Prosecution details 'horrific' murder case against Pistorius

PRETORIA -- "Blade Runner" Oscar Pistorius put on his artificial legs and walked across his bedroom before firing four handgun rounds into the locked bathroom door, killing his cowering girlfriend in cold blood, prosecutors said on Tuesday.

Reeva Steenkamp, a law graduate and model, died after being hit by three rounds, prosecutor Gerrie Nel said.

Pistorius wept uncontrollably in court as Nel outlined details of a shooting that has gripped South Africa and the millions around the world who saw the double amputee's track glory as the ultimate tale of triumph over adversity.

Scores of mourners gathered in the coastal city of Port Elizabeth for Steenkamp's funeral, where the mood was one of grief tinged with anger at the loss of "an angel".

In Pretoria central magistrate's court, defense lawyer Barry Roux disputed the murder charge, saying the facts surrounding the shooting in the early hours of Thursday were unclear.

"All we really know is she locked herself behind the toilet door and she was shot," he told the packed courtroom.

However, the prosecution painted a picture of premeditated killing - a crime that carries a life sentence in South Africa.

"If I arm myself, walk a distance and murder a person, that is premeditated," he said. "The door is closed. There is no doubt. I walk seven meters and I kill."

"The motive is 'I want to kill'. That's it," he added. "This deceased was in a 1.4 by 1.14 meter little room. She could go nowhere. It must have been horrific."

The arrest of Pistorius, 26, stunned the millions who had watched in awe last year as the Olympic and Paralympic sprinter reached the semi-final of the 400 meters in the London Olympics, running on high-technology carbon fiber 'blades'.

Initial reports suggested he might have mistaken Steenkamp for an intruder - a possibility in crime-ridden South Africa and a version Pistorius told his sister immediately after the shooting, Nel said.

The prosecution countered this theory by saying Steenkamp's overnight bag had been found in the bedroom of the plush two-storey home in a gated compound north of Pretoria.

"ROT IN JAIL"

Dressed in a dark suit, Pistorius arrived at the court in a police car shortly before 7 a.m. (0500 GMT). Proceedings were delayed as more than 100 journalists from around the world jostled to get into the dimly lit, brick-face courtroom.

The case has drawn further attention to endemic violence against women in South Africa after the gang-rape, mutilation and murder of a 17-year-old near Cape Town this month.

Members of the Women's League of the ruling African National Congress protested outside the building, waving placards saying: "No Bail for Pistorius" and "Rot in jail".

At Steenkamp's cremation in the windswept Victoria Park Crematorium in Port Elizabeth, sorrow mingled with outrage.

"She was an angel. She was so soft, so innocent. Such a lovely person. It's just sad that this could happen to somebody so good," said Gavin Venter, an ex-jockey who worked for Steenkamp's father.

"I'm disgusted with what he did. He must be dealt with harshly," he added. "Without a doubt he's a danger to the public. He'll be a danger to witnesses. He must stay in jail."

After the hour-long private ceremony in the cream-colored hill-top church, Steenkamp's brother Adam and uncle Mike, fighting back tears, spoke briefly to reporters.

"There's a space missing inside all the people that she knew that can't be filled again," Adam Steenkamp said. "We are going to keep all the positive things that we remember and know about my sister. We will miss her."

The case has gripped sports-mad South Africa, where Pistorius was seen as a rare hero who had transcended the racial divides that persist 19 years after the end of apartheid.

Pistorius' endorsements and sponsorships, which include sportswear giant Nike, British telecoms firm BT, sunglasses maker Oakley and French designer Thierry Mugler, are thought to be worth as much as $2 million a year.

Nike said on Monday it had dropped Pistorius from any future advertising campaigns. Other sponsors have said they will make no decisions until the legal process has run its course.

Pistorius has cancelled scheduled track appearances in Australia, Brazil and Britain in the coming months to focus on his attempt to clear his name.

Born without a fibula in either leg, Pistorius had his lower legs amputated as an 11-month-old baby but became the highest-profile athlete in the history of the Paralympic Games.

In last year's Paralympics he suffered his first loss over 200 meters in nine years. After the race he questioned the legitimacy of Brazilian winner Alan Oliveira's prosthetic blades, but was quick to express regret for the comments.

Reuters

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National Briefing | South: Abortion Curbs Clear Senate in Arkansas

The State Senate voted 25 to 7 on Monday to ban most abortions 20 weeks into a pregnancy. The measure goes back to the House to consider an amendment that added exceptions for rape and incest. The legislation is based on the belief that fetuses can feel pain 20 weeks into a pregnancy, and is similar to bans in several other states. Opponents say it would require mothers to deliver babies with fatal conditions. Gov. Mike Beebe has said he has constitutional concerns about the proposal but has not said whether he will veto it.

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Cubs seek big payday on TV rights

While the Chicago Cubs and rooftop owners debate proposed stadium billboards, a much more lucrative revenue source is in the team's sights.

Officials confirmed Monday that the team plans to begin renegotiating its broadcast rights agreement with WGN-TV, putting nearly half of its televised games in play after the 2014 season and opening the door to a potentially imminent payday that could help fund proposed Wrigley Field renovations.

The Cubs and WGN-TV have a broadcast partnership that dates to 1948 and a history that is inextricably linked. With baseball rights fees soaring in recent years, due in part to the creation of exclusive team cable channels, there is much at stake for both. Last month, the Los Angeles Dodgers launched their own cable sports network, striking a deal with Time Warner Cable that will pay the team a reported $7 billion to broadcast its games over 25 years.

The Cubs couldn't create their own cable channel until 2020.

For now, Cubs games are split between Comcast SportsNet Chicago and WGN-TV, earning the club about $60 million in annual broadcast rights fees combined, according to sources close to the situation. The CSN deal runs through 2019 and includes the White Sox, Bulls and Blackhawks as partners. Comcast owns about 30 percent of the network.

The White Sox on Monday declined to discuss the future of their broadcast rights.

The Cubs get about $20 million to air 70 games each year on WGN. They have decided to exercise a renegotiation option with the Tribune Co.-owned station, seeking to boost those revenues for the 2015 season and beyond. WGN will have a chance to retain those rights, but other media players are likely to get a shot as well.

"WGN has the ability to retain those rights through 2019, provided that they're willing to pay fair market value," said Cubs spokesman Julian Green. "That's a discussion for WGN and the Cubs to have together."

Based on the $60 million revenue fee for combined broadcast rights, the Cubs get about $400,000 per game, far below the market value potentially set by the Dodgers. Under their reported new deal, the Dodgers will be getting about $280 million per year, or about $1.8 million per game.

"It doesn't surprise me that the Cubs are going to look at all available options out there, including Comcast and everybody else who might be interested in their rights," said Jim Corno, president of Comcast SportsNet Chicago. "Sports content is extremely valuable. It's DVR-proof. Not many people are going to DVR a Dodgers game or a Bulls game or a White Sox game if they can watch it live. The advertiser can buy spots knowing that the chances are very slim that people are not going to watch my commercials because they're going to fast-forward through them."

The Ricketts family inherited the broadcast agreements as part of their 2009 purchase of the Cubs from Tribune Co., owner of the Chicago Tribune and WGN-TV. The $845 million deal — then the highest in Major League Baseball history — included Wrigley Field and a 25 percent stake in Comcast SportsNet Chicago.

Since then, valuations have soared, due in no small part to skyrocketing broadcast rights. Last March, an ownership group led by Chicago financier Mark Walter, CEO of Guggenheim Partners, paid a record $2.15 billion to buy the Dodgers out of bankruptcy. In January, the team announced the launch of its own regional sports network with Time Warner Cable beginning in 2014.

For the Cubs, who are looking to offset a proposed $300 million renovation of 99-year-old Wrigley Field with some new outfield billboards, the broadcast rights issue is a significant opportunity. Experts say there are plenty of options to improve on the current deal, including the possibility of upfront payments that secure partial rights through 2019, and a full standalone network beginning in 2020.

In a statement, Tribune Co. signaled it was willing to consider competing to keep the Cubs on WGN.

"WGN-TV has enjoyed a tremendous relationship with the Cubs and their fans since 1948," Tribune Co. spokesman Gary Weitman said in a statement Monday. "It is a relationship that we are proud of, and one that brings Cubs baseball to fans throughout Chicago and across the country. We're looking forward not only to the upcoming 2013 season, but also to working with the Cubs on baseball broadcasts in the future."

Tribune Co. shows games on both WGN-Ch. 9 and the national cable channel WGN America. While Tribune Co., which is under new management, is looking at programming options for WGN America that include original shows, sources say the company is likely to want to keep the Cubs in its lineup.

Green said the Cubs plan to talk to different parties about where the slate of games currently broadcast by WGN will be seen.

"I think there are a number of options that will certainly present themselves as we talk about this with WGN and other partners throughout the year," the Cubs spokesman said. "But at the end of the day, any final result needs to be a result that benefits the organization and most importantly, the baseball team."

The rise in sports rights fees is being passed along to cable and satellite operators, who in turn are raising monthly fees for customers, whether they watch the games or not. There is some speculation that the Dodgers deal proves to be a tipping point in which cable operators rebel by threatening to drop those sports networks.

Not everyone agrees that the Dodgers deal represents the ceiling of what broadcast rights fees are worth. Corno said that if the Dodgers sale and the new deal for the team's baseball network seemed outrageously expensive now, they likely will seem in retrospect to have been fairly priced, or even a bargain.

"In 25 years, when this deal is up, people will not be talking about how expensive the Dodger deal is," he said. "Because somebody else will have cut a deal in a major market with a major team that will make this deal look like Time Warner got a heck of a deal."

rchannick@tribune.com

Twitter @RobertChannick

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2 questioned in fatal shooting of Chicago teen

Janay McFarlane, 18, was shot on the way to a store, the same day Obama spoke on gun violence.

Two people are being questioned in connection with the fatal shooting of an 18-year-old Chicago woman who was killed Friday, the same day her sister attended President Barack Obama's speech on gun violence, officials said Sunday.

An 18-year-old man and a 20-year-old man are considered persons of interest in the homicide investigation and are being questioned by North Chicago police and officials from the Lake County State's Attorney's Office in connection with the death of Janay McFarlane, according to a statement released this afternoon by North Chicago police.

The men were arrested after McFarlane was shot at about 11:30 p.m. Friday on the  1300 block of Jackson Avenue in the northern suburb.

Angela Blakely, McFarlane’s mother, said she knew few details about the investigation but was encouraged by the news of the arrests.

“I’m just hoping that they do find out who did this to my baby, so they can pay for the crime they committed,” she said.

Blakely urged anyone with information about the killing to talk with police.

McFarlane, 18, of the 8900 block of South Lowe Avenue, was in North Chicago visiting family and friends and was walking with friends when she was shot, according Blakely. McFarlane was walking with friends, one of whom may have been the intended target, Blakely said.

When police responded to a call of shots being fired in the area they found McFarlane fatally shot, police said. They canvassed the area and were tipped off to the men who were taken in for questioning, according to police.

McFarlane was killed just hours after her sister, Destini Warren, 14, had attended President Barack Obama's speech against gun violence Friday.

Blakely, the mother of both girls, said that the family had been anticipating the President's visit to the school where Destini is a freshman.

Leading up to the visit, McFarlane frequently mentioned the recent death of Hadiya Pendleton, 15, whose own shooting death a mile from the Obama's home spurred the President's visit.

"It's terrible, it's terrible the only thing I can remember is my daughter telling me, 'Mommy, it's so sad about Hadiya. That makes no sense,' " Blakely said. "She always asked me a lot of questions about death."

The speech resonated even more when her family got the call from McFarlane's father in North Chicago, who told Destini that her sister was dead, she said.

"It was like real painful," said Destini, her voice choking back tears.

North Chicago officials said McFarlane's killing is the first in the northern suburb since October. The October slaying was the only homicide for the town last year.

chicagobreaking@tribune.com

Twitter: @ChicagoBreaking

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Bulgari will showcase Elizabeth Taylor’s gems in Oscar-week exhibit

(Reuters) – Famed jeweler Bulgari said on Sunday it would put eight pieces of the late actress Elizabeth Taylor‘s jewels on display at its Beverly Hills boutique, more than a year after the Hollywood star’s world-class collection fetched record prices at auction.

The exhibition of pieces from that sale will include jewels Taylor obtained and wore during well-documented times in her storied life, including the filming of “Cleopatra,” which launched her romance with Richard Burton, Bulgari said.

Included are Taylor’s first piece of Bulgari jewelry, an emerald-and-diamond brooch which achieved a record per-carat price for any emerald at the Christie’s sale. The brooch sold for $ 6,578,500, setting a record price for an emerald jewel and emeralds per carat at $ 280,000.

An emerald and diamond necklace which sold at the Christie’s auction for $ 6.1 million, and a diamond and gold sautoir set with six ancient Roman coins acquired for $ 5.9 million, will also be shown along with other diamonds, sapphires and more.

The jewels, widely reported to have been bought from the Taylor estate by Bulgari at the December 2011 auction of her collection at Christie’s, will go on display this week in advance of next Sunday’s Academy Awards, Bulgari said.

“There couldn’t have been a more appropriate celebrity to have fallen in love with Bulgari,” it said in announcing the display.

Noting Taylor’s “grounded” nature in contrast to her impossibly glamorous life, it said Bulgari is known for creating jewels that pair precious stones with items of no intrinsic value such as antique coins, ceramics and silk cords.

Burton, whom Taylor married and divorced twice, once famously quipped that “The only Italian word Elizabeth knows is Bulgari.” The Italian luxury house was founded in 1884 in Rome by Greek Sotirios Voulgaris, known in Italy as Sotirio Bulgari.

It was acquired in 2011 for 4.3 billion euros ($ 6.01 billion) and other considerations by the French luxury house LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton SA.

Taylor died in 2011 aged 79 of congestive heart failure. The Christie’s auction of her gems took in a record $ 116 million.

(Editing by Chris Michaud and Todd Eastham)

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Well: Health Effects of Smoking for Women

The title of a recent report on smoking and health might well have paraphrased the popular ad campaign for Virginia Slims, introduced in 1968 by Philip Morris and aimed at young professional women: “You’ve come a long way, baby.”

Today that slogan should include: “…toward a shorter life.” Ten years shorter, in fact.

The new report is one of two rather shocking analyses of the hazards of smoking and the benefits of quitting published last month in The New England Journal of Medicine. The data show that “women who smoke like men die like men who smoke,” Dr. Steven A. Schroeder, a professor of health and health care at the University of California, San Francisco, wrote in an accompanying editorial.

That was not always the case. Half a century ago, the risk of death from lung cancer among men who smoked was five times higher than that among women smokers. But by the first decade of this century, that risk had equalized: for both men and women who smoked, the risk of death from lung cancer was 25 times greater than for nonsmokers, Dr. Michael J. Thun of the American Cancer Society and his colleagues reported.

Today, women who smoke are even more likely than men who smoke to die of lung cancer. According to a second study in the same journal, women smokers face a 17.8 times greater risk of dying of lung cancer than women who do not smoke; men who smoke are at 14.6 times greater risk to die of lung cancer than men who don’t. Women who smoke now face a risk of death from lung cancer that is 50 percent higher than the estimates reported in the 1980s, according to Dr. Prabhat Jha of the Center for Global Health Research in Toronto and his colleagues.

After controlling for age, body weight, education level and alcohol use, the new analysis found something else: men and women who continue to smoke die on average 10 years sooner than those who never smoked.

Dramatic progress has been made in reducing the prevalence of smoking, which has fallen from 42 percent of adults in 1965 (the year after the first surgeon general’s report on smoking and health) to 19 percent in 2010. Yet smoking still results in nearly 200,000 deaths a year among people 35 to 69 years old in the United States. A quarter of all deaths in this age group would not occur if smokers had the same risk of death as nonsmokers.

The risks are even greater among men 55 to 74 and women 60 to 74. More than two-thirds of all deaths among current smokers in these age groups are related to smoking. Over all, the death rate from all causes combined in these age groups “is now at least three times as high among current smokers as among those who have never smoked,” Dr. Thun’s team found.

While lung cancer is the most infamous hazard linked to smoking, the habit also raises the risk of death from heart disease, stroke, pulmonary disease and other cancers, including breast cancer.

Furthermore, changes in how cigarettes are manufactured may have increased the dangers of smoking. The use of perforated filters, tobacco blends that are less irritating, and paper that is more porous made it easier to inhale smoke and encouraged deeper inhalation to achieve satisfying blood levels of nicotine.

The result of deeper inhalation, Dr. Thun’s report suggests, has been an increased risk of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or C.O.P.D., and a shift in the kind of lung cancer linked to smoking. Among nonsmokers, the risk of death from C.O.P.D. has declined by 45 percent in men and has remained stable in women, but the death rate has more than doubled among smokers.

But there is good news, too: it’s never too late to reap the benefits of quitting. The younger you are when you stop smoking, the greater your chances of living a long and healthy life, according to the findings of Dr. Jha’s international team.

The team analyzed smoking and smoking-cessation histories of 113,752 women and 88,496 men 25 and older and linked them to causes of deaths in these groups through 2006.

Those who quit smoking by age 34 lived 10 years longer on average than those who continued to smoke, giving them a life expectancy comparable to people who never smoked. Smokers who quit between ages 35 and 44 lived nine years longer, and those who quit between 45 and 54 lived six years longer. Even quitting smoking between ages 55 and 64 resulted in a four-year gain in life expectancy.

The researchers emphasized, however, that the numbers do not mean it is safe to smoke until age 40 and then stop. Former smokers who quit by 40 still experienced a 20 percent greater risk of death than nonsmokers. About one in six former smokers who died before the age of 80 would not have died if he or she had never smoked, they reported.

Dr. Schroeder believes we can do a lot better to reduce the prevalence of smoking with the tools currently in hand if government agencies, medical insurers and the public cooperate.

Unlike the races, ribbons and fund-raisers for breast cancer, “there’s no public face for lung cancer, even though it kills more women than breast cancer does,” Dr. Schroeder said in an interview. Lung cancer is stigmatized as a disease people bring on themselves, even though many older victims were hooked on nicotine in the 1940s and 1950s, when little was known about the hazards of smoking and doctors appeared in ads assuring the public it was safe to smoke.

Raising taxes on cigarettes can help. The states with the highest prevalence of smoking have the lowest tax rates on cigarettes, Dr. Schroeder said. Also helpful would be prohibiting smoking in more public places like parks and beaches. Some states have criminalized smoking in cars when children are present.

More “countermarketing” of cigarettes is needed, he said, including antismoking public service ads on television and dramatic health warnings on cigarette packs, as is now done in Australia. But two American courts have ruled that the proposed label warnings infringed on the tobacco industry’s right to free speech.

Health insurers, both private and government, could broaden their coverage of stop-smoking aids and better publicize telephone quit lines, and doctors “should do more to stimulate quit attempts,” Dr. Schroeder said.

As Nicola Roxon, a former Australian health minister, put it, “We are killing people by not acting.”

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U. of C. Medicine's leader gears up for challenges

Nearly every morning, before 7 a.m., Dr. Kenneth Polonsky is dropped off near the Lakefront Trail on Chicago's South Side, a few steps from Lake Michigan.

He carries no briefcase, wears no suit and has no cup of coffee, the standard trappings of his executive contemporaries.

Instead — at least in the winter — he's covered in high-tech running gear, leaving only a small patch of skin around his eyes exposed to the weather. The outfit, he muses, must raise suspicions among cab drivers.

"It's 6:30 in the morning, it's dark and can be, maybe, 10 degrees outside," he says. "When I ask the driver to drop me by the side of (the road), they must think, 'What's going on with this guy? There's something funny here.'"

Twelve months a year, through heat waves, cold snaps, rain, sleet and snow, the top official at University of Chicago Medicine starts most mornings running 5 miles to work.

It's a routine that reflects lessons learned from decades of studying diabetes and treating patients with the disease and one he pairs with watching his diet "like a hawk." The daily run also is a vehicle for the cerebral 62-year-old M.D. to contemplate the challenges that lie ahead.

There are many, starting with the massive transformation of the way medical care is paid for and delivered as part of President Barack Obama's 2010 health care overhaul.

Polonsky also faces cuts to research funding that flows to the Pritzker School of Medicine through the National Institutes of Health and growing financial pressure from Illinois' Medicaid program, the federal-state health insurance program that serves a substantial percentage of the hospital's South Side patients.

All this while christening and trying to pay for a $700 million, 1.2 million-square-foot new hospital, a 10-story, boxy, modernist structure that towers above a campus better known for its ubiquitous, early-20th-century red-roofed Gothic buildings.

The hospital, dubbed the Center for Care and Discovery in the absence of a donor willing to lay down $50 million for naming rights, is scheduled to open Saturday.

With 240 private patient rooms, 28 supersize operating rooms and seven advanced imaging rooms, the hospital will specialize in neuroscience and the treatment of cancer and gastrointestinal diseases.

But even what is supposed to be a celebratory, clink-the-glasses moment for Polonsky and the university has been sullied by controversy.

An estimated 50 protesters entered the hospital on a Sunday afternoon in January, holding placards and using a megaphone to voice their displeasure that such a costly facility was not outfitted with a trauma unit.

University police with batons were videotaped shoving protesters to the ground. Four were arrested in the melee.

Polonsky said the system is re-evaluating its role in trauma care, "a legitimate question for discussion and debate and one we are looking at again in detail."

Managing this issue will be a major test of Polonsky's leadership in 2013 and will occur against the backdrop of the largest upheaval to the health care industry in a generation.

"We're in a really vulnerable situation at the moment; there's no question about it," Polonsky said of the shift under way in health care. "But that's one of the reasons I'm interested in my job. I believe I can impact a series of big issues."

Many people, he said, go through life wondering whether what they're doing is worthwhile or significant in the big picture of things.

"I'm very fortunate to never, ever have had that problem," Polonsky said.

A boy in South Africa

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Woman shot, killed hours after sibling attends Obama speech

Hours after Destini Warren, 14, attended President Barack Obama’s speech against gun violence Friday, her family learned of a terrible irony.

Destini’s sister, Janay McFarlane, 18, was the victim of the very thing that the President was condemning at Hyde Park Academy in Chicago.

McFarlane, of the 8900 block of South Lowe Avenue, was visiting friends and family in North Chicago when she was shot on her way to a store in the northern suburb, her family said.

She was pronounced dead at 11:30 p.m., shortly after sustaining a single gunshot wound to her head, according to the Lake County Coroner’s office.

North Chicago Police officials did not return calls for comment Saturday.

Angela Blakely, the mother of both girls, said that the family had been anticipating the President's visit to the school where Destini is a freshman.

Leading up to the visit, McFarlane frequently mentioned the recent death of Hadiya Pendleton, 15, whose own shooting death a mile from the Obama's home spurred the President's visit.

“It's terrible, it's terrible the only thing I can remember is my daughter telling me, 'Mommy, it's so sad about Hadiya. That makes no sense,'“ Blakely said. “She always asked me a lot of questions about death.”

Blakely said that McFarlane was still trying to make sense of the violence that claimed Pendleton’s life. She kept questioning why someone so innocent could die from violence.

McFarlane, who attended Hyde Park Academy before she became pregnant with her son Jayden — 3-months-old — and dropped out, was excited that her younger sister was able to attend Obama’s speech.

Destini said that during the days before the President arrived to Chicago, her sister would come by and talk to her about the visit. Destini said she last spoke to her sister on Thursday night before the younger girl went to sleep.

“She was like 'Just tell me how it's going to be.' She was excited for me,” said Destini. “ (The violence) was really wracking her because she was talking to my momma about Hadiya.”

Destini said she was sitting on a bench about two rows behind the President on stage listening as he spoke about gun violence.

“I could relate to it because that's been happening to a lot of people,” said Destini.

The speech resonated even more when her family got the call from McFarlane's father in North Chicago, who told Destini that her sister was dead, she said.

“It was like real painful,” said Destini, her voice choking back tears.

Since President Obama's speech on Friday, two people have been killed and six injured by guns in Chicago.

csadovi@tribune.com

Freelance reporter Ruth Fuller contributed

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Romanian film “Child’s Pose” wins Berlin Golden Bear

BERLIN (Reuters) – “Child’s Pose”, a Romanian drama about a domineering mother using her social position to try to save her son from jail, won the Golden Bear for best picture at the Berlin film festival on Saturday.

The movie, directed by Calin Peter Netzer and starring Luminita Gheorghiu in the central role, had been among the favorites for the coveted prize, which extends the remarkable success of Romanian filmmakers on the European festival circuit.

The awards ceremony brought to a close the 11-day cinema showcase, where hundreds of movies were screened across Berlin and stars including Matt Damon, Nicolas Cage, Anne Hathaway, Jude Law and Catherine Deneuve walked the red carpet.

In “Child’s Pose”, Gheorghiu shines as the wealthy 60-year-old Cornelia, who attempts to buy off the poor family of a boy killed by her son in a road accident.

The veteran actress also appeared in Cristian Mungiu’s “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days”, a grisly abortion drama that put Romanian cinema firmly on the international map when it won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes film festival in 2007.

“I’m still shell-shocked,” Netzer told reporters after the ceremony. “I haven’t quite woken up to this new reality. It will probably take a couple of days for it to sink in.”

The big surprise on the night was the best actor award for Nazif Mujic, a Bosnian Roma who had to be convinced to play himself in “An Episode in the Life of an Iron Picker” about his own experiences on the fringes of society.

The movie, a docu-drama directed by Danis Tanovic and made for 30,000 euros ($ 40,100), captured hearts in Berlin for its straightforward storytelling and moving account of the impoverished Mujic’s desperate attempts to pay for his wife’s emergency operation.

“FEELS LIKE NEIL ARMSTRONG”

Tanovic, an Oscar winner for his 2001 war movie “No Man’s Land”, read about the story in a local newspaper in 2011 and was so angry at Bosnian society’s apparent lack of humanity that he determined to make a film about it.

“I think he (Mujic) feels like Neil Armstrong when he went to the moon, seriously,” Tanovic said of his star. “And I really do hope it is going to change his life for the better.”

Arguably the most popular winner at the 63rd Berlin film festival was Paulina Garcia, the Chilean actress whose portrayal in “Gloria” of a 58-year-old divorcee in Santiago was the highlight for many festival-goers and won her best actress.

Refusing to retire quietly into the background, Gloria drinks, smokes, parties and enjoys sex, all the while holding down a full time job and keeping in touch with her children.

The powerful older woman was a constant theme throughout the main competition of 19 films eligible for prizes, and Garcia was up against Gheorghiu and French actresses Catherine Deneuve and Juliette Binoche for the acting Silver Bear.

Best director went to U.S. filmmaker David Gordon Green for his touching road movie “Prince Avalanche”, in which Paul Rudd and Emile Hirsch play a pair of misfits who go to work in a remote forest where they embark on a journey of self-discovery.

Iranian entry “Closed Curtain” picked up the best script prize for directors Kamboziya Partovi and Jafar Panahi. Panahi made the movie in secret in defiance of a 20-year filmmaking ban and was not allowed to travel to Berlin to collect his award.

“Tradition and culture remain, politicians come and go,” Partovi told reporters after receiving the honor.

Kazakh cinematographer Aziz Zhambakiyev was honored for outstanding artistic achievement for his painterly work on “Harmony Lessons”, set on the harsh steppes of Kazakhstan.

($ 1 = 0.7490 euros)

(Reporting by Mike Collett-White, editing by Paul Casciato)

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Cuomo Bucks Tide With Bill to Lift Abortion Limits

ALBANY — Bucking a trend in which states have been seeking to restrict abortion, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo is putting the finishing touches on legislation that would guarantee women in New York the right to late-term abortions when their health is in danger or the fetus is not viable.

Mr. Cuomo, seeking to deliver on a promise he made in his recent State of the State address, would rewrite a law that currently allows abortions after 24 weeks of pregnancy only if the pregnant woman’s life is at risk. The law is not enforced, because it is superseded by federal court rulings that allow late-term abortions to protect a woman’s health, even if her life is not in jeopardy. But abortion rights advocates say the existence of the more restrictive state law has a chilling effect on some doctors and prompts some women to leave the state for late-term abortions.

Mr. Cuomo’s proposal, which has not yet been made public, would also clarify that licensed health care practitioners, and not only physicians, can perform abortions. It would remove abortion from the state’s penal law and regulate it through the state’s public health law.

Abortion rights advocates have welcomed Mr. Cuomo’s plan, which he outlined in general terms as part of a broader package of women’s rights initiatives in his State of the State address in January. But the Roman Catholic Church and anti-abortion groups are dismayed; opponents have labeled the legislation the Abortion Expansion Act.

The prospects for Mr. Cuomo’s effort are uncertain. The State Assembly is controlled by Democrats who support abortion rights; the Senate is more difficult to predict because this year it is controlled by a coalition of Republicans who have tended to oppose new abortion rights laws and breakaway Democrats who support abortion rights.

New York legalized abortion in 1970, three years before it was legalized nationally by the Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade. Mr. Cuomo’s proposal would update the state law so that it could stand alone if the broader federal standard set by Roe were to be undone.

“Why are we doing this? The Supreme Court could change,” said a senior Cuomo administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the governor had not formally introduced his proposal.

But opponents of abortion rights, already upset at the high rate of abortions in New York State, worry that rewriting the abortion law would encourage an even greater number of abortions. For example, they suggest that the provision to allow abortions late in a woman’s pregnancy for health reasons could be used as a loophole to allow unchecked late-term abortions.

“I am hard pressed to think of a piece of legislation that is less needed or more harmful than this one,” the archbishop of New York, Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, wrote in a letter to Mr. Cuomo last month. Referring to Albany lawmakers in a subsequent column, he added, “It’s as though, in their minds, our state motto, ‘Excelsior’ (‘Ever Upward’), applies to the abortion rate.”

National abortion rights groups have sought for years to persuade state legislatures to adopt laws guaranteeing abortion rights as a backup to Roe. But they have had limited success: Only seven states have such measures in place, including California, Connecticut and Maryland; the most recent state to adopt such a law is Hawaii, which did so in 2006.

“Pretty much all of the energy, all of the momentum, has been to restrict abortion, which makes what could potentially happen in New York so interesting,” said Elizabeth Nash, state issues manager at the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion rights. “There’s no other state that’s even contemplating this right now.”

In most statehouses, the push by lawmakers has been in the opposite direction. The past two years has seen more provisions adopted at the state level to restrict abortion rights than in any two-year period in decades, according to the Guttmacher Institute; last year, 19 states adopted 43 new provisions restricting abortion access, while not a single significant measure was adopted to expand access to abortion or to comprehensive sex education.

“It’s an extraordinary moment in terms of the degree to which there is government interference in a woman’s ability to make these basic health care decisions,” said Andrea Miller, the president of NARAL Pro-Choice New York. “For New York to be able to send a signal, a hopeful sign, a sense of the turning of the tide, we think is really important.”

Abortion rights advocates say that even though the Roe decision supersedes state law, some doctors are hesitant to perform late-term abortions when a woman’s health is at risk because the criminal statutes remain on the books.

“Doctors and hospitals shouldn’t be reading criminal laws to determine what types of health services they can offer and provide to their patients,” said M. Tracey Brooks, the president of Family Planning Advocates of New York State.

For Mr. Cuomo, the debate over passing a new abortion law presents an opportunity to appeal to women as well as to liberals, who have sought action in Albany without success since Eliot Spitzer made a similar proposal when he was governor. But it also poses a challenge to the coalition of Republicans and a few Democrats that controls the State Senate, the chamber that has in the past stood as the primary obstacle to passing abortion legislation in the capital.

The governor has said that his Reproductive Health Act would be one plank of a 10-part Women’s Equality Act that also would include equal pay and anti-discrimination provisions. Conservative groups, still stinging from the willingness of Republican lawmakers to go along with Mr. Cuomo’s push to legalize same-sex marriage in 2011, are mobilizing against the proposal. Seven thousand New Yorkers who oppose the measure have sent messages to Mr. Cuomo and legislators via the Web site of the New York State Catholic Conference.

A number of anti-abortion groups have also formed a coalition called New Yorkers for Life, which is seeking to rally opposition to the governor’s proposal using social media.

“If you ask anyone on the street, ‘Is there enough abortion in New York?’ no one in their right mind would say we need more abortion,” said the Rev. Jason J. McGuire, the executive director of New Yorkers for Constitutional Freedoms, which is part of the coalition.

Members of both parties say that the issue of reproductive rights was a significant one in November’s legislative elections. Democrats, who were bolstered by an independent expenditure campaign by NARAL, credit their victories in several key Senate races in part to their pledge to fight for legislation similar to what Mr. Cuomo is planning to propose.

Republicans, who make up most of the coalition that controls the Senate, have generally opposed new abortion rights measures. Speaking with reporters recently, the leader of the Republicans, Dean G. Skelos of Long Island, strenuously objected to rewriting the state’s abortion laws, especially in a manner similar to what the governor is seeking.

“You could have an abortion up until the day the child would be born, and I think that’s just wrong,” Mr. Skelos said. He suggested that the entire debate was unnecessary, noting that abortion is legal in New York State and saying that is “not going to be changed.”

The Senate Democratic leader, Andrea Stewart-Cousins of Yonkers, who is the sponsor of a bill that is similar to the legislation the governor is drafting, said she was optimistic that an abortion measure would reach the Senate floor this year.

“New York State’s abortion laws were passed in 1970 in a bipartisan fashion,” she said. “It would be a sad commentary that over 40 years later we could not manage to do the same thing.”

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