the field’s most elementary, yet still unresolved, questions: What, exactly, is a personality problem?

Habits of Thought

It wasn’t supposed to be this difficult.

Personality problems aren’t exactly new or hidden. They play out in Greek mythology, from Narcissus to the sadistic Ares. They percolate through biblical stories of madmen, compulsives and charismatics. They are writ large across the 20th century, with its rogues’ gallery of vainglorious, murderous dictators.

Yet it turns out that producing precise, lasting definitions of extreme behavior patterns is exhausting work. It took more than a decade of observing patients before the German psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin could draw a clear line between psychotic disorders, like schizophrenia, and mood problems, like depression or bipolar disorder.

Likewise, Freud spent years formulating his theories on the origins of neurotic syndromes. And Freudian analysts were largely the ones who, in the early decades of the last century, described people with the sort of “confounded identities” that are now considered personality disorders.

Their problems were not periodic symptoms, like moodiness or panic attacks, but issues rooted in longstanding habits of thought and feeling — in who they were.

“These therapists saw people coming into treatment who looked well put-together on the surface but on the couch became very disorganized, very impaired,” said Mark F. Lenzenweger, a professor of psychology at the State University of New York at Binghamton. “They had problems that were neither psychotic nor neurotic. They represented something else altogether.”

Several prototypes soon began to emerge. “A pedantic sense of order is typical of the compulsive character,” wrote the Freudian analyst Wilhelm Reich in his 1933 book, “Character Analysis,” a groundbreaking text. “In both big and small things, he lives his life according to a preconceived, irrevocable pattern.”

Others coalesced too, most recognizable as extreme forms of everyday types: the narcissist, with his fragile, grandiose self-approval; the dependent, with her smothering clinginess; the histrionic, always in the thick of some drama, desperate to be the center of attention.

In the late 1970s, Ted Millon, scientific director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Personology and Psychopathology, pulled together the bulk of the work on personality disorders, most of it descriptive, and turned it into a set of 10 standardized types for the American Psychiatric Association’s third diagnostic manual. Published in 1980, it is a best seller among mental health workers worldwide.

These diagnostic criteria held up well for years and led to improved treatments for some people, like those with borderline personality disorder. Borderline is characterized by an extreme neediness and urges to harm oneself, often including thoughts of suicide. Many who seek help for depression also turn out to have borderline patterns, making their mood problems resistant to the usual therapies, like antidepressant drugs.

Today there are several approaches that can relieve borderline symptoms and one that, in numerous studies, has reduced hospitalizations and helped aid recovery: dialectical behavior therapy.

This progress notwithstanding, many in the field began to argue that the diagnostic catalog needed a rewrite. For one thing, some of the categories overlapped, and troubled people often got two or more personality diagnoses. “Personality Disorder-Not Otherwise Specified,” a catchall label meaning little more than “this person has problems” became the most common of the diagnoses.

It’s a murky area, and in recent years many therapists didn’t have the time or training to evaluate personality on top of everything else. The assessment interviews can last hours, and treatments for most of the disorders involve longer-term, specialized talk therapy.

Psychiatry was failing the sort of patients that no other field could possibly help, many experts said.

“The diagnoses simply weren’t being used very much, and there was a real need to make the whole system much more accessible,” Dr. Lenzenweger said.

Resisting Simplification 

It was easier said than done.

The most central, memorable, and knowable element of any person — personality — still defies any consensus.

A team of experts appointed by the psychiatric association has worked for more than five years to find some unifying system of diagnosis for personality problems.

The panel proposed a system based in part on a failure to “develop a coherent sense of self or identity.” Not good enough, some psychiatric theorists said.

Later, the experts tied elements of the disorders to distortions in basic traits.

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Holiday sales soar on Cyber Monday

Web shopping soared on Cyber Monday, continuing a strong start to the holiday season.

Online sales were up 26.6 percent from last year by Monday evening, according to IBM Digital Analytics Benchmark, which tracks data from 500 retail sites. ComScore meanwhile, expected online sales to hit a record of about $1.5 billion by day's end.

Cyber Monday has become the biggest online shopping day in recent years as employees head back to the office but continue to cybershop for holiday gifts. The growth of smartphones and tablets has only increased that ability, an opportunity Web retailers have been eager to exploit.

This year, retailers aggressively pushed "Pre-Black Friday" promotions and flooded consumers with emails touting good deals in the days before Thanksgiving. As a result, the big shopping days of Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Cyber Monday have blurred into a sale-laden week.

Some retail analysts had worried that strong online sales growth on Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday would entice shoppers to buy earlier, threatening revenue later in the season.

"So far, that is not the case," said Jay Henderson, the strategy director for IBM Smarter Commerce. "Extending the shopping season has really just fueled additional online spending rather than cannibalizing days later in the season."

Sales across Amazon.com, the largest online retailer, had risen 52 percent from the previous year by midmorning Monday, according to ChannelAdvisor, which offers services to third-party sellers on e-commerce sites. Meanwhile, eBay sales volume increased 57 percent, the firm said.

The average online order size on Cyber Monday was $130.30. That was down from almost $200 during the whole of Cyber Monday last year, according to IBM.

But Monday's discounts on the websites of bricks -and-mortar retailers weren't necessarily as broad or as deep as consumers could find if they shopped in the days before, according to Michael Brim, founder of deal site BFAds.net. "We're not seeing across the board the lowest prices like we do on Black Friday or Thanksgiving," he said. "It's better than the average weekly sales, but it's not on the level of Black Friday … yet," he said.

Most retailers — about 97 percent — were expected to offer Cyber Monday deals this year, up from 90 percent last year, according to the National Retail Federation. That means good deals were there for the finding on sites that might not normally have sales, Brim said.

Laptops and apparel at specialty sites were popular items Monday, Brim said.

Amazon offered $30 off its 7-inch Kindle Fire tablet, which usually sells for $159. The deal was available only on Cyber Monday.

Hoffman Estates-based retailer Sears said it found that a number of its shoppers opted to buy online and pick up merchandise in the store, according to spokesman Tom Aiello, who declined to say whether online traffic increased Monday. Shoppers want "to save on shipping, or they want to touch it — and get it the same day and make sure they've got that gift in their hands," he said.

Tribune news services contributed.

crshropshire@tribune.com

Twitter @corilyns

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Pfleger points police to suspect in fatal stabbing

During an argument with his wife Wednesday, Demetrius Jackson allegedly stabbed to death a 55-year-old man who intervened, then called St. Sabina Catholic Church to pray with the Rev. Michael Pfleger.

Shortly after a Cook County judge ordered Jackson, 32, held without bond on Sunday on a charge of first-degree murder, Pfleger, reached by phone, recounted the conversation he had with Jackson on Friday, a day before he turned himself in.

"He told me the guy who he allegedly stabbed is his best friend," Pfleger said. "He said (the victim) punched him in the face. He told me he just reacted. He asked me to pray with him, and I prayed with him."

Jackson, who lives in Chicago's Roseland neighborhood, hung his head in Cook County Bond Court as a judge said he faced a murder charge in the death of William Terry of the 10300 block of South Forest Avenue.

Jackson and his wife were arguing in their home, also in the 10300 block of South Forest, Wednesday night when he allegedly grabbed a knife and threatened to kill her, prosecutors said. The wife fled to Terry's home and called 911, prosecutors said.

Before police arrived, Jackson's wife and Terry decided to walk back to Jackson's home. Still holding a knife, Jackson confronted the two outside and continued to berate his wife, authorities said. Terry stepped between them, "trying to calm" the defendant, Assistant State's Attorney Brad Dickey said. Terry fell to the ground, and Jackson leapt on top of him, stabbing him multiple times in front of several witnesses, authorities said.

"Terry was able to stagger to his home," Dickey said. Gasping for breath, he collapsed on his front porch. He was taken to Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn shortly after 8 p.m. and pronounced dead, according to police. Other county officials said Terry lived in Riverdale.

Jackson, who appears to have no criminal record, worked with St. Sabina on the Safe Passage project, public defender Stephen Herczeg said. A Chicago Public Schools program, Safe Passage employs community members to help improve safety by standing guard along the routes children travel to schools.

When the two spoke, Pfleger encouraged Jackson to turn himself in to police.

"I told him, 'I'm not a court or a lawyer or a judge,'" Pfleger said. "I told him I wouldn't judge him. I just encouraged him to turn himself in and not run. A lot of times, people are afraid to go to the police directly. I said I would try to set it up."

When Jackson agreed, Pfleger said he called police at the Gresham District, telling them of Jackson's intentions.

As promised, Jackson showed up at a police station Friday morning and gave a video-taped confession, according to court documents.

"Thank God it worked," said Pfleger. "It's very sad. I feel bad about the man who got killed, too. It's a loss of two lives."

efmeyer@tribune.com

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Betfair pulls out of Greece over permits row

LONDON (Reuters) – Online gambling exchange Betfair said it would withdraw from the Greek market until there was greater clarity on gaming regulation in the country.

Betfair, which has not yet applied for a permit to operate in Greece, questioned the cost and conditions attached to permits required by gaming firms to trade in the country.

“According to legal advice received, the value of these permits is unclear and we consider the gambling legislation in the country to be inconsistent with European law,” Betfair said on Monday.

“The associated fiscal conditions attached to these permits, which may include payment of taxes on historical revenues, make the market economically unattractive.”

Earlier this month the Greek Gaming Commission said gambling firms operating in Greece without a permit would face financial penalties and criminal sanctions.

Betfair said it believes there are “significant issues with the legality of this decision” by the Greek Gaming Commission.

It added that it was disappointed the European Commission had not moved to prevent what Betfair calls “protectionist behavior.”

Earlier this month Betfair, which launched 12 years ago and operates an exchange system that allows gamblers to bet against each other rather than the bookmaker, withdrew its online sports betting exchange in Germany because of a tax levied on stakes on sports events from July 2012.

The European Commission last month said it was not proposing EU-wide legislation to regulate online gambling.

Prior to Betfair’s decision to withdraw from the market, it had been expected to generate 13 million pounds ($ 20.81 million) of revenue from the Greek market in the current financial year.

($ 1 = 0.6246 British pounds)

(Reporting by Rhys Jones; editing by James Davey)

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Dog bite sidelines ‘Dirty Dozen’ trumpeter Towns

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Dirty Dozen Brass Band trumpeter Efrem Towns is recovering at home in New Orleans from a vicious attack by a Rottweiler at an Atlanta motel.

He missed performances in Colorado and New Orleans after the attack on Nov. 18, and doesn’t know if he’ll make the band’s next scheduled gig on Dec. 28, The Times-Picayune (http://bit.ly/XOJoNr) reported.

He and baritone sax player Roger Lewis said the dog surged from an open motel room door after Towns knocked on the door of Lewis’ room.

“I didn’t know if it was a dog, wolverine, bear, mongoose or what. I just knew something had me,” Towns said.

He said the dog‘s owner came out of the next room, and they were able to subdue it.

At Atlanta’s Grady Hospital, he received 30 stitches in his groin. Towns, who has health insurance through his wife, Tracie, said he will be seeing a urologist this week.

The Dirty Dozen Brass Band formed in 1977, and is credited with creating the contemporary, funk-infused brass band sound. It’s been featured on albums with David Bowie, Elvis Costello and the Black Crowes.

Towns said he probably could practice while convalescing. “But I’m very uncomfortable right now,” he said Friday evening. “I’m basically immobilized — it’s hard getting around. I’m kind of miserable.”

The experience hasn’t soured Towns on dogs. He and his wife own three miniature schnauzers, a standard schnauzer and a mixed breed. On Friday, his daughter’s dachshund was visiting.

“I’m a dog person,” he said. “And even though I got bit, I hope they don’t put that dog to sleep.”

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Information from: The Times-Picayune, http://www.nola.com

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