Robert Wagner not interviewed in new Wood inquiry

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Robert Wagner has declined to be interviewed by detectives in a renewed inquiry into the drowning death of his wife Natalie Wood three decades ago, an investigator said Thursday.

Wagner was interviewed by authorities soon after Wood’s drowning in 1981, but the actor is the only person who was on the yacht the night Wood died who has not spoken to detectives as part of the latest inquiry, despite repeated requests and attempts, sheriff’s Lt. John Corina said.

Blair Berk, an attorney for Wagner and his family, said the actor had cooperated with authorities since his wife died.

Detectives began re-investigating the case in November 2011. Since then investigators have interviewed more than 100 people, but Wagner has refused and Corina said the actor’s representatives have not given any reason for his silence.

The detective’s remarks provided new insight into the case that has remained one of Hollywood’s enduring mysteries. Earlier this week, coroner’s officials released an updated autopsy report that had been under a security hold. It detailed why Wood’s death had been reclassified from an accidental drowning to a drowning caused by “undetermined factors.”

“Mr. Wagner has fully cooperated over the last 30 years in the investigation of the accidental drowning of his wife in 1981,” Berk said in a prepared statement. “Mr. Wagner has been interviewed on multiple occasions by the Los Angeles sheriff’s department and answered every single question asked of him by detectives during those interviews.”

After 30 years, Berk said, neither Wagner nor his daughters have any new information to add. She said the latest investigation was prompted by people seeking to exploit and sensationalize the 30th anniversary of the death.

The renewed inquiry came after the yacht‘s captain Dennis Davern told “48 Hours” and the “Today” show that he heard Wagner and Wood arguing the night of her disappearance and believed Wagner was to blame for her death.

Authorities have not identified any suspects in the case.

Wood, 43, was on a yacht with Wagner, Christopher Walken and the boat captain on Thanksgiving weekend of 1981 before she somehow ended up in the water.

Corina said Walken gave a prepared statement and spoke to detectives for an hour.

Detectives have also interviewed other actors who knew both Wagner and Wood to learn more about their relationship.

Corina said detectives have tried at least 10 times to interview Wagner but have been refused. He said some of the refusals have come from the actor’s attorney, and that detectives at one point traveled to Colorado to try to speak with Wagner but were unsuccessful.

Corina said the latest inquiry had turned up new evidence.

“Most of the people we’ve talked to were never talked to 30 years ago,” he said. “We’ve got a lot of new information.”

Asked if the information might lead to criminal charges, Corina said that would be up to prosecutors if they are presented a case.

“All we can do is collect the facts,” he said. “We’re still trying to collect all the facts.”

Corina said new people have emerged with information each time the case is in the news. Detectives would like to interview other people who haven’t agreed to talk, he said.

Coroner’s officials released an update autopsy report on Monday that detailed the reasons Wood’s death certificate was changed last year from a drowning death to “drowning and other undetermined factors.”

The updated report states the change was made in part because investigators couldn’t rule out that some of the bruises and marks on Wood’s body happened before she went into the water.

“Since there are unanswered questions and limited additional evidence available for evaluation, it is opined by this medical examiner that the manner of death should be left as undetermined,” Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Lakshmanan Sathyavagiswaran wrote in the report completed in June.

Officials also considered that Wood wasn’t wearing a life jacket, had no history of suicide attempts and didn’t leave a note as reasons to amend the death certificate.

Wood was famous for roles in films such as “West Side Story” and “Rebel Without a Cause” and was nominated for three Academy Awards.

Conflicting versions of what happened on the yacht have contributed to the mystery of her death. Wood, Wagner and Walken had all been drinking heavily in the hours before the actress disappeared.

Wagner wrote in a 2008 memoir that he and Walken argued that night. He wrote that Walken went to bed and he stayed up for a while, but when he went to bed, he noticed that his wife and a dinghy that had been attached to the yacht were missing.

“Nobody knows,” he wrote. “There are only two possibilities; either she was trying to get away from the argument, or she was trying to tie the dinghy. But the bottom line is that nobody knows exactly what happened.”

___

Anthony McCartney can be reached at http://twitter.com/mccartneyAP

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Well: The Fallout of a Chance Medical Finding

An incidental finding — I was convinced of it. My patient had undergone a CT scan of the abdomen at another hospital because of stomach pains and “incidentally noted” was a 2-centimeter mass in her adrenal gland. She brought in the report for me to see, nervous that she might have cancer.

I reassured her that it was exceedingly unlikely that she had cancer. Benign masses in the adrenal gland are nearly as common as birthmarks. They almost never cause symptoms and we stumble across them only because we do so many scans for other reasons. They’ve even earned their own appellation: incidentalomas, and that’s what I was sure she had.

Of course a tiny fraction — 1 to 2 percent — of these adrenal masses can wreak havoc by churning out an excess of adrenal hormones or by being cancerous. Luckily, the mass on my patient’s scan possessed all the reassuring characteristics of benignity: it was small, low-attenuating, well circumscribed, with smooth borders. And she had no symptoms to suggest adrenal hyperactivity or cancer. It was most likely a benign adrenal adenoma that would never cause her harm.

Nevertheless, once the incidentaloma had been given life, so to speak, it was no longer incidental. We were now obliged to run some highly complicated — and expensive — lab tests. I winced as I ordered urinary metanephrines to test the adrenaline-producing capacity of the adrenal. The computer warned me with exclamation points and asterisks that this was a “greater-than-$100-send-out test.” Explaining how to correctly collect a 24-hour urine sample was its own involved discussion. Then I had to explain the even more complicated logistics of the overnight dexamethasone-suppression test to evaluate the cortisol-producing capacity of the adrenal.

After that, I considered the follow-up CT scans, recommended at six months, one year and two years, to ensure that the mass wasn’t growing. What about all that radiation? One group of endocrinologists estimated that the chance of uncovering a malignant cancer in patients like mine was roughly equal to the chance of causing a fatal cancer from the radiation of these follow-up CT scans. And might these CT scans pick up other incidental findings, opening yet more Pandora’s boxes of medical evaluation?

And what about the issue of skyrocketing medical costs? The evaluation of this incidentaloma was going to cost more than a thousand dollars. Tens of millions of CT scans are done every year in the United States. It doesn’t take many back-of-the-envelope calculations to see how quickly the costs of incidental findings, and their subsequent evaluations, add up. How much should the societal obligation weigh into the decisions for my patient?

My thoughts flitted back to the doctor who had ordered this CT in the first place. Perhaps if the doctor had had more time to spend on the history and physical, the CT would not have been necessary. From my 15 years with this patient, I knew that her symptoms could be voluminous in quantity and quality. This wasn’t to say that something serious couldn’t squeak in, but over the years I have learned that it takes immense perseverance and patience to tease out the significance of each symptom. Otherwise we’d be doing a CT every week for her.

But I could understand how a doctor in a busy ER on a weekend might have been overwhelmed by the plethora of symptoms and simply ordered a CT “to be on the safe side.” I wished that doctor had tried to call me before ordering the scan, but what’s done was done. The fallout of that decision was now in my lap.

By now we had run well over our allotted time and my patient was utterly overwhelmed by the complex testing procedures and schedules. The adrenal mass was an incidental finding, after all, but it had completely steamrolled our visit. My patient’s diabetes, obesity, depression, arthritis and elevated cholesterol all ended up with the short end of the clinical stick — an outcome that surely is not incidental to her health.

---

Danielle Ofri is an associate professor of medicine at New York University School of Medicine and editor in chief of the Bellevue Literary Review. Her most recent book is “Medicine in Translation: Journeys With My Patients.”

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Liguori named CEO of Tribune Co.

Television executive Peter Liguori was named the new chief executive of Tribune Co. Thursday, taking the reins of the reorganized Chicago-based media company weeks after its emergence from bankruptcy.

In a widely expected announcement, Liguori, 52, a former top executive at Fox Broadcasting and Discovery Communications, was confirmed by Tribune Co.'s new seven-member board, which met for the first time Thursday in Los Angeles. In Chicago, Tribune Co. owns the Chicago Tribune, WGN-Ch.9 and WGN-AM.

"It can be daunting; I tend to view it as being exciting," Liguori said in an interview about his new job. "It's just a company of tremendous media assets with big iconic brand names, and many of those names are in major markets."

Liguori said he looked forward to leading Tribune Co. into a new era, focusing on content development across all media platforms. And despite speculation by analysts and industry insiders that the company was unlikely to retain its full portfolio of TV stations and newspapers, Liguori said he is hoping to keep Tribune's broadcasting and publishing businesses together under one roof.

"I don't care if it's newspapers or TV or digital operations or our other media assets: I'm hoping to make them work together," Liguori said. "And I'm really interested in building the company through innovation and through commitment to our mission of creating compelling content and best-in-class services."

Liguori replaces Eddy Hartenstein, who has been CEO of Tribune Co. since May 2011. Hartenstein will remain on the board and continue as publisher of the Los Angeles Times. He also will serve as special adviser to the office of CEO, according to Liguori.

"Eddy has done an exemplary job taking this company through some very, very rough times," Liguori said. "He has done a very good job as the publisher of a key asset, and I will benefit from having his advice and counsel and institutional knowledge at my side."

Tribune Co. filed for bankruptcy protection in December 2008, saddled with a total of $13 billion in debt after real estate investor Sam Zell completed his $8.2 billion buyout less than one year earlier. It emerged from Chapter 11 on Dec. 31, 2012, with a healthy balance sheet, owned by its senior creditors: Oaktree Capital Management; Angelo, Gordon & Co.; and JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Bruce Karsh, president of Los Angeles-based investment firm Oaktree, the largest Tribune Co. shareholder with about 23 percent of the equity, was named chairman of the new board, which also includes Liguori; former Yahoo interim CEO Ross Levinsohn; entertainment lawyer Craig Jacobson; Oaktree managing director Ken Liang; and Peter Murphy, a former strategy executive at Walt Disney Co.

A Bronx native and Yale graduate, Liguori is a former advertising executive who transitioned into television more than two decades ago. He is credited with turning cable channel FX into a programming powerhouse during his ascent to entertainment chief at News Corp.'s Fox Broadcasting. More recently, he was chief operating officer at Discovery Communications Inc., where he helped oversee the rocky launch of the Oprah Winfrey Network. He became interim CEO in 2011 after the previous executive was forced out; he left the company when Winfrey made herself CEO of OWN. Liguori has been working since July as a New York-based media consultant for private equity firm Carlyle Group.

Liguori said job one will be assessing Tribune Co.'s diverse portfolio of assets, which include 23 television stations; national cable channel WGN America; WGN Radio; eight daily newspapers, including the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times; and other properties, all of which the reorganization plan valued at $4.5 billion after cash distributions and new financing.

Despite its roots as a newspaper company, broadcasting has supplanted the declining publishing segment as the core profit center for the company. Liguori acknowledged broadcasting will be a focus going forward, but not necessarily at the expense of Tribune Co.'s newspaper holdings.

"I'm tasked to be a chief executive officer and a general businessman, and I'm going to take the same principles that I've used in broadcasting, and (extend) them out to all of our business," he said.

Liguori became president of Fox's FX Networks in 1998, when it was a small basic cable channel airing mostly reruns. Elevated to CEO in 2001, he remade FX by offering edgy original programming such as the "The Shield," "Nip/Tuck" and "Rescue Me," creating a string of first-run successes.

Unlocking the value of WGN America, which lags top cable networks such as TBS and FX, will be a priority, Liguori said.

"In this very co-dependent media environment, it's not just sitting there and focusing on how quickly we could grow the bottom line," Liguori said. "The bottom line is the outcome of great content, great marketing, which will drive great ratings, which will attract advertisers, which will further our relationship with affiliates, and will lead to natural growth based on the fact that we have high levels of usership."

Content development will also be key for Tribune Co.'s other media properties, including newspapers, Liguori said.

"I look at the newspapers and appreciate what we do for the local communities, and do recognize that the newspaper business is challenged right now," he said. "But how do we innovate, how do we go out and create stories, create coverage, servicing community and spreading that content across all media platforms?"

In the face of digital competition and sagging publishing industry revenue, Tribune Co.'s newspaper holdings have declined to $623 million in total value, according to financial adviser Lazard. With some newspaper owners expressing interest in acquisitions, Liguori said: "I have a fiduciary responsibility to hear those out."

"Those would be evaluated on an as-come basis. However, with all that being said, it's my job to make sure it doesn't stop me from focusing on our day-to-day business and growing the assets that we have."

He added: "Newspapers are a core part of our business."

Further, Liguori said all of Tribune Co.'s assets will be assessed, with an eye toward maximizing performance, and ultimately, value for the company. That includes real estate holdings such as Tribune Tower in Chicago and Times Mirror Square in Los Angeles, which were on the block until they were taken off the market in 2009.

"In places like Chicago and LA, particularly, there's a bunch of underutilized space that's being leased and has high demand and getting very good rates," Liguori said. "As I look toward the real estate assets, I've just got to ascertain what the value of the properties are and are we best utilizing them."

With a clean balance sheet and the company operating profitably, Liguori said strategic acquisitions will also be on the table, as Tribune aspires to be more of a growth company going forward.

"I think it really changes the driving mission of Tribune versus the past four years, where it undoubtedly had to be a bit shackled," he said. "I look forward to seeing what possibilities are out there and with great financial rigor and diligence, determining whether or not acquisitions would help us."

While the first board meeting was held in Los Angeles, Liguori said it doesn't presage a westward migration for the 166-year-old Tribune Co.

"The corporate office will continue to be in Chicago, and I'm going to be spending considerable time there," Liguori said. "There's great tradition and great history of Tribune being an iconic brand in Chicago."

rchannick@tribune.com | Twitter @RobertChannick

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Notre Dame A.D.: Te'o victim of 'sad and very cruel deception'

Notre Dame Vice President/Director of Athletics Jack Swarbrick makes statement on Manti Te'o Girlfriend Hoax Allegations

Facing a media throng just days before competing for a national championship, Notre Dame's star linebacker Manti Te'o fielded a question about the death of his girlfriend and his ability to rise above the tragedy.

It was a benign question, one he had heard dozen of times before as Lennay Kekua's passing had been woven so tightly into the narrative of his triumphant senior year. And he answered it as he always had.

But at that time, Te'o — and university officials — knew there was far more to the story than platitudes about football and family.

A week earlier, on Dec. 26, the Heisman Trophy runner-up told Notre Dame officials that his girlfriend did not exist and that he was a victim of an elaborate Internet hoax, the school said Wednesday.

"In many ways, Manti was the perfect mark because he is a guy who is so willing to believe in others and so ready to help, that as this hoax played out in a way that called upon those tendencies of Manti, it roped him more and more into the trap," Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick said. "He was not a person who would have a second thought about offering his assistance and help."

Swarbrick outlined a bizarre story in which Te'o learned his girlfriend never existed about three months after her supposed death. The player received a phone call Dec. 6, while at an awards show, from what he believed was Kekua's old cellphone number. The woman on the other end — in a voice he recognized as Kekua's — told him that she wasn't dead.

Two days after Te'o was thrown for a loop by a dead girlfriend rising from the grave, here is how he answered a question about charity work he had performed this year.

"I worked with Relay for Life stuff," he said. "I really got hit with cancer. I don't like cancer at all. I lost both my grandparents and my girlfriend to cancer."

She later tried to rekindle the relationship, Swarbrick said.

"Every single thing about this, until that day in the first week of December, was real to Manti," Swarbrick said. "There was no suspicion it wasn't. No belief it might not be. And so the pain was real. The grief was real. The affection was real. That's the nature of this sad, cruel game."

Swarbrick likened the hoax to the movie"Catfish

"Every single thing about this, until that day in the first week of December, was real to Manti," Swarbrick said. "There was no suspicion it wasn't. No belief it might not be. And so the pain was real. The grief was real. The affection was real. That's the nature of this sad, cruel game."

Swarbrick likened the hoax to the movie "Catfish," in which a person creates a fake persona with someone else's picture, then dupes another person into a romantic relationship. The film spurred a popular MTV show by the same name that investigates online relationships to see if the participants are real.

Te'o notified his coaches of the situation Dec. 26, after discussing it with his parents over the Christmas holiday. Swarbrick said he met with the player twice and found his story about the exclusively online and telephonic relationship to be consistent. Te'o and Kekua never met face to face, Swarbrick said.

"Several meetings were set up where Lennay never showed," he said.

Kekua's purported passing came within 48 hours of the real death of Te'o's grandmother, Annette Santiago, in September. That double loss vaulted Te'o onto the cover of Sports Illustrated and, along with Notre Dame's eventual undefeated regular season, into the Heisman Trophy mix.

Te'o finished second in that voting to Texas A&M quarterback Johnny Manziel, tying for the best finish ever by a pure defender.

The scam does more than shatter a college football fairy tale. It also leaves a black mark on sports journalism, as many news outlets — including the Tribune — ran stories about Kekua's passing without verifying her death. There was no published obituary for Kekua and no California driver's license issued to anyone with that name. The Social Security Administration database had no record of anyone with the surname Kekua dying in 2012.

Yet respected national publications such as Sports Illustrated, the Los Angeles Times and The New York Times all ran stories about Te'o's heartbreak. The Chicago Tribune published 15 articles mentioning her death in the past four months.

An Academic All-American with a 3.3 grade-point average, Te'o, 21, released a statement Wednesday insisting that he had been duped into having a long-term, "emotional relationship" with an Internet impostor. Describing the situation as "painful and humiliating," Te'o said he believed he maintained an authentic relationship with Kekua over the phone and via the Internet.

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Commentary: Background Checks? Yes, but Leave Video Games Alone

COMMENTARY | I have mixed feelings toward the White House‘s gun violence response. I agree that background checks should be required before people are allowed to buy a firearm and that an assault weapon ban should be reinstated into law. While limiting the number of bullets in a weapon’s magazine will decrease the number of deaths in a mass shooting, the public does not need high-capacity magazines. Therefore any weapon using high-capacity magazines should be banned from public use, not just capping the magazines to 10 bullets.

But violent video games and other media images and scenes real-life violence? These media do not kill people. The shooters kill the people. Those who are mentally unstable may not understand that violent video games are not real life and should not be duplicated in real life. As long as gamers understand the difference between video games and real life, that shouldn’t be touched.

– Edmond, Okla.

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Drop Dead Diva canceled by Lifetime

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – “Drop Dead Diva” has been dropped.

The series has been canceled by Lifetime after four seasons, the last of which ended in September.

An individual familiar with the situation told TheWrap that the cost of producing the series had become prohibitive, and that Lifetime had approached Sony Pictures Television, which produced the series, about coming up with creative ways to keep the series on the air, apparently to no avail.

Ratings-wise, the series had performed well. In combination with “Army Wives,” “Drop Dead Diva” helped push Lifetime to the number one cable position on Sundays from 9 to 11 p.m. among the women 25-54 demographic last year.

“Drop Dead Diva” revolved around a shallow model who dies in a car crash and comes back to life in the body of a recently deceased lawyer who had led an altruistic life. Brooke Elliott, Margaret Cho and Jackson Hurst starred on the series.

Deadline first reported the news of “Drop Dead Diva”‘s cancelation.

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Some With Autism Diagnosis Can Recover, Study Finds

Doctors have long believed that disabling autistic disorders last a lifetime, but a new study has found that some children who exhibit signature symptoms of the disorder recover completely.

The study, posted online on Wednesday by the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, is the largest to date of such extraordinary cases and is likely to alter the way that scientists and parents think and talk about autism, experts said.

Researchers on Wednesday cautioned against false hope. The findings suggest that the so-called autism spectrum contains a small but significant group who make big improvements in behavioral therapy for unknown, perhaps biological reasons, but that most children show much smaller gains. Doctors have no way to predict which children will do well.

Researchers have long known that between 1 and 20 percent of children given an autism diagnosis no longer qualify for one a few years or more later. They have suspected that in most cases the diagnosis was mistaken; the rate of autism diagnosis has ballooned over the past two decades, and some research suggests that it has been loosely applied.

The new study should put some of that skepticism to rest.

“This is the first solid science to address this question of possible recovery, and I think it has big implications,” said Sally Ozonoff of the MIND Institute at the University of California, Davis, who was not involved in the research. “I know many of us as would rather have had our tooth pulled than use the word ‘recover,’ it was so unscientific. Now we can use it, though I think we need to stress that it’s rare.”

She and other experts said the findings strongly supported the value of early diagnosis and treatment.

In the study, a team led by Deborah Fein of the University of Connecticut at Storrs recruited 34 people who had been diagnosed before the age of 5 and no longer had any symptoms. They ranged in age from 8 to 21 years old and early in their development were in the higher-than-average range of the autism spectrum. The team conducted extensive testing of its own, including interviews with parents in some cases, to gauge current social and communication skills.

The debate over whether recovery is possible has simmered for decades and peaked in 1987, when the pioneering autism researcher O. Ivar Lovaas reported that 47 percent of children with the diagnosis showed full recovery after undergoing a therapy he had devised. This therapy, a behavioral approach in which increments of learned skills garner small rewards, is the basis for the most effective approach used today; still, many were skeptical and questioned his definition of recovery.

Dr. Fein and her team used standardized, widely used measures and found no differences between the group of 34 formerly diagnosed people and a group of 34 matched control subjects who had never had a diagnosis.

“They no longer qualified for the diagnosis,” said Dr. Fein, whose co-authors include researchers from Queens University in Kingston, Ontario; Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia; the Institute of Living in Hartford; and the Child Mind Institute in New York. “I want to stress to parents that it’s a minority of kids who are able to do this, and no one should think they somehow missed the boat if they don’t get this outcome.”

On measures of social and communication skills, the recovered group scored significantly better than 44 peers who had a diagnosis of high-functioning autism or Asperger’s syndrome.

Dr. Fein emphasized the importance of behavioral therapy. “These people did not just grow out of their autism,” she said. “I have been treating children for 40 years and never seen improvements like this unless therapists and parents put in years of work.”

The team plans further research to learn more about those who are able to recover. No one knows which ingredients or therapies are most effective, if any, or if there are patterns of behavior or biological markers that predict such success.

“Some children who do well become quite independent as adults but have significant anxiety and depression and are sometimes suicidal,” said Dr. Fred Volkmar, the director of the Child Study Center at the Yale University School of Medicine. There are no studies of this group, he said.

That, because of the new study, is about to change.

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FAA grounds Dreamliners in U.S.

Federal officials say they are temporarily grounding Boeing's 787 Dreamliners until the risk of possible battery fires is addressed. (Jan. 16)

With its new plane ordered to stay on the ground, Boeing Co. confronts a full-fledged crisis as it struggles to regain the confidence of passengers and the airline customers who stood by the 787 Dreamliner during years of cost overruns and delivery delays.

A second major incident involving "a potential battery fire risk'' prompted the Federal Aviation Administration on Wednesday to temporarily ground all 787s operated by U.S. carriers until it is determined that the lithium-ion batteries on board are safe.

The order affects United Airlines, which is the first U.S. customer. The FAA gave no indication how soon the plane could resume flying.

The decision came the same day Japanese airlines grounded their 787s after an emergency landing and five days after the FAA and U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood declared that the flying public is safe on Dreamliners. When it offered those assurances Friday, however, the FAA also announced a comprehensive review of the 787's design, manufacture and assembly.

The grounding represents a significant setback for Chicago-based Boeing, which is marketing the fuel-efficient, mainly carbon-composite jetliner as a vision of the future of commercial passenger aviation. The development of the plane was marred by long production and delivery delays, but it is selling well and has customers around the world.

"We stand behind its overall integrity. We will be taking every necessary step in the coming days to assure our customers and the traveling public of the 787's safety and to return the airplanes to service," Jim McNerney, Boeing's chairman and chief executive, said in a statement. He said Boeing is working with the FAA to find answers as quickly as possible.

Chicago-based United Airlines has six 787s, but it has been flying only one on flights between O'Hare International Airport and Houston. The airline said Wednesday night that it will accommodate customers on other planes. The domestic 787 flights were to end in late March, when United's first 787s were to begin serving international routes. 

United said it "will work closely with the FAA and Boeing on the technical review as we work toward restoring 787 service."

Foreign carriers are not affected by the FAA order, but LOT Polish Airlines canceled its inaugural flight celebration at O'Hare on Wednesday night, even before the flight landed from Warsaw.

"We just think it would be inappropriate to go ahead with the activities," said Frank Joost, regional sales director of the Americas for LOT. He described the FAA grounding of 787 flights as a "surprise."

LOT also canceled the Dreamliner's return flight to Warsaw. Passengers hoping to depart on the 9:55 p.m. flight said they were disappointed. Many were rebooked on Lufthansa through Munich.

Suzy Zaborek, 27, of Chicago was at Chicago O'Hare on Wednesday night waiting for her father to arrive from Poland aboard the 787. He came home early specifically to ride on the inaugural flight.

Zaborek had not been following the Dreamliner woes in recent weeks and the dramatic groundings on Wednesday.

"I'm glad I didn't know because I wouldn't have let him get on on of those," she said.

The FAA decision to ground all U.S.-registered 787s was the direct result of an in-flight incident involving a battery earlier in the day in Japan, FAA officials said. It followed another 787 battery fire that occurred Jan. 7 on the ground in Boston.

Both failures resulted in the release of flammable materials, heat damage, smoke and the potential for fire in the electrical compartments, the FAA said.

"Before further flight, operators of U.S.-registered Boeing 787 aircraft must demonstrate to the FAA that the batteries are safe," the regulatory agency said. The statement said the FAA will work with Boeing and airlines "to develop a corrective action plan to allow the U.S. 787 fleet to resume operations as quickly and safely as possible."

The FAA said it took drastic action because it determined that battery failures are "likely to exist or develop" in other planes.

Lithium-ion batteries can catch fire if they are overcharged, and the fires are difficult to extinguish, Boeing has previously said. Still, lithium-ion is the right choice for the 787, Boeing officials said.

Earlier Wednesday, Japan's two largest airlines grounded their fleets of 787s after one of the jets made an emergency landing and passengers were evacuated via emergency slides.

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Prosecutors suspended in case of man who later burned family

The Cook County State’s Attorney’s office suspended two attorneys who denied felony charges against a man who threatened to kill his family three months before setting them ablaze, killing himself and two others.

Anita Alvarez's office declined to file felony charges against 29-year-old Nathaniel Beller in a domestic violence case in Cicero in September. Beller is suspected of pouring gasoline on his two young children and wife, Taniya Johnson, 33, and igniting them on Dec. 29, shortly after his release from a mental health facility, officials said. Killed were Beller, his wife, and Neriyah, 4, his daughter. His son Naciere, 9, was critically injured

In the September case, Beller was accused of filling a bathtub with gasoline and threatening to kill his family, according to a Cicero police report, which stated prosecutors cited a "lack of evidence" in declining charges against Beller.

Alvarez released a statement after the news broke promising to investigate. Her office released another statement Tuesday.

“As promised, my office has conducted a complete review of this matter and as a result I have ordered the unpaid suspension of two Assistant State’s Attorneys who were ultimately responsible for the charging decision that was made,” according to a statement released by Spokeswoman Sally Daly on behalf of Alvarez.    

Cicero police officers in September had to force their way into an apartment after negotiating with Beller to release his two children. At one point, Beller lit a cigarette while in the apartment, according to a police report. 

Officers also inventoried gas cans and a lighter as evidence from inside the apartment, the report stated.

An Assistant State’s Attorney interviewed Beller at the hospital but after returning to the Cicero police department, informed police that no charges would be filed, according to a Cicero police report. A different attorney, according to the report, later cited a “lack of evidence” and Taniya’s lack of cooperation as reasons why he could not approve felonies.

At least one other attorney  was mentioned in the Cicero police report – it’s not clear which of the three were suspended.

Beller, his daughter and his wife died after the fire. The family was among a handful of people injured in the blaze, including upstairs neighbors of the brick home who suffered smoke inhalation.

The blaze brought dozens of firefighters to the home and extra ambulances as responding firefighters found more burn and smoke victims.

pnickeas@tribune.com
Twitter: @peternickeas

lford@tribune.com
Twitter: @ltaford

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New photos of BlackBerry X10 with QWERTY keyboard leak

New images of Research In Motion’s (RIMM) first BlackBerry 10-powered smartphone equipped with a full QWERTY keyboard have leaked ahead of the handset’s unveiling later this month. BlackBerry blog BlackBerry Empire on Monday evening published a pair of photos showing the face of the upcoming N-series smartphone along with the home screen and the app launcher.

[More from BGR: HTC One SV review]

As revealed by earlier images of the phone, the device closely resembles RIM’s previous-generation BlackBerry Bold 9900 from the front, sporting a slim flat design with a touchscreen situated above the famous four-row BlackBerry keyboard.

[More from BGR: Extensive BlackBerry Z10 demo video posted by German website [video]]

RIM will unveil the new handset, thought to be launching as the “BlackBerry X10,” during a press conference on January 30th where BGR will be reporting live. RIM’s first full touch BlackBerry 10 phone, the “BlackBerry Z10,” will also be unveiled at the event.

This article was originally published on BGR.com

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