'Blade Runner' Oscar Pistorius weeps as he faces murder charge

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- Olympic sprinter Oscar Pistorius, the double-amputee revered in South Africa for overcoming his disability to compete in the London Games last year, wept in court Friday as he faced a murder charge in connection with the fatal shooting of his girlfriend.

During the proceedings in Pretoria, Gerrie Nel, one of the National Prosecuting Authority’s most senior advocates, said he would argue the killing of model and law graduate Reeva Steenkamp was premeditated murder, the most serious category of offense under South African law.

Nel is known for prosecuting high-profile cases, including winning the conviction of former police chief and Interpol boss Jackie Selebi on corruption charges.

Pistorius, nicknamed the "Blade Runner" because of the carbon-fiber prosthetic legs he uses to compete, did not enter a formal plea and was remanded into custody at Brooklyn police station in Pretoria until Tuesday, when his bail application is to be heard.

Under South African law, a suspect charged with such a high-level offense would have to prove exceptional circumstances to be granted bail.

In a packed courtroom, members of Pistorius' family struggled to pass through a media scrum and to find seats. The hearing coincided with "Black Friday," a day when people were being urged to wear black to protest rapes and violence against women.

[Updated, 8:35 a.m. Feb. 15: The family and Pistorius' management company later issued a statement denying that the athlete had murdered his girlfriend, saying: "The alleged murder is disputed in the strongest possible terms."

Some details of Pistorius' argument and the state's case are expected Tuesday.]

The famed athlete's court appearance came as South African media reported that he shot Steenkamp, his girlfriend of several months, four times through a bathroom door.

Under South African law, a person who fatally shoots an intruder has to prove he or she had a reasonable fear that the intruder posed a real threat to his or her life.

South Africa has one of the highest rates of gun homicides in the world, with killings of women by intimate partners the leading cause of female homicide in the country. About 57% of female homicide victims were killed by their partners in 2009, according to a report last year by the Medical Research Council.

One-third of female homicides were committed by partners with a history of prior violence against their partners, according to the report.

Friends of Steenkamp and Pistorius mourned the incident on social media.

"Drained, confused, I just can't wrap my head around things," one of Pistorius’ close friends, Alex Pilakoutas, posted on Twitter.

Darren Fresco, who described himself as one of Steenkamp’s best friends said he was hoping to wake from a nightmare and hear her infectious laughter again.

"We were just goofing off the other day talking to each other in only the way that we could to each other. My heart is on the verge of exploding with the pain of such a sudden loss of one of my best friends," Fresco, who said he was one of the last people to exchange tweets with Steenkamp, posted on Facebook.

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robyn.dixon@latimes.com

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Preparing for War, Valve Launches Steam for Linux

Valve’s gaming service Steam is now available for Linux users, the company said this week.

To celebrate the launch, Valve is selling 57 Linux-compatible games at bargain prices, with prices slashed by 50 or 75 percent. Games on sale include classic Valve titles like Half-Life and Counter-Strike: Source, as well as newer games including Bastion and FTL: Faster Than Light.

The release lays the groundwork for a coming battle over the way people play games in their living rooms.

Valve CEO Gabe Newell has been publicly promoting his company’s plan for pushing PC gaming, and the Steam client, into the living room using Valve-branded PC hardware with a living-room form factor, as well as Steam-ready hardware produced by other vendors.

Speaking at the DICE gaming industry conference earlier this month, Newell stressed the importance of open platforms, calling a potential Apple TV game console “threatening” to the idea of PCs moving into the living room.

“Our company wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for the openness of the PC. Steam wouldn’t exist if not for the openness of the Internet,” Newell said. He then called Linux a “get out of jail free pass for our industry, if we need it.”

Last July, Newell called Microsoft’s Windows 8 “a catastrophe for everybody in the PC space” while speaking to VentureBeat.

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Fat Dad: Baking for Love

Fat Dad

Dawn Lerman writes about growing up with a fat dad.

My grandmother Beauty always told me that the way to a man’s heart was through his stomach, and by the look of pure delight on my dad’s face when he ate a piece of warm, homemade chocolate cake, or bit into a just-baked crispy cookie, I grew to believe this was true. I had no doubt that when the time came, and I liked a boy, that a batch of my gooey, rich, chocolaty brownies would cast him under a magic spell, and we would live happily ever.

But when Hank Thomas walked into Miss Seawall’s ninth grade algebra class on a rainy, September day and smiled at me with his amazing grin, long brown hair, big green eyes and Jimi Hendrix T-shirt, I was completely unprepared for the avalanche of emotions that invaded every fiber of my being. Shivers, a pounding heart, and heat overcame me when he asked if I knew the value of 1,000 to the 25th power. The only answer I could think of, as I fumbled over my words, was “love me, love me,” but I managed to blurt out “1E+75.” I wanted to come across as smart and aloof, but every time he looked at me, I started stuttering and sweating as my face turned bright red. No one had ever looked at me like that: as if he knew me, as if he knew how lost I was and how badly I needed to be loved.

Hank, who was a year older than me, was very popular and accomplished. Unlike other boys who were popular for their looks or athletic skills, Hank was smart and talented. He played piano and guitar, and composed the most beautiful classical and rock concertos that left both teachers and students in awe.

Unlike Hank, I had not quite come into my own yet. I was shy, had raggedy messy hair that I tied back into braids, and my clothes were far from stylish. My mother and sister had been on the road touring for the past year with the Broadway show “Annie.” My sister had been cast as a principal orphan, and I stayed home with my dad to attend high school. My dad was always busy with work and martini dinners that lasted late into the night. I spent most of my evenings at home alone baking and making care packages for my sister instead of coercing my parents to buy me the latest selection of Gloria Vanderbilt jeans — the rich colored bluejeans with the swan stitched on the back pocket that you had to lay on your bed to zip up. It was the icon of cool for the popular and pretty girls. I was neither, but Hank picked me to be his math partner anyway.

With every equation we solved, my love for Hank became more desperate. After several months of exchanging smiles, I decided to make Hank a batch of my homemade chocolate brownies for Valentine’s Day — the brownies that my dad said were like his own personal nirvana. My dad named them “closet” brownies, because when I was a little girl and used to make them for the family, he said that as soon as he smelled them coming out of the oven, he could imagine dashing away with them into the closet and devouring the whole batch.

After debating for hours if I should make the brownies for Hank with walnuts or chips, or fill the centers with peanut butter or caramel, I got to work. I had made brownies hundreds of times before, but this time felt different. With each ingredient I carefully stirred into the bowl, my heart began beating harder. I felt like I was going to burst from excitement. Surely, after Hank tasted these, he would love me as much as I loved him. I was not just making him brownies. I was l showing him who I was, and what mattered to me. After the brownies cooled, I sprinkled them with a touch of powdered sugar and wrapped them with foil and red tissue paper. The next day I placed them in Hank’s locker, with a note saying, “Call me.”

After seven excruciating days with no call, some smiles and the usual small talk in math class, I conjured up the nerve to ask Hank if he liked my brownies.

“The brownies were from you?” he asked. “They were delicious.”

Then Hank invited me to a party at his house the following weekend. Without hesitation, I responded that I would love to come. I pleaded with my friend Sarah to accompany me.

As the day grew closer, I made my grandmother Beauty’s homemade fudge — the chocolate fudge she made for Papa the night before he proposed to her. Stirring the milk, butter and sugar together eased my nerves. I had never been to a high school party before, and I didn’t know what to expect. Sarah advised me to ditch the braids as she styled my hair, used a violet eyeliner and lent me her favorite V-neck sweater and a pair of her best Gloria Vanderbilt jeans.

When we walked in the door, fudge in hand, Hank was nowhere to be found. Thinking I had made a mistake for coming and getting ready to leave, I felt a hand on my back. It was Hank’s. He hugged me and told me he was glad I finally arrived. When Hank put his arm around me, nothing else existed. With a little help from Cupid or the magic of Beauty’s recipes, I found love.

---

Fat Dad’s ‘Closet’ Brownies

These brownies are more like fudge than cake and contain a fraction of the flour found in traditional brownie recipes. My father called them “closet” brownies, because when he smelled them coming out of the oven he could imagine hiding in the closet to eat the whole batch. I baked them in the ninth grade for a boy that I had a crush on, and they were more effective than Cupid’s arrow at winning his heart.

6 tablespoons unsalted butter, plus extra for greasing the pan
8 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped, or semisweet chocolate chips
3/4 cup brown sugar
2 eggs at room temperature, beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 cup flour
1/2 cup chopped walnuts (optional)
Fresh berries or powdered sugar for garnish (optional)

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2. Grease an 8-inch square baking dish.

3. In a double boiler, melt chocolate. Then add butter, melt and stir to blend. Remove from heat and pour into a mixing bowl. Stir in sugar, eggs and vanilla and mix well.

4. Add flour. Mix well until very smooth. Add chopped walnuts if desired. Pour batter into greased baking pan.

5. Bake for 35 minutes, or until set and barely firm in the middle. Allow to cool on a rack before removing from pan. Optional: garnish with powdered sugar, or berries, or both.

Yield: 16 brownies

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Dawn Lerman is a New York-based health and nutrition consultant and founder of Magnificent Mommies, which provides school lectures, cooking classes and workshops. Her series on growing up with a fat father appears occasionally on Well.

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Off the Charts: In World Trade Data, Signs of a Slowdown

WORLD trade slowed last year, as major countries like Japan and Germany shipped exports that were worth less than those in 2011. The United States bucked the trend to some extent, but the 4.5 percent increase in exports was far smaller than the 15.8 percent jump in 2011.

The accompanying charts show the change in exports and imports of goods in 12 large countries — the industrialized countries in the Group of 7, in addition to Australia and four emerging economies, China, Brazil, India and South Korea. All figures are in United States dollars.

Of the 12, only China, with an 8 percent gain, posted faster growth in exports than the United States. Canada reported a small gain, but the others showed declines. In their local currencies, South Korea and India had gains, but they were erased by the decline of those currencies against the dollar.

Import totals can provide an indication of economic woes, as declining incomes cause consumers to buy less, including fewer items from abroad. Imports fell in Germany, France and particularly Italy. This week, the European Union reported that the euro zone economy declined in the fourth quarter — the third consecutive fall. Germany’s economy, which had been growing slowly, also shrank.

In the United States, imports of goods rose just 3 percent in 2012. It was the second consecutive year, and the sixth year in the last seven, that exports grew more — or, in 2009, shrank less — than imports. Before that, imports rose faster than exports for eight consecutive years, from 1998 through 2005.

The United States runs a trade surplus in services, not shown in the chart, but the trade deficit in goods widened slightly in 2012 to $727.9 billion. That figure is still well below the deficits from 2004 through 2008, before the credit crisis and recession caused international trade to decline rapidly in 2009. The strong gains many countries experienced in 2010 and 2011 reflected a return to more normal levels.

Exports plunged in all countries during the crisis, but the trends since then have varied. German exports in 2012 were 3 percent lower than in 2008, while French exports were off almost 8 percent. Japanese and British exports were about 2 percent higher. The United States, by contrast, reported exports of goods in 2012 that were up 20 percent from 2008, and Brazilian exports were 23 percent higher.

Those gains pale next to those of developing Asian economies. South Korean exports in 2012 were 30 percent higher than in 2008, while China bolstered its shipments by 43 percent. Indian exports were 50 percent higher.

The charts also show changes in American trade with the other 11 countries listed. Exports to most of the European countries fell in 2012, but exports to France rose sharply. France has resisted austerity more than most of its neighbors, something that may have contributed to the rise.

Floyd Norris comments on finance and the economy at nytimes.com/economix.

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Oscar Pistorius remains in jail facing murder charge

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- South African athlete Oscar Pistorius, who made history last year as the first double amputee runner to compete in the Olympics using prosthetic blades, will spend the night in jail Thursday after he was charged with murder in the death of his girlfriend at his house, prosecutors said.

The National Prosecuting Authority said Pistorius would remain in custody until his hearing Friday, when police intend to oppose bail.

Reeva Steenkamp, a 30-year-old model, died after being shot several times in the head and arm in Pistorius’ house in an upscale suburb in Pretoria.

PHOTOS: Pistorius in the London Olympics

Pistorius was ushered from the home by police Thursday morning with a gray hoodie covering his head and obscuring most of his face.

South Africans were in shock about the accusation against Pistorius, who became a hero during his long battle for the right to compete in the Olympics. After a controversy on whether the blades he uses to walk and run gave him an advantage in races, Pistorius was granted the right to compete in the London 2012 Olympic Games.

South Africa has one of the world's highest rates of murder and violent crime, and many South Africans keep guns at home to guard against intruders.

The Afrikaans-language newspaper Beeld suggested that Pistorius mistook his girlfriend for a burglar and killed her accidentally.

However, a police spokeswoman, Brig. Denise Beukes, said police were “surprised” at reports the killing was accidental, adding that that version hadn’t come from police, according to the South African Press Assn.

"I confirm there had been previous incidents of a domestic nature at his place,” said Beukes, adding that police couldn’t comment on the decision to oppose bail.

Beukes said police had interviewed neighbors who heard sounds at Pistorius’ home earlier in the evening, and also at the time the incident reportedly took place.

Pistorius’ father, Henke Pistorius, said his son was sad. But the older Pistorius said he didn’t know the facts.

“I don’t know nothing. It will be extremely obnoxious and rude to speculate,” he said in a radio interview. “If anyone makes a statement, it will have to be Oscar.”

An advertisement for Nike, one of Pistorius’ major sponsors, was removed from his official website Thursday. It had shown the athlete in a green lycra athletic suit and the slogan, “I am the bullet in the chamber."

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Think One Fewer Browser Means Less Work? Think Again

Opera software is abandoning its homegrown rendering engine in favor of the open source WebKit rendering engine. Many developers seem to think this means one fewer browser to test in, but unfortunately, that’s not the case.

The problem with the dream of less testing because there’s more WebKit is that “WebKit” can mean many things. The WebKit in Safari does not have all the features you’ll find in the WebKit that powers Google Chrome. The situation gets even more complicated with mobile where there are about as many different versions of WebKit as there are browsers.

As Mozilla’s Rob Hawkes and Robert Nyman point out in the post WebKit: An Objective View, that means “each browser will still have its own quirks, performance differences, design, and functionality. These should all be tested for.”

Worse, individual WebKit browsers can pick and choose which APIs to include in their final builds, which means just because something is available in WebKit, does not mean it’s available in, for example, both Chrome and Safari. Couple this with Safari’s relatively slow release schedule and just the two major desktop WebKit variants are going to require testing to make sure everything works.

Throwing a WebKit-based Opera in the mix just means another WebKit browser that needs to be part of your testing.

There’s nothing wrong with this state of affairs, nor will it change all that much when Opera is on WebKit as well, but it won’t mean less testing, nor is it going to make web developers’ lives any easier (especially since most of them weren’t testing in Opera anyway).

Testing will always be a necessary part of web development, but the danger that Hawkes and Nyman foresee is that developers will test less because they assume that if something works in one version of WebKit it will work in all of them. While that hasn’t happened yet, the CSS prefix debacle certainly doesn’t bode well for the WebKit-heavy future.

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Irish composer Raymond Deane talks Achill, Alma and ABBA too

DUBLIN (Reuters) – Irish composer Raymond Deane chafes at what he sees as a lack of recognition in his homeland for classical composers in a country better known for traditional fiddling and rock supergroup U2 than for notes on staves.

“Classical music means Mozart and Beethoven and when you say Irish classical music their eyes just widen,” Deane, who recently turned 60, told Reuters over lunch at a French-style bistro in Dublin.

“Classical music doesn’t do much for the tourist industry except frighten off the tourists.”

Deane, who also is an activist who has taken up the causes of East Timorese and Palestinian human rights and campaigns to get artists to boycott Israel, described the Irish composer’s plight in the 1990s as “the honor of non-existence”.

Though he can rattle off the names of more than a half dozen Irish men and women composers of international stature, he says little has changed.

The difference is this year, Deane’s often haunting, sometimes playful chamber pieces got an airing at a birthday celebration in a Dublin church, one of his orchestral works was played at the National Concert Hall and September will see a concert staging of a new opera, “The Alma Fetish”.

The last, a collaboration with librettist Gavin Kostick, is a musical treatment of a theme that probably – actually, undoubtedly – would have been banned in Roman Catholic Ireland not too many years ago.

It is based on the love affair between composer Gustav Mahler’s widow Alma, a femme fatale for many a European intellectual, and the Austrian painter Oskar Kokoschka. He became so enamored of her he ordered up a life-size doll shaped, in all respects, like Alma.

Although the performance will be a concert staging, Deane said the doll will be there in some form or other, possibly in projections.

“You couldn’t not have it, because it’s absolutely central,” he said, adding that he was in part attracted to the story of Alma’s and Kokoschka’s affair because of the Olympia doll character in Offenbach’s opera “The Tales of Hoffmann”. Alma also seduced Oskar to the main theme of one of Deane’s favorite operas, Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde”.

“Alma seduced Oskar to the ‘liebestod’ but in my version she sings and plays it as a Viennese waltz,” he said.

In a sign of the pan-European roots of his inspiration, Deane has quoted and used themes from composers as diverse as Mahler, Mussorgsky and Stockhausen in a musical career that began at about age 10 when his family moved from scenic but rustic Achill Island, off Ireland’s west coast, to Dublin, and Deane began writing down improvisations at the piano.

“It’s ridiculous, everyone is immature at the age of 10 but I was a particularly immature 10-year-old, and to think I’ve stood by a decision I made then, there’s really something absurd about it.”

Here’s what else he had to say about getting a musical education via the BBC’s classical station Radio 3, what he did or didn’t learn from his professors and why he makes no secret about liking ABBA‘s “Dancing Queen”:

Q: You studied under some of the musical greats of the 20th century, including the eternal enfant terrible Karlheinz Stockhausen. What did that do for you?

A: “‘Study’ in quotation marks – anybody else who would have gone through my particular curriculum vitae, studying with (composer) Gerald Bennett in Switzerland, Stockhausen in Cologne…would have made some use of them, seen them as opportunities. To a large extent I wasted all the opportunities that were offered to me by these people, quite perversely.”

Q: So where did you learn your craft, or more simply, how did you become a composer?

A: “I went to the usual university, did a degree at Maynooth (National University of Ireland), a doctorate. But my main musical education really was BBC Radio 3. When we came to Dublin in my early teens I had this old transistor radio that was really my main connection to the outer world and it wasn’t linked up to anything so the reception from the BBC was diabolical. The static was amazing and sometimes it would disappear completely. I would tune in and hear ‘tssshh’ and through this I would hear the music and then ‘tssshhh’. Sometimes it would disappear and I would try to imagine what I was missing. I think a lot of the kind of perverse quality of some of those early pieces of mine stems from that – a distant relationship and a rather distorted relationship to something.”

Q: Plus you and your composer friend Gerald Barry, in the days a quarter of a century ago before you swore off the drink, used to have some late evenings in which he’d play Rod Stewart and you’d pick ABBA, particularly “Dancing Queen”.

A: “I was a big fan of ABBA, I still have a lot of time for ABBA, I have a lot of time for the Beatles, a lot of time for Neil Young…Bruce Springsteen. My CD and record collection has a lot of non-classical stuff in it. I probably draw the line at rap.”

(Editing by Paul Casciato)

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Life, Interrupted: Crazy, Unsexy Cancer Tips

Life, Interrupted

Suleika Jaouad writes about her experiences as a young adult with cancer.

Every few weeks I host a “girls’ night” at my apartment in Lower Manhattan with a group of friends who are at various stages in their cancer treatments. Everyone brings something to eat and drink, and we sit around my living room talking to one another about subjects both heavy and light, ranging from post-chemo hair styling tips, fears of relapse or funny anecdotes about a recent hospital visit. But one topic that doesn’t come up as often as you might think — particularly at a gathering of women in their early 20s and 30s — is sex.

Actually, I almost didn’t write this column. Time and again, I’ve sat down to write about sex and cancer, but each time I’ve deleted the draft and moved on to a different topic. Writing about cancer is always a challenge for me because it hits so close to home. And this topic felt even more difficult. After my diagnosis at age 22 with leukemia, the second piece of news I learned was that I would likely be infertile as a result of chemotherapy. It was a one-two punch that was my first indication that issues of cancer and sexual health are inextricably tied.

But to my surprise, sex is not at the center of the conversation in the oncology unit — far from it. No one has ever broached the topic of sex and cancer during my diagnosis and treatment. Not doctors, not nurses. On the rare occasions I initiated the conversation myself, talking about sex and cancer felt like a shameful secret. I felt embarrassed about the changes taking place in my body after chemotherapy treatment began — changes that for me included hot flashes, infertility and early menopause. Today, at age 24, when my peers are dating, marrying and having children of their own, my cancer treatments are causing internal and external changes in my body that leave me feeling confused, vulnerable, frustrated — and verifiably unsexy.

When sex has come up in conversations with my cancer friends, it’s hardly the free-flowing, liberating conversation you see on television shows like HBO’s “Girls” or “Sex and the City.” When my group of cancer friends talk about sex — maybe it’s an exaggeration to call it the blind leading the blind — we’re just a group of young women who have received little to no information about the sexual side effects of our disease.

One friend worried that sex had become painful as a result of pelvic radiation treatment. Another described difficulty reaching orgasm and wondered if it was a side effect of chemotherapy. And yet another talked about her oncologist’s visible discomfort when she asked him about safe birth control methods. “I felt like I was having a conversation with my uncle or something,” she told me. As a result, she turned to Google to find out if she could take a morning-after pill. “I felt uncomfortable with him and had nowhere to turn,” she said.

This is where our conversations always run into a wall. Emotional support — we can do that for one another. But we are at a loss when it comes to answering crucial medical questions about sexual health and cancer. Who can we talk to? Are these common side effects? And what treatments or remedies exist, if any, for the sexual side effects associated with cancer?

If mine and my girlfriends’ experiences are indicative of a trend, then the way women with cancer are being educated about their sexual health is not by their health care providers but on their own. I was lucky enough to meet a counselor who specializes in the sexual health of cancer patients at a conference for young adult cancer patients. Sage Bolte, a counselor who works for INOVA Life With Cancer, a Virginia-based nonprofit organization that provides free resources for cancer patients, was the one to finally explain to me that many of the sexual side effects of cancer are both normal and treatable.

“Part of the reason you feel shame and embarrassment about this is because no one out there is saying this is normal. But it is,” Dr. Bolte told me. “Shame on us as health care providers that we have not created an environment that is conducive to talking about sexual health.”

Dr. Bolte said part of the problem is that doctors are so focused on saving a cancer patient’s life that they forget to discuss issues of sexual health. “My sense is that it’s not about physicians or health care providers not caring about your sexual health or thinking that it’s unimportant, but that cancer is the emergency, and everything else seems to fall by the wayside,” she said.

She said that one young woman she was working with had significant graft-versus-host disease, a potential side effect of stem cell transplantation that made her skin painfully sensitive to touch. Her partner would try to hold her hand or touch her stomach, and she would push him away or jump at his touch. It only took two times for him to get the message that “she didn’t want to be touched,” Dr. Bolte said. Unfortunately, by the time they showed up at Dr. Bolte’s office and the young woman’s condition had improved, she thought her boyfriend was no longer attracted to her. Her boyfriend, on the other hand, was afraid to touch her out of fear of causing pain or making an unwanted pass. All that was needed to help them reconnect was a little communication.

Dr. Bolte also referred me to resources like the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors and Therapists; the Society for Sex Therapy and Research; and the Association of Oncology Social Workers, all professional organizations that can help connect cancer patients to professionals trained in working with sexual health issues and the emotional and physical concerns related to a cancer diagnosis.

I know that my girlfriends and I are not the only women out there who are wondering how to help themselves and their friends answer difficult questions about sex and cancer. Sex can be a squeamish subject even when cancer isn’t part of the picture, so the combination of sex and cancer together can feel impossible to talk about. But women like me and my friends shouldn’t have to suffer in silence.

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Suleika Jaouad (pronounced su-LAKE-uh ja-WAD) is a 24-year-old writer who lives in New York City. Her column, “Life, Interrupted,” chronicling her experiences as a young adult with cancer, appears regularly on Well. Follow @suleikajaouad on Twitter.

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DealBook: Buffett to Pay $23 Billion for Heinz, as Big Mergers Revive

10:12 a.m. | Updated

Warren E. Buffett has found another American icon worth buying: H. J. Heinz.

Berkshire Hathaway, the giant conglomerate that Mr. Buffett runs, said on Thursday that it would buy the food giant for about $23 billion, adding Heinz ketchup to its stable of prominent brands.

The proposed acquisition, coming fast on the heels of a planned $24 billion buyout of the computer maker Dell and a number of smaller deals, heralds a possible reemergence in merger activity.  The number of deals and the prices being paid for companies are still a far cry from the lofty heights of the boom before the financial crisis.  But an improving stock market, growing confidence among business executives and mounting piles of cash held by corporations and private equity funds all favor a return to deal-making. 

Mr. Buffett is teaming up with 3G Capital Management, a Brazilian-backed investment firm that owns a majority stake in a company whose business is complementary to Heinz’s: Burger King.

Under the terms of the deal, Berkshire and 3G will pay $72.50 a share, about 20 percent above Heinz’s closing price on Wednesday. Including debt, the transaction is valued at $28 billion.

“This is my kind of deal and my kind of partner,” Mr. Buffett told CNBC on Thursday. “Heinz is our kind of company with fantastic brands.”

In many ways, Heinz fits Mr. Buffett’s deal criteria almost to a T. It has broad brand recognition – besides ketchup, it owns Ore-Ida and Lea & Perrins Worcestershire sauce – and has performed well. Over the last 12 months, its stock has risen nearly 17 percent.

Mr. Buffett told CNBC that he had a file on Heinz dating back to 1980. But the genesis of Thursday’s deal actually lies with 3G, an investment firm backed by several wealthy Brazilian families, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter.

One of the firm’s principal backers, Jorge Paulo Lemann, brought the idea of buying Heinz to Berkshire about two months ago, this person said. Mr. Buffett agreed, and the two sides approached Heinz’s chief executive, William R. Johnson, about buying the company.

“We look forward to partnering with Berkshire Hathaway and 3G Capital, both greatly respected investors, in what will be an exciting new chapter in the history of Heinz,” Mr. Johnson said in a statement.

Berkshire and 3G will each contribute about $4 billion in cash to pay for the deal, with Berkshire also paying $8 billion for preferred shares. The rest of the cost will be covered by debt financing raised by JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo.

Mr. Buffett told CNBC that 3G would be the primary supervisor of Heinz’s operations, saying, “Heinz will be 3G’s baby.”

The food company’s headquarters will remain in Pittsburgh, Heinz’s home for over 120 years.

Heinz’s stock was up nearly 20 percent in morning trading, at $72.51, closely mirroring the offered price. Berkshire’s class A stock was also up slightly, rising 0.64 percent to $148,691 a share.

Heinz was advised by Centerview Partners, Bank of America Merrill Lynch and the law firm Davis Polk & Wardwell. A transaction committee of the company’s board was advised by Moelis & Company and Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz.

Berkshire’s and 3G’s lead adviser was Lazard, with JPMorgan and Wells Fargo providing additional advice. Kirkland & Ellis provided legal advice to 3G, while Berkshire relied on its usual law firm, Munger, Tolles & Olson.

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Dorner manhunt: Investigators work to ID charred human remains

After what LAPD Chief Charlie Beck called "a bittersweet night," investigators Wednesday were in the process of identifying the human remains found in the charred cabin where fugitive ex-cop Christopher Dorner was believed to have been holed up after trading gunfire with officers, authorities said.

If the body is identified as Dorner’s, the standoff would end a weeklong manhunt for the ex-LAPD officer and Navy Reserve lieutenant suspected in a string of shootings following his firing by the Los Angeles Police Department several years ago. Four people have died in the case, allegedly at Dorner’s hands.

Beck said he would not consider the manhunt over until the body was identified as Dorner. Police remained on tactical alert and were conducting themselves as if nothing had changed in the case, officials said.

PHOTOS: Manhunt for ex-LAPD officer

The latest burst of gunfire came Tuesday after the suspect, attempting to flee law enforcement officials, fatally shot a San Bernardino County sheriff’s deputy and seriously injured another, officials said. He then barricaded himself in a wooden cabin outside Big Bear, not far from ski resorts in the snow-capped San Bernardino Mountains east of Los Angeles, according to police.

"This could have ended much better, it could have ended worse," said Beck as he drove to the hospital where the injured deputy was located. "I feel for the family of the deputy who lost his life."

The injured deputy is expected to survive but it is anticipated he will need several surgeries. The names of the two deputies have not been released.

TIMELINE: Manhunt for ex-LAPD officer

Just before 5 p.m., authorities smashed the cabin's windows, pumped in tear gas and called for the suspect to surrender, officials said. They got no response. Then, using a demolition vehicle, they tore down the cabin's walls one by one. When they reached the last wall, they heard a gunshot. Then the cabin burst into flames, officials said.

Last week, authorities said they had tracked Dorner to a wooded area near Big Bear Lake. They found his torched gray Nissan Titan with several weapons inside, the said, and the only trace of Dorner was a short trail of footprints in newly fallen snow.

According to a manifesto that officials say Dorner posted on Facebook, he felt the LAPD unjustly fired him several years ago, when a disciplinary panel determined that he lied in accusing his training officer of kicking a mentally ill man during an arrest. Beck has promised to review the case.

DOCUMENT: Read the manifesto

The manifesto vows "unconventional and asymmetrical warfare" against law enforcement officers and their families. "Self-preservation is no longer important to me. I do not fear death as I died long ago," it said.

On Tuesday morning, two maids entered a cabin in the 1200 block of Club View Drive and ran into a man who they said resembled the fugitive, a law enforcement official said. The cabin was not far from where Dorner's singed truck had been found and where police had been holding news conferences about the manhunt.

The man tied up the maids, and he took off in a purple Nissan parked near the cabin, the official said. About 12:20 p.m., one of the maids broke free and called police.

FULL COVERAGE: Sweeping manhunt for ex-cop

Nearly half an hour later, officers with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife spotted the stolen vehicle and called for backup, authorities said. The suspect turned down a side road in an attempt to elude the officers but crashed the vehicle, police said.

A short time later, authorities said, the suspect carjacked a light-colored pickup truck. Allan Laframboise said the truck belonged to his friend Rick Heltebrake, who works at a nearby Boy Scout camp.

Heltebrake was driving on Glass Road with his Dalmatian, Suni, when a hulking African American man stepped into the road, Laframboise said. Heltebrake stopped. The man told him to get out of the truck.

INTERACTIVE MAP: Searching for suspected shooter

"Can I take my dog?" Heltebrake asked, according to his friend.

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