J.&J. Study Suggested Hip Device Could Fail in Thousands More

An internal analysis conducted by Johnson & Johnson in 2011 after it recalled a troubled hip implant projected that the all-metal device could fail within five years in nearly 40 percent of patients who received it, newly disclosed court records show.

The analysis, which the company has never released, suggests that thousands of additional patients may have to undergo painful procedures over the next few years to replace the implant, known as the Articular Surface Replacement, or A.S.R. It also indicates that the episode’s cost to Johnson & Johnson will continue to grow.

The analysis was part of a small set of records unsealed Friday by a judge in Los Angeles Superior Court as part of pretrial proceedings in a lawsuit brought by a patient against the DePuy Orthopaedics unit of Johnson & Johnson.

Over 10,000 lawsuits have been filed against DePuy by patients who got an A.S.R. If the California case, which involves a man named Loren Kransky, goes forward this week as scheduled, it would be first of those cases to go to trial.

The records released Friday by Superior Court Judge J. Stephen Czuleger represent a tiny fraction of the tens of thousands of internal DePuy documents that the plaintiff’s lawyers say they have reviewed in connection with the California lawsuit. As a result, it is difficult to assess the strength of the case against the implant maker based on them.

Asked for comment, a spokeswoman for DePuy, Mindy Tinsley, said in a statement that the company’s internal analysis “was based on a small, limited set of data that could not be used to generalize” the overall replacement rate for the A.S.R.  She added that any documents or partial testimony released before the trial “may not be able to be fully understood without proper context.”

For years, executives of DePuy insisted that the A.S.R. was performing on a par with other types of artificial hips, and said they moved to recall the device in mid-2010 when new data from an orthopedic registry in England showed it was failing more frequently.

But documents in the Los Angeles case and other lawsuits nationwide against DePuy are expected to reveal what actions company officials took – or did not take – before the A.S.R.’s recall and when they became aware of the implant’s problems.

Traditional hip implants, which are made out of plastic and metal, typically last 15 years or more before wearing out and requiring replacement. But the A.S.R., which had a cup and ball made of metal, began to fail in large numbers of patients soon after implant.

About 93,000 patients worldwide received an A.S.R., about one-third of them in the United States. Patients here received a version of the A.S.R. that was a traditional hip implant. Those outside the United States were outfitted with either the traditional version or a modified version used in an alternative joint replacement procedure known as resurfacing.

Both versions of the A.S.R., however, shared a central component, a metal hip cup that can shed tiny particles of metal debris as its moves. That debris has caused severe tissue and bone damage in hundreds of patients, crippling some of them.

One DePuy engineer acknowledged in court papers released Friday that company officials were aware in 2008 from reports by an English surgeon that the resurfacing version of the A.S.R. was releasing high levels of metallic ions, particularly in women.

In other pretrial testimony released Friday, Paul Voorhorst, DePuy’s director of biostatistics and data management, said that the company performed several reviews of A.S.R. failures in patients in the fall of 2011, a year after it recalled the model.

Based on the number of patients who had already undergone device replacement at the time, DePuy estimated that about 37 percent of patients who got an A.S.R. may need to get it replaced within five years of receiving it.

Last year, The New York Times reported that DePuy executives decided in 2009 to phase out the A.S.R. and sell off its inventories just weeks after the Food and Drug Administration asked the company in a letter for added safety data about the implant.

The F.D.A. also told the company at that time that it was rejecting its efforts to sell the resurfacing version of the device in country because of concerns about “high concentration of metal ions” in the blood of patients who received it.

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President Obama opens second term

WASHINGTON – After Barack Obama publicly took the oath of office for his second term on Monday, he strongly defended the ideology of his party as he urged Americans to accept compromise as a path toward solving the nation’s problems.

“Progress does not compel us to settle centuries-long debates about the role of government for all time – but it does require us to act in our time,” Obama said shortly after taking the oath from Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.  “Decisions are upon us, and we cannot afford delay.  We cannot mistake absolutism for principle, or substitute spectacle for politics, or treat name-calling as reasoned debate.”

Just over 18 minutes -- relatively short by historical standards -- the address hit several major policy priorities that Obama hopes to pursue.

PHOTOS: President Obama’s second inauguration

For the first time ever, an inaugural address mentioned the rights of gay Americans, as Obama declared that America’s “journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law – for if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well.”

The president also insisted on the need to “respond to the threat of climate change” – a subject he largely avoided after a stinging loss in Congress early in his first term.

“Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science, but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires, and crippling drought, and more powerful storms,” he said.  “The path towards sustainable energy sources will be long and sometimes difficult.  But America cannot resist this transition; we must lead it.

“That is how we will preserve our planet, commanded to our care by God.”

Obama wove those specific policy pledges, along with brief reminders of his proposals for gun control and immigration reform, into a text that, overall, amounted to a strong reaffirmation of the core of liberal, Democratic politics and its belief in the positive role that government can play in the nation’s life.

In a nod to those who do not share that outlook, he noted that Americans “have never relinquished our skepticism of central authority, nor have we succumbed to the fiction that all society’s ills can be cured through government alone.”

But, he said, “preserving our individual freedoms ultimately requires collective action.”

“We do not believe that in this country, freedom is reserved for the lucky, or happiness for the few,” he said. “The commitments we make to each other – through Medicare, and Medicaid, and Social Security – these things do not sap our initiative; they strengthen us.  They do not make us a nation of takers; they free us to take the risks that make this country great.

PHOTOS: Past presidential inaugurations

“We are true to our creed when a little girl born into the bleakest poverty knows that she has the same chance to succeed as anybody else, because she is an American, she is free, and she is equal, not just in the eyes of God but also in our own,” he declared.

At the conclusion, Obama walked back into the Capitol building, then turned for a moment to look out at the national Mall, filled with hundreds of thousands of flag-waving Americans. “I want to see this again,” he could be heard saying.

Shortly afterward, he signed the Capitol’s guest book, then, with the bipartisan congressional leadership looking on, signed the formal paperwork to submit the nominations of his choices for several Cabinet posts, the secretaries of State, Defense and Treasury and the head of the CIA.

The speech culminated a ceremony heavily laced with references to the country’s long struggle toward equality for its African American citizens.

From an invocation by the widow of a slain leader of the civil rights movement that opened the formal proceedings to the two Bibles on which Obama took the oath, one of which belonged to Abraham Lincoln and the other to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., the symbols of the nation’s 57^th inaugural ceremony traced the historic arc that led toward the nation’s first black president.

GALLERY: Inauguration gowns through the years

Four years ago, Obama took office with the country in the midst of two wars and the worst economic crisis in more than half a century. His second inauguration arrives with one war over, the other winding down and the economy recovering, but with Washington dominated by a bitter political stalemate that reflects a deep partisan divide in the nation.

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A 'Courage Board' for All Conditions

Rating: 9/10 Nearly flawless; buy it now

It’s easy to guess what The Hovercraft was built for just by looking at it: The short swallowtail and the big blunted nose all scream “powder hound.”

I did my first series of tests in early December up in Lake Tahoe, and there was a lot more crust, ice and grooms than powder, so I took it out without expecting much. I got waaay more than I figured I would: The board held its edge just fine in the groomers, but there was no surprise there. The shock came when I crossed over to the shaded side of the mountain, when the soft groomers turned into icy crud. I was fully expecting the Jones to sketch out and leave me butt-checking all over the place, but The Hovercraft’s edge sliced right into the ice and held it as well as it did the soft stuff. No transition, no adjustments — the board just went from soft snow to ice without skipping a beat.

It was so odd that it took me most of the morning before I really trusted it. But by lunchtime, I was flying down the mountain at speeds I wouldn’t dare with any of the other boards we tested. The board’s great bite is thanks to the Jones’ underfoot camber and so-called Magne-Traction edges, which essentially act like a serrated blade to bite into hard snow. These features combine to give the board a huge amount of precision and control in hard snow.

A few weeks later, I was finally able to take it out on Mt. Shasta’s backcountry to hit some deep stuff. It excelled there as well (entirely as expected) thanks to the rockered and blunted nose, which let the board float on top of the soft stuff, while the short, stiff tail made it easy to kick back and keep the nose up.

Bottom line: I’ve never seen a board perform so well in such a wide range of snow conditions. During my multi-mountain testing session of The Hovercraft snowboard, I let one of my friends ride it. He echoed my own thoughts with one simple statement: “This thing just does whatever you ask it to do.”

WIRED Simply some of the best all-mountain performance I’ve seen. Great float on powder, plus a locked-in grip on ice and crud. Seamlessly transitions from soft to hard snow. Shockingly lightweight construction.

TIRED Blunt nose and swallowtail design means you’re not gonna be riding a lot of switch.

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“Les Miserables” soundtrack tops UK albums chart

LONDON (Reuters) – The soundtrack of the Oscar-nominated movie “Les Miserables” climbed to the top spot in the UK albums chart, the first film cast recording to do so since Madonna’s “Evita” in 1997, the Official Charts Company said on Sunday.

A film version of a hugely successful stage musical based on a novel by 19th century French writer Victor Hugo, “Les Miserables” has already picked up a Golden Globe award for best movie musical, and is nominated for a best picture Oscar.

The recording of songs performed by the actors in the movie, including Anne Hathaway, Russell Crowe and Hugh Jackman, had entered the UK albums chart in fifth position a week ago. It knocked Emeli Sande‘s “Our Version Of Events” off the top spot.

Hathaway, who plays a character called Fantine, also had the 22nd spot in the singles chart with her performance of “I Dreamed A Dream”, one of the most popular songs from the musical.

At the very top of the singles chart, U.S. producer will.i.am’s collaboration with Britney Spears, “Scream & Shout”, held onto the number one ranking, fending off stiff competition from new entrants 50 Cent and Justin Timberlake.

U.S. rapper 50 Cent’s new release, “My Life”, featuring Eminem and Maroon 5′s Adam Levine, came in at number two while Timberlake, the former ‘N Sync star, nabbed the number three spot with his “Suit and Tie” featuring Jay-Z.

(Reporting By Estelle Shirbon; Editing by Sophie Hares)

Music News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Recipes for Health: Lentil, Celery and Tomato Minestrone

Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times

If you did a lot of cooking over the Christmas and New Year’s holidays you may have some celery hearts lingering in your refrigerator. You needed a few branches for a stew, a stock, or a soup, so you bought a whole bunch, and here it is weeks later and the rest of the celery is wilting in the produce drawer.

This doesn’t have to happen if you think of this vegetable as something more than an aromatic. I’m a big fan of celery, both raw and cooked, as the main ingredient or as one of several featured ingredients in a dish. You can do the traditional thing with raw celery and dice it up and add it to a potato, tuna or egg salad, or you can make a celery salad, slicing the branches as thin as you can get them and tossing them with herbs, radishes, oil and vinegar, and blue cheese. If you are cooking with celery, don’t stop at one branch when you make soup. The celery contributes a wonderful herbal flavor dimension. It retains its texture for a long time when you cook it, so I used it as the main vegetable in a risotto and loved the way it stood up to the creamy rice.

You always see celery listed as an ingredient in tonic juices and blender drinks. It has long been used in Chinese medicine to help control high blood pressure, which makes sense because it contains phytochemicals called phthalides that reduce stress hormones and work to relax the muscle walls in arteries, increasing blood flow. The vegetable is an excellent source of Vitamins K and C, and a very good source of potassium, folate, dietary fiber, molybdenum, manganese, and Vitamin B6. Another bonus attribute – it is very low in calories. However, it is on the high side as far as sodium goes.

Lentil, Celery and Tomato Minestrone

I make minestrones like this all the time, but I hadn’t made a version with this much celery in it until I made this one, and I loved the dimension of flavor it contributes to the mix.

1 cup lentils, rinsed

1 onion, halved

A bouquet garni made with 2 sprigs each thyme and parsley, a bay leaf, and a Parmesan rind

1 1/2 quarts water

1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil

1 medium carrot, diced

3 celery stalks, diced

2 garlic cloves, minced

Salt, preferably kosher salt, to taste

1 28-ounce can chopped tomatoes, with liquid

Pinch of sugar

2 tablespoons tomato paste

1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley

Very thinly sliced celery, from the inner heart, for garnish

Freshly grated Parmesan cheese for serving

1. Combine the lentils, 1/2 onion and the bouquet garni with 1 quart water in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat, add salt to taste, cover and simmer 30 minutes.

2. Chop the remaining onion. Heat the olive oil in a large, heavy soup pot or Dutch oven over medium heat and add the onion, carrot, and celery. Cook, stirring often, until the onion is tender, about 5 minutes, and add the garlic and a pinch of salt. Stir together until fragrant, about 1 minute, and add the canned tomatoes with their liquid and the sugar. Bring to a simmer and cook, stirring often, for about 10 minutes, until the tomatoes have cooked down somewhat and smell fragrant.

3. Add the lentils with their broth, the tomato paste, salt to taste, an additional 2 cups water, and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat, cover, and simmer 30 minutes. Taste and adjust seasonings. Season to taste with freshly ground pepper, stir in the parsley and serve, garnishing each bowl with thinly sliced celery heart if you want some crunch, and passing the Parmesan at the table.

Yield: Serves 4 to 6 (4 if there are teen-agers in your house)

Advance preparation: This will keep for three or four days in the refrigerator. It may require thinning out. It’s even better the day after you make it. I have a teenage son and he just about polished off the leftovers – which should have served 3 – the day after I tested the recipe.

Variation: Shortly before serving add 2 cups baby spinach and simmer just until wilted.

Nutritional information per serving (4 servings): 276 calories; 4 grams fat; 0 grams saturated fat; 1 gram polyunsaturated fat; 2 grams monounsaturated fat; 0 milligrams cholesterol; 49 grams carbohydrates; 12 grams dietary fiber; 392 milligrams sodium (does not include salt to taste); 17 grams protein

Nutritional information per serving (6 servings): 184 calories; 2 grams fat; 0 grams saturated fat; 0 grams polyunsaturated fat; 2 grams monounsaturated fat; 0 milligrams cholesterol; 32 grams carbohydrates; 8 grams dietary fiber; 261 milligrams sodium (does not include salt to taste); 11 grams protein

Martha Rose Shulman is the author of “The Very Best of Recipes for Health.”

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DealBook: In Euro Zone, Signs of Progress and Fears of Complacency

PARIS – This may be the year that Europe stops being the ticking time bomb of the global economy.

Ireland is on track to leave international bailout limbo by summer. Talk of Greece leaving the euro is off the table. And financial speculators have generally stopped betting the euro zone will blow up.

But even as the sense of emergency fades, Europe is potentially facing a starker problem.

For three years, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and a phalanx of policy makers have been working to shore up the euro’s foundations to prevent the currency union from unraveling. As they gather with academics, executives and various experts this week at the World Economic Forum, which opens Wednesday in Davos, Switzerland, the biggest concern is that leaders might become less vigilant now that the heat is off, ushering in a raft of new troubles that could dog the euro for years to come.

“The risk is that complacency takes hold because there is no more urgency in the crisis, and that everything that has been done up until now will be deemed sufficient,” said Jacob Kirkegaard, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington. If that happens, he warned, “Europe will turn into the next Japan, and become a permanently depressed or stagnating economic area.”

Ms. Merkel might be forgiven for feeling a sense of vindication. Her deliberate approach to crisis management and refusal to get too far ahead of German public opinion has often frustrated her euro zone peers and foreign allies. And yet, the strategy seems to have worked — so far, at least. Ms. Merkel, who is to speak at Davos on Thursday, and other European leaders have generally done just enough to contain the crisis without alienating taxpayers.

Much of the credit for the current calm in Europe goes to Mario Draghi, the president of the European Central Bank. He appeased financial markets with his promise last summer to do whatever it took to preserve the euro, including buying the government bonds of Spain if necessary to keep a lid on the country’s borrowing costs.

The effect of Mr. Draghi’s promise has been evident: financial markets have stopped driving the borrowing costs of Spain and Italy toward the danger levels that led Ireland, Greece and Portugal to reach for international financial lifelines. Today, few people fear that Europe’s southern countries will break away from the euro union.

Other dire prospects, like Germany and other Northern European countries fleeing the euro union to avoid getting caught in a quagmire, have also dropped off the watch list. If anything, the focus of anxiety is the fiscal situation in the United States, where gridlock in Washington has become just as debilitating for the country’s finances as the euro policy paralysis was for European politicians.

“Some European policy makers who visited the United States recently were delighted to see that because of the fiscal cliff, Europe wasn’t on every channel,” said Kenneth S. Rogoff, a professor of economics at Harvard University. “There is an ecstasy over the fact that they won’t blow apart tomorrow.”

Still, Mr. Rogoff added, Europe must revive economic growth to fully address its problems. “And even if they do, that’s not a long-term solution,” he said. “They need to integrate more fully, or they will fall apart.”

Europe’s political leaders have taken important steps to improve spending discipline among euro members, to provide a financial backstop for troubled euro zone countries and to consolidate supervision of banks. Despite many imperfections, the measures seem to have been enough to convince investors that officials are slowly constructing a more resilient currency union.

“European countries have shown their resolve in making the euro a success and reaffirmed the deep political commitment to work together toward a stronger union,” Vítor Constâncio, the vice president of the European Central Bank, told an audience in Beijing on Jan. 12.

But leaders have yet to address some serious flaws in the structure of the euro zone. For example, they have not solved the problem of how to wind down terminally ill banks without sticking taxpayers with the bill. And they are far away from a deposit insurance fund for Europe, which means the risk of bank runs remains.

“In order to define a turning point, you need a lot of factors besides the stabilization of financial markets,” Mr. Draghi said this month.

But coming events could undermine confidence. Germany will hold national elections in September, which could make Ms. Merkel even more cautious than usual and stall euro zone decision making. Already, her main rivals pulled off an upset in regional elections this weekend in Lower Saxony.

Italian elections are also looming. Mario Monti, the prime minister who has restored Italy’s international credibility and is to speak at Davos on Wednesday, faces a public that is grumpy about a rollback of job protections and other policy overhauls. Silvio Berlusconi, a former Italian prime minister who presided over years of economic standstill, is attempting a populist comeback.

In France, President François Hollande’s pledge to bring the deficit down to 3 percent of gross domestic product this year to adhere to the rules governing euro membership may be challenged if France’s military engagement in Mali and the surrounding region turns into a drawn-out affair.

Across the channel, Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain, who is scheduled to speak at Davos on Thursday morning, has sounded warnings that the country might leave the European Union if changes in its administration are not made. “The danger is that Europe will fail and that the British people will drift toward the exit,” according to prepared text of a speech Mr. Cameron postponed delivering last week because of developments in the hostage crisis in Algeria.

In the meantime, the severe effects of prolonged austerity in several European countries are leaving deep social scars. Tax increases and steep spending cuts have ground many European citizens deeper than ever into hardship, prompting millions to demonstrate in Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain. Recessionary economies in those countries are expected to get worse before they improve.

In Greece, where austerity has hit the hardest, people are burning trash and wood this winter for lack of money to pay electricity bills, and the government’s efforts to enact structural overhauls needed to turn the economy around and attract foreign investors continue to lag.

And then there is Germany, which itself is being tugged into a slowdown as its cash-poor southern neighbors continue to refrain from buying Audis and other high-priced German goods.

Unemployment in the euro zone continues to climb: the jobless rate in the 17 countries of the bloc hit a record 11.8 percent in November. Youth unemployment has surpassed 50 percent in Spain and Greece, a stratosphere of despair. Thousands of bright young people continue to flee Greece, Ireland, Spain and other countries every month for the booming economies of Australia and Canada.

Portuguese workers are even going to Africa in search of a better future, as the middle class there grows along with improving economic conditions on the southern part of the African continent.

Yet painful adjustments are starting to bear some fruit. Labor costs have come down in countries including Spain and Portugal, helping make their work forces more competitive within the region. In Spain, for instance, where unit labor costs have fallen 4 percent since the onset of the financial crisis in 2008, the labor market is now so alluring that Ford, Renault and Volkswagen have announced plans to expand production there.

In addition, the alarming flight of deposits from banks in Spain has come to a stop.

The euro zone’s problems have proven an opportunity for some countries to remove structural impediments to growth. In France, where Mr. Hollande has promised to make the economy more competitive, labor unions have agreed to a deal to overhaul swaths of the notoriously rigid labor market.

The deal would tame some of the French labor code’s most confounding restrictions, including lengthy hiring and firing procedures and outsize business taxes, as the country tries to lift its competitiveness, curb unemployment and improve the budget.

“Is the worst over? Probably yes,” analysts at Barclays Capital wrote in a recent note to clients.

That will be especially true if leaders and businesses persist in using the crisis as a chance to renew European competitiveness.

While some countries may have made enough economic overhauls to enjoy substantial growth, once the crisis is past, said Nicolas Véron, a senior fellow at Bruegel, a research institute in Brussels, “there are a lot of nuts still to crack.”

Liz Alderman reported from Paris and Jack Ewing from Frankfurt.

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U.S., other nations await Algeria death toll

CAIRO—

The U.S., Britain and other countries sought to learn the fate of their citizens Sunday after Algeria announced that the death toll from a hostage crisis at a remote gas refinery was expected to rise beyond a previous estimate of 23.

It was another painstaking day for security officials trying to determine how a band of Islamist militants overran the gas complex last week, and for families and nations awaiting word of new deaths. Britain confirmed that three of its citizens were killed and three are unaccounted for.

Algerian officials said security teams defusing mines and explosive booby-traps at the Sahara Desert site had found “numerous” bodies, according to the Associated Press. Algerian communications minister Mohamed Said Belaid was quoted by the state news agency as saying: "I am afraid unfortunately to say that the death toll will go up."

As many as seven U.S. hostages are missing, along with about 14 Japanese. Other captives included Norwegians, Malaysians and French. Algerian officials said a final death count would be released in the coming hours.

Nearly 700 Algerians and 107 foreigners had been freed or had escaped from the gas field in eastern Algeria during the four-day, bloody ordeal that ended Saturday. Officials said at least 23 hostages and 32 militants had been killed. But discrepancies remained over the nationalities of the dead and the exact number of those who died.

“The priority now must be to get everybody home from Algeria," said British Prime Minister David Cameron. "This is a stark reminder once again of the threat we face from terrorism the world over. We have had successes in recent years in reducing the threat from some parts of the world, but the threat has grown particularly in northern Africa.”

Cameron, who had earlier appeared irritated that the Algerians did not inform foreign capitals before troops first stormed the refinery Thursday, tempered his criticism.

"People will ask questions about the Algerian response to these events,” he said. “But I would just say that the responsibility for these deaths lies squarely with the terrorists who launched this vicious and cowardly attack. And I'd also say that when you’re dealing with a terrorist incident on this scale, with up to 30 terrorists, it is extremely difficult to respond and to get this right in every respect.”

 The natural gas complex at In Amenas -- near the Libyan border -- is operated by BP, Statoil and Sonatrach, the Algerian national oil company. BP said four of its employees were missing.

Militants linked to Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb raided the facility before dawn Wednesday. They claimed it was to avenge French airstrikes on Islamic rebels in neighboring Mali. But officials from the U.S. and other countries indicated the attack was planned ahead of this month’s French military action. 

Belaid said the militants were "nationals of Arab and African countries, and of non-African countries."

jeffrey.fleishman@latimes.com

(Times staff writer Henry Chu in London contributed to this report)     

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Wired Science Space Photo of the Day: Soap Bubble Nebula

Informally known as the "Soap Bubble Nebula", this planetary nebula (officially known as PN G75.5+1.7) was discovered by amateur astronomer Dave Jurasevich on July 6th, 2008. It was noted and reported by Keith Quattrocchi and Mel Helm on July 17th, 2008. This image was obtained with the Kitt Peak Mayall 4-meter telescope on June 19th, 2009 in the H-alpha (orange) and [OIII] (blue) narrowband filters. In this image, north is to the left and east is down.

PN G75.5+1.7 is located in the constellation of Cygnus, not far from the Crescent Nebula (NGC 6888). It is embedded in a diffuse nebula which, in conjunction with its faintness, is the reason it was not discovered until recently. The spherical symmetry of the shell is remarkable, making it very similar to Abell 39.

Image: T. A. Rector/University of Alaska Anchorage, H. Schweiker/WIYN and NOAO/AURA/NSF [high-resolution] Read NOAO Conditions of Use before downloading

Caption: NOAO

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Chastain bests Arnold, Wahlberg at box office

NEW YORK (AP) — Jessica Chastain easily outmuscled Arnold Schwarzenegger and Mark Wahlberg over the weekend, topping the box office with her supernatural horror film “Mama.”

According to studio estimates Sunday, “Mama” earned $ 28.1 million. Chastain held the top two spots with both “Mama” and the Osama bin Laden manhunt drama “Zero Dark Thirty,” for which she’s nominated by the best actress Oscar. In its second week of wide release, “Zero Dark Thirty” took in $ 17.6 million.

Schwarzenegger‘s post-governorship comeback got off to a poor start. His action flick “The Last Stand” opened with just $ 6.3 million, one of the worst debuts for the brawny 65-year-old star.

The Mark Wahlberg, Russell Crowe New York crime film “Broken City” didn’t fare much better. It premiered with $ 9.1 million.

Entertainment News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Well: Holly the Cat's Incredible Journey

Nobody knows how it happened: an indoor housecat who got lost on a family excursion managing, after two months and about 200 miles, to return to her hometown.

Even scientists are baffled by how Holly, a 4-year-old tortoiseshell who in early November became separated from Jacob and Bonnie Richter at an R.V. rally in Daytona Beach, Fla., appeared on New Year’s Eve — staggering, weak and emaciated — in a backyard about a mile from the Richters’ house in West Palm Beach.

“Are you sure it’s the same cat?” wondered John Bradshaw, director of the University of Bristol’s Anthrozoology Institute. In other cases, he has suspected, “the cats are just strays, and the people have got kind of a mental justification for expecting it to be the same cat.”

But Holly not only had distinctive black-and-brown harlequin patterns on her fur, but also an implanted microchip to identify her.

“I really believe these stories, but they’re just hard to explain,” said Marc Bekoff, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Colorado. “Maybe being street-smart, maybe reading animal cues, maybe being able to read cars, maybe being a good hunter. I have no data for this.”

There is, in fact, little scientific dogma on cat navigation. Migratory animals like birds, turtles and insects have been studied more closely, and use magnetic fields, olfactory cues, or orientation by the sun.

Scientists say it is more common, although still rare, to hear of dogs returning home, perhaps suggesting, Dr. Bradshaw said, that they have inherited wolves’ ability to navigate using magnetic clues. But it’s also possible that dogs get taken on more family trips, and that lost dogs are more easily noticed or helped by people along the way.

Cats navigate well around familiar landscapes, memorizing locations by sight and smell, and easily figuring out shortcuts, Dr. Bradshaw said.

Strange, faraway locations would seem problematic, although he and Patrick Bateson, a behavioral biologist at Cambridge University, say that cats can sense smells across long distances. “Let’s say they associate the smell of pine with wind coming from the north, so they move in a southerly direction,” Dr. Bateson said.

Peter Borchelt, a New York animal behaviorist, wondered if Holly followed the Florida coast by sight or sound, tracking Interstate 95 and deciding to “keep that to the right and keep the ocean to the left.”

But, he said, “nobody’s going to do an experiment and take a bunch of cats in different directions and see which ones get home.”

The closest, said Roger Tabor, a British cat biologist, may have been a 1954 study in Germany which cats placed in a covered circular maze with exits every 15 degrees most often exited in the direction of their homes, but more reliably if their homes were less than five kilometers away.

New research by the National Geographic and University of Georgia’s Kitty Cams Project, using video footage from 55 pet cats wearing video cameras on their collars, suggests cat behavior is exceedingly complex.

For example, the Kitty Cams study found that four of the cats were two-timing their owners, visiting other homes for food and affection. Not every cat, it seems, shares Holly’s loyalty.

KittyCams also showed most of the cats engaging in risky behavior, including crossing roads and “eating and drinking substances away from home,” risks Holly undoubtedly experienced and seems lucky to have survived.

But there have been other cats who made unexpected comebacks.

“It’s actually happened to me,” said Jackson Galaxy, a cat behaviorist who hosts “My Cat From Hell” on Animal Planet. While living in Boulder, Colo., he moved across town, whereupon his indoor cat, Rabbi, fled and appeared 10 days later at the previous house, “walking five miles through an area he had never been before,” Mr. Galaxy said.

Professor Tabor cited longer-distance reports he considered credible: Murka, a tortoiseshell in Russia, traveling about 325 miles home to Moscow from her owner’s mother’s house in Voronezh in 1989; Ninja, who returned to Farmington, Utah, in 1997, a year after her family moved from there to Mill Creek, Wash.; and Howie, an indoor Persian cat in Australia who in 1978 ran away from relatives his vacationing family left him with and eventually traveled 1,000 miles to his family’s home.

Professor Tabor also said a Siamese in the English village of Black Notley repeatedly hopped a train, disembarked at White Notley, and walked several miles back to Black Notley.

Still, explaining such journeys is not black and white.

In the Florida case, one glimpse through the factual fog comes on the little cat’s feet. While Dr. Bradshaw speculated Holly might have gotten a lift, perhaps sneaking under the hood of a truck heading down I-95, her paws suggest she was not driven all the way, nor did Holly go lightly.

“Her pads on her feet were bleeding,” Ms. Richter said. “Her claws are worn weird. The front ones are really sharp, the back ones worn down to nothing.”

Scientists say that is consistent with a long walk, since back feet provide propulsion, while front claws engage in activities like tearing. The Richters also said Holly had gone from 13.5 to 7 pounds.

Holly hardly seemed an adventurous wanderer, though her background might have given her a genetic advantage. Her mother was a feral cat roaming the Richters’ mobile home park, and Holly was born inside somebody’s air-conditioner, Ms. Richter said. When, at about six weeks old, Holly padded into their carport and jumped into the lap of Mr. Richter’s mother, there were “scars on her belly from when the air conditioner was turned on,” Ms. Richter said.

Scientists say that such early experience was too brief to explain how Holly might have been comfortable in the wild — after all, she spent most of her life as an indoor cat, except for occasionally running outside to chase lizards. But it might imply innate personality traits like nimbleness or toughness.

“You’ve got these real variations in temperament,” Dr. Bekoff said. “Fish can by shy or bold; there seem to be shy and bold spiders. This cat, it could be she has the personality of a survivor.”

He said being an indoor cat would not extinguish survivalist behaviors, like hunting mice or being aware of the sun’s orientation.

The Richters — Bonnie, 63, a retired nurse, and Jacob, 70, a retired airline mechanics’ supervisor and accomplished bowler — began traveling with Holly only last year, and she easily tolerated a hotel, a cabin or the R.V.

But during the Good Sam R.V. Rally in Daytona, when they were camping near the speedway with 3,000 other motor homes, Holly bolted when Ms. Richter’s mother opened the door one night. Fireworks the next day may have further spooked her, and, after searching for days, alerting animal agencies and posting fliers, the Richters returned home catless.

Two weeks later, an animal rescue worker called the Richters to say a cat resembling Holly had been spotted eating behind the Daytona franchise of Hooters, where employees put out food for feral cats.

Then, on New Year’s Eve, Barb Mazzola, a 52-year-old university executive assistant, noticed a cat “barely standing” in her backyard in West Palm Beach, struggling even to meow. Over six days, Ms. Mazzola and her children cared for the cat, putting out food, including special milk for cats, and eventually the cat came inside.

They named her Cosette after the orphan in Les Misérables, and took her to a veterinarian, Dr. Sara Beg at Paws2Help. Dr. Beg said the cat was underweight and dehydrated, had “back claws and nail beds worn down, probably from all that walking on pavement,” but was “bright and alert” and had no parasites, heartworm or viruses. “She was hesitant and scared around people she didn’t know, so I don’t think she went up to people and got a lift,” Dr. Beg said. “I think she made the journey on her own.”

At Paws2Help, Ms. Mazzola said, “I almost didn’t want to ask, because I wanted to keep her, but I said, ‘Just check and make sure she doesn’t have a microchip.’” When told the cat did, “I just cried.”

The Richters cried, too upon seeing Holly, who instantly relaxed when placed on Mr. Richter’s shoulder. Re-entry is proceeding well, but the mystery persists.

“We haven’t the slightest idea how they do this,” Mr. Galaxy said. “Anybody who says they do is lying, and, if you find it, please God, tell me what it is.”

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