Public's response saved lives in mall shooting

Citizens' coolheadedness and individual preparation for coping with gunfire in public settings may have curtailed the casualty count from Tuesday's shooting at a Portland, Ore., shopping mall, law officers suggested on the day after the tragedy.

Two people died and one was critically wounded before the shooter, 22-year-old Jacob Tyler Roberts of Portland, killed himself a few minutes after running into the food court at the Clackamas Town Center mall. Officials say Mr. Roberts, wearing camouflage and a white hockey mask, had methodically fired "multiple" rounds from an assault-style rifle at random shoppers.

Most of the 10,000 Christmas shoppers at the mall appeared nearly as ready and able as police to deal with a gunman appearing suddenly in their midst, Clackamas County Sheriff Craig Roberts said on Wednesday.

"Many people have asked me why there were so few victims during this incident," said Sheriff Roberts. He listed the fact that Mr. Roberts's AR-15 semiautomatic rifle intermittently jammed and noted a well-practiced mall lockdown procedure. But he also credited "10,000 people in the mall who at one time kept a level head, got themselves out of the mall, helped others get out, secured themselves in stores.… It was really about a whole group of people coming together to make a difference."

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Law officers said during a Wednesday press conference that they did not know whether any member of the public carrying a concealed weapon had counterattacked Roberts. But they said they are certain that Roberts died by his own hand after fleeing down a stairwell from the mall's upper level.

The death rate from mass shootings has ticked up slightly in recent years, even as deaths in single-victim incidents have decreased, according to a recent analysis of FBI crime data by the Huffington Post. The worst recent mass shooting came in July in Aurora, Colo., where a gunman killed 12 people and injured 58 during a midnight screening of a new "Batman" movie.

Gun-control advocates seized on the mall shooting as a possible result of the expiration in 2004 of a national ban on assault weapons.

"Santa Claus could have been shot in the mall," said Penny Okamoto, executive director of Ceasefire Oregon, in an interview with the Portland Tribune. "If you're sick of this, you should call your legislators to tell them to fix the laws so that assault weapons don't end up in the hands of felons."

Many versions of the AR-15 were banned under the assault weapons law, but it's not known if the gun used in the Clackamas mall shooting was one of them.

Police said Roberts had no criminal record and had stolen the AR-15 from "someone he knew."

Does the collected response by shoppers at the Clackamas Town Center indicate that Americans are becoming less daunted by senseless violence and, perhaps, better ready to react? Those who back broad gun rights under the Constitution's Second Amendment suggest a shift may be under way in people's readiness to respond.

In blocking Illinois's ban on concealed weapons, the last such law in the nation, Seventh US Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Richard Posner on Tuesday implied that self-defense readiness in public is not only protected by the US Constitution, but may be good social policy. An awareness "that many law-abiding citizens are walking the streets armed may make criminals timid," he wrote in his ruling.

"As far as a social shift, I think people are getting more intelligent and appropriate in their reactions to shooters," says Dave Kopel, research director at the Independence Institute, a libertarian-leaning think tank in Golden, Colo. "Police training has changed in significant ways since the Columbine [High School] shooting [in 1999], where they no longer wait for the SWAT team to arrive but go in immediately with … the army they have. There's also an awareness [among police and the public] that if you're trying to stop a gangster from robbing a liquor store, you may have a [heck] of a fight on your hands, but that these publicity-seeking guys with mental illness, they basically crumble at first opposition."

The upshot, says Mr. Kopel: "Lying down and cowering doesn't seem to work very well, so law enforcement has gotten smarter and civilians have gotten smarter."

In Clackamas County, Sheriff Roberts said local law-enforcement personnel had trained earlier this year for a shooting scenario at Clackamas Town Center, an exercise that involved both police and retailers. On Tuesday, arriving police, in keeping with evolving police tactics nationwide, formed small teams and quickly entered the mall to pursue the shooter. Police could not say Wednesday whether any officers saw the shooter before he killed himself.

Dennis Curtis, the mall's general manager, noted that police officers told him that they were amazed "how many stores were secured and people were locked in place" upon entering the mall to look for the shooter.

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Taliban popular where US fought biggest battle

MARJAH, Afghanistan (AP) — Nearly three years after U.S.-led forces launched the biggest operation of the war to clear insurgents, foster economic growth and set a model for the rest of Afghanistan, angry residents of Helmand province say they are too afraid to go out after dark because of marauding bands of thieves.

And during the day, they say corrupt police and government officials bully them into paying bribes. After 11 years of war, many here long for a return of the Taliban. They say that under the Taliban, who routinely punished thieves by cutting off a hand, they were at least safe from crime and corruption.

"If you had a box of cash on your head, you could go to the farthest part of Marjah and no one would take it from you, even at night," said Maulvi Daoud, who runs a cubbyhole sized-shop in the town of Marjah. "Today you bring your motorcycle in front of your shop and it will be gone. Now the situation is that you go on the road and they are standing in police and army uniform with weapons and they can take your money."

It was in the town of Marjah in early 2010 that some 15,000 NATO and Afghan forces waged the war's biggest battle. They not only fought the Taliban with weapons, they promised to bring good governance to Marjah and the rest of the southern province of Helmand — and demonstrate to the residents the advantages of shunning the militants.

But it appears the flaw in the plan was with the quality of Afghans chosen by President Hamid Karzai to govern and police the area after most of the fighting ended. And that adds to growing doubts about the entire country's future after foreign troops withdraw by the end of 2014.

Despite military claims of gains across the province and an overall drop in violence, Marjah residents told The Associated Press that NATO's counterinsurgency experiment has failed. A bleak picture also emerges from anecdotal evidence collected from dozens of interviews with residents elsewhere in the province, some from the most violent districts.

Many claim the U.S.-funded local police, a type of locally sanctioned militia, routinely demand bribes and threaten to accuse those who do not comply of being members of the Taliban. Good governance never came to Marjah, they say.

In villages of sun-baked mud homes, at crowded bus stops and in local tea houses where residents sit cross-legged on plastic-covered tables drinking tea and eating off communal plates, people scoffed at claims of security and development. They heaped criticism on the Afghan government and officials, accusing them of stealing billions of dollars in aid money meant for the people and on an international community that they said ignored their needs and pandered to a corrupt administration.

Daoud, the Marjah shop owner, said there was more security under the country's Taliban regime that was ousted by the U.S.-led invasion in late 2001.

"They were never cruel to us and the one difference was security. It was better during the Taliban," he said.

His partner in the rickety shop along Marjah's chaotic one-street bazaar, Mohammed Haider, said poppy farmers who planted substitute crops such as cotton are losing money because they cannot sell their harvests. He predicted poppy production would double when foreign soldiers leave in 2014.

At a bus stop in Helmand's provincial capital of Lashkar Gah, residents scrambled for dilapidated old buses and cars to go to parts of Helmand. Hamidullah, who like many Afghans uses only one name, was waiting for a bus to Sangin district — the scene of some of the most violent fighting between the Taliban and British and U.S. forces.

Like the majority of those at the stop, he wanted foreign forces to leave Afghanistan.

"All these foreign soldiers are here and it is totally insecure everywhere in Helmand," Hamidullah said. "For the time that they are in Afghanistan we will always have war."

Several of the men scrambling on top the packed buses and jamming themselves into the back of cars seemed to growl at the presence of foreigners in their midst. A single question: "What is the situation like in Helmand today?" brought a cacophony of answers. Many of the voices sounded angry, some sounded weary and a few angry-looking men walked away.

"We are completely destroyed today," said Hamidullah.

"The situation is getting worse and worse," shouted a voice in the crowd. Another yelled: "There is no security because of the foreigners." And from a deeply wrinkled elderly man whose voice seemed both angry and sad: "If the foreigners are out of Afghanistan, all the problems will be solved. Are our lives any better?"

Analysts who know Helmand say a corrupt government poses one of the biggest hurdles to stability, alienating the local population and driving them into the hands of the Taliban.

The province is strategically important because of a massive poppy production that is financing the insurgency and fueling criminal activity. While some success has been achieved at getting farmers to plant substitute crops, Helmand is still one of Afghanistan's largest opium-producing provinces, often blamed on anti-government sentiment and collusion between corrupt government officials and the Taliban.

The NATO-led coalition, known as the International Security Assistance Force, claims there are tangible gains against the Taliban in Helmand and neighboring Kandahar province.

"While insurgent activity remains problematic in several districts, primarily in northern Helmand and western Kandahar, data from the battle space shows a marked decrease in overall enemy activity," ISAF spokesman Jamie Graybeal said recently.

Despite a drop of 8 percent in militant attacks from January to October compared to the same period last year, Helmand and neighboring Nimroz province accounted for 32 percent of all such attacks reported across the country from October 2011 to October this year, according to ISAF.

Ryan Evans, a research fellow at the U.S.-based Center for National Policy, called Helmand the "most dangerous and violent" of Afghanistan's 34 provinces.

"From 2010 to early 2012, one of five ISAF soldiers was killed in this one province — Helmand. And the province has since taken more lives and limbs than any other province," said Evans, who worked with U.S. and British troops in Helmand during 2010 and 2011.

The larger question, of course, is whether what's happening in Helmand is a harbinger of what the rest of Afghanistan will look like after the departure of the international troops.

A report released last month by the British Parliament's International Development Committee offered grim statistics.

Afghanistan continues to be one of the poorest countries in the world, with the average person earning less than one dollar a day despite $32 billion in foreign investment.

The country has also tumbled in corruption ratings assembled by Transparency International. Afghanistan was ranked 117 out of 158 countries in 2005, then slid to 180 out of 183 nations last year. The scandal-ridden Kabul Bank milked millions of dollars from Afghans' savings.

Some Afghans believe their countrymen are responsible for the current state of affairs.

Haji Khalil who moved his family from Marjah to Lashkar Gah during the 2010 offensive, blamed Afghans for the spike in thefts and lawlessness since the defeat of the Taliban.

"During the Taliban no one would steal because we knew the punishment, but when they left everyone began to steal," Khalil said.

"We became worse after the Taliban," he said. "The problem is with us."

___

Kathy Gannon is AP's Special Regional Correspondent for Afghanistan and Pakistan. She can be followed on www.twitter.com/kathygannon

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Microsoft ups Surface production, to sell in more stores

SEATTLE (Reuters) – Microsoft Corp has stepped up manufacturing of the Surface tablet, its new device designed to counter Apple Inc‘s iPad, and will introduce it to third-party retailers this week.

The moves suggest Microsoft is seeing some demand for its first own-brand computer in the crucial holiday shopping season, although it has yet to divulge any sales figures.

“The public reaction to Surface has been exciting to see,” said Panos Panay, general manager of Microsoft’s Surface project, which forms part of the company’s Windows unit.

“We’ve increased production and are expanding the ways in which customers can interact with, experience and purchase Surface,” said Panay, but gave no details of how many extra units were being produced.

Panay did not mention names of retailers that will sell the Surface, but separately office equipment retailer Staples Inc said it would stock the tablet from Wednesday.

He said the Surface would also be on sale at retailers in Australia from mid-December, with more countries to follow in the next few months.

Since launch in late October, the Surface has only been sold by Microsoft itself, in its own brick and mortar stores in the United States and Canada and online in Australia, China, France, the UK and Germany.

The only Surface model available now – officially called Surface with Windows RT – runs a version of Windows created to work on the low-power chips designed by ARM Holdings, which dominate smartphones and tablets but are incompatible with old Windows applications.

It starts at $ 499 for the 32 gigabyte version plus $ 120 for a thin cover that doubles as a keyboard.

A larger, heavier tablet – called Surface with Windows 8 Pro – will be introduced in January, running on an Intel Corp chip that works with all Microsoft’s Windows and Office applications. Microsoft plans to price the new Surface from $ 899 for a 64 gigabyte version.

The world’s largest software company also said it would keep its chain of ‘pop-up’ holiday stores open into the new year and will convert them into permanent retail outlets or what it called “specialty store locations”.

Microsoft’s recent push into physical retail – following Apple’s great success – has resulted in 31 permanent stores plus 34 holiday ‘pop-up’ stores in the U.S. and Canada.

If Microsoft converted each of the temporary stores into permanent outlets it would have 65 stores, still well below Apple with almost 400 worldwide.

(Reporting by Bill Rigby in Seattle, Sruthi Ramakrishnan in Bangalore)

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Lawsuit claims A&E's 'Storage Wars' show is rigged

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Some of the valuables found hidden in abandoned lockers on A&E's "Storage Wars" have been added by producers to deceive viewers, a former cast member of the show claims in a lawsuit filed Tuesday.

David Hester's suit claims producers have added a BMW Mini and newspapers chronicling Elvis Presley's death to lockers in order to build drama for the show and that his complaints about the practices led to his firing.

Hester is seeking more than $750,000 in his wrongful termination, breach of contract and unfair business practices lawsuit. A&E Television Network declined comment, citing the pending lawsuit.

"Storage Wars" follows buyers who bid for abandoned storage lockers hoping to find valuables tucked inside.

"A&E regularly plants valuable items or memorabilia," the lawsuit states. Hester's suit claims he was fired from participating in the series' fourth season after expressing concerns that manipulating the storage lockers for the sake of the show was illegal.

He claims that producers stopped adding items to his units after his initial complaints but continued the practice for other series participants. The lawsuit alleges entire units have been staged and the practice may violate a federal law intended to prevent viewers from being deceived when watching a show involving intellectual skills.

"Storage Wars" depicts buyers having only a few moments to look into an abandoned unit before deciding on whether to bid on it at auction. The lawsuit claims some of the auction footage on the show is staged.

Hester, known as "The Mogul" on the show, has been buying abandoned storage units and re-selling their contents for 26 years, according to the suit.

Nielsen Co. has ranked "Storage Wars" among cable television's top-ranked shows several times since its 2010 debut.

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DA investigating Texas' troubled $3B cancer agency

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Turmoil surrounding an unprecedented $3 billion cancer-fighting effort in Texas worsened Tuesday when its executive director offered his resignation and the state's chief public corruption prosecutor announced an investigation into the beleaguered agency.

No specific criminal allegations are driving the latest probe into the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas, said Gregg Cox, director of the Travis County district attorney's public integrity unit. But his influential office opened a case only weeks after the embattled agency disclosed that an $11 million grant to a private company bypassed review.

That award is the latest trouble in a tumultuous year for CPRIT, which controls the nation's second-largest pot of cancer research dollars. Amid the mounting problems, the agency announced Tuesday that Executive Director Bill Gimson had submitted his letter of resignation.

"Unfortunately, I have also been placed in a situation where I feel I can no longer be effective," Gimson wrote in a letter dated Monday.

Gimson said the troubles have resulted in "wasted efforts expended in low value activities" at the agency, instead of a focused fight against cancer. Gimson offered to stay on until January, and the agency's board must still approve his request to step down.

His departure would complete a remarkable house-cleaning at CPRIT in a span of just eight months. It began in May, when Dr. Alfred Gilman resigned as chief science officer in protest over a different grant that the Nobel laureate wanted approved by a panel of scientists. He warned it would be "the bomb that destroys CPRIT."

Gilman was followed by Chief Commercialization Officer Jerry Cobbs, whose resignation in November came after an internal audit showed Cobbs included an $11 million proposal in a funding slate without a required outside review of the project's merits. The lucrative grant was given to Dallas-based Peloton Therapeutics, a biomedical startup.

Gimson chalked up Peloton's award to an honest mistake and has said that, to his knowledge, no one associated with CPRIT stood to benefit financially from the company receiving the taxpayer funds. That hasn't satisfied some members of the agency's governing board, who called last week for more assurances that no one personally profited.

Cox said he has been following the agency's problems and his office received a number of concerned phone calls. His department in Austin is charged with prosecuting crimes related to government officials; his most famous cases include winning a conviction against former U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay in 2010 on money laundering charges.

"We have to gather the facts and figure what, if any, crime occurred so that (the investigation) can be focused more," Cox said.

Gimson's resignation letter was dated the same day the Texas attorney general's office also announced its investigation of the agency. Cox said his department would work cooperatively with state investigators, but he made clear the probes would be separate.

Peloton's award marks the second time this year that a lucrative taxpayer-funded grant authorized by CPRIT instigated backlash and raised questions about oversight. The first involved the $20 million grant to M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston that Gilman described as a thin proposal that should have first been scrutinized by an outside panel of scientific peer-reviewers, even though none was required under the agency's rules.

Dozens of the nation's top scientists agreed. They resigned en masse from the agency's peer-review panels along with Gilman. Some accused the agency of "hucksterism" and charting a politically-driven path that was putting commercial product-development above science.

The latest shake-up at CPRIT caught Gilman's successor off-guard. Dr. Margaret Kripke, who was introduced to reporters Tuesday, acknowledged that she wasn't even sure who she would be answering to now that Gimson was stepping down. She said that although she wasn't with the agency when her predecessor announced his resignation, she was aware of the concerns and allegations.

"I don't think people would resign frivolously, so there must be some substance to those concerns," Kripke said.

Kripke also acknowledged the challenge of restocking the peer-review panels after the agency's credibility was so publicly smeared by some of the country's top scientists. She said she took the job because she felt the agency's mission and potential was too important to lose.

Only the National Institutes of Health doles out more cancer research dollars than CPRIT, which has awarded more than $700 million so far.

Gov. Rick Perry told reporters in Houston on Tuesday that he wasn't previously aware of the resignation but said Gimson's decision to step down was his own.

Joining the mounting criticism of CPRIT is the woman credited with brainstorming the idea for the agency in the first place. Cathy Bonner, who served under former Texas Gov. Ann Richards, teamed with cancer survivor Lance Armstrong in selling Texas voters in 2007 on a constitutional amendment to create an unprecedented state-run effort to finance a war on disease.

Now Bonner says politics have sullied an agency that she said was built to fund research, not subsidize private companies.

"There appears to be a cover-up going on," Bonner said.

Peloton has declined comment about its award and has referred questions to CPRIT. The agency has said the company wasn't aware that its application was never scrutinized by an outside panel, as required under agency rules.

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White House, Boehner quietly swap fiscal cliff offers

(AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

President Barack Obama and Republican House Speaker John Boehner spoke Tuesday after privately exchanging a new round of rival proposals for keeping the economy from tumbling off the "fiscal cliff" on January 1, aides to both men told Yahoo News. The fresh discussion signaled a welcome bit of movement in negotiations that had appeared stalled for several days.

"The Speaker and POTUS (the President of the United States) spoke by telephone this evening," a White House official said on condition of anonymity. A Boehner aide said the White House had presented a new offer on tax cuts and revenue increases on Monday and that Republicans had returned with a counter-offer on Tuesday.

The White House refused to offer details about its proposal. But the Boehner aide said the new offer brought Obama's initial demand for $1.6 trillion in new tax revenues down to $1.4 trillion.

The step would still require raising tax rates on wealthier Americans, something Boehner has previously rejected. Obama has said any final deal must raise tax rates on the richest Americans.

Boehner spokesman Michael Steel confirmed that the Speaker's office had returned a counter-offer to the president but would not disclose many specifics.

"We sent the White House a counter-offer that would achieve tax and entitlement reform to solve our looming debt crisis and create more American jobs," Steel said.

Earlier Tuesday, the Speaker himself complained that Obama hadn't been specific enough about the spending cuts he was prepared to embrace as part of a broader deficit-cutting plan.

"Let's be honest, we're broke," Boehner said on the House floor. "We're still waiting for the White House to identify what spending cuts the president is willing to make as part of the 'balanced approach' that he promised the American people."

Also Tuesday, Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid warned it was unlikely that lawmakers and the White House would be able to forge a compromise in time for Christmas, raising the prospect of a high-stakes game of chicken through the end of the year.

"It's going to be extremely difficult to get it done before Christmas -- but it could be done," the Nevada Democrat told reporters. "This is not something we can do easily, at least as far as bill drafting goes. But until we hear something from the Republicans, there's nothing to draft."

Reid's comments reflected the sense of gloom across the Capitol in recent days about prospects for averting automatic across-the-board tax hikes and painful government spending cuts that, together, could plunge the economy in a new recession. Those measures will take effect January 1 unless Congress acts.

Obama had no public appearances Tuesday. His spokesman, Jay Carney, acknowledged the White House was deliberately being "incredibly opaque" about the behind-the scenes negotiations.

"If it weren't for the broader interest here, which is in trying to allow some space for the parties to see if they can achieve a compromise, you know, I'd be spilling my guts from here," Carney said.

At their weekly party lunch meetings on Capitol Hill, senators complained about the secrecy surrounding the talks.

Alabama Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions said Boehner "doesn't have my proxy" in cutting a deal with Obama.

"I've been elected, I've got a responsibility to make an independent determination of these matters," Sessions said.

Why the secrecy? Republican Senator Rob Portman of Ohio told Yahoo News "you need to build a level of trust first by not having it negotiated in the media." "You need an opportunity, particularly with the president and Republican congressional leaders, to talk about some very tough issues," he said.

Still, he said, "they can't expect those of us who going to ultimately decide what happens in the senate to vote on it without having a full understanding and input."

For Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad of North Dakota, a Democrat who is retiring, the problem is less the back-room dealing and more the posturing for the cameras. "It's the same old lines over and over. How about just going into a room and getting a deal?" he said.

For his part, Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell tried to steer the focus back to his party's preferred terrain: Spending cuts. He listed a series of programs he considered wasteful, citing government promotion of a videogame that allows teens "to relive prom night."

"Get this: Taxpayers also just spent $325,000 on a Robotic squirrel named RoboSquirrel," he said. "The president seems to think that if all he talks about are taxes, and that's all reporters write about, somehow the rest of us will magically forget that government spending is completely out of control, and that he himself has been insisting on balance."

The Republican push came as party insiders privately acknowledged that they've placed themselves in a significant PR bind by insisting that tax cuts for middle class earners can only be extended if they are preserved for wealthier Americans as well. Obama wants to tax rates on income above $200,000 for individuals and $250,000 for families, a position Boehner and other Republican leaders have rejected.

"We're terribly weak on this, the tax component," said one congressional Republican.

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Australian DJs apologize for royal hoax call

SYDNEY (AP) — They say they expected a hang-up and a few laughs. Instead, the Australian DJs behind a hoax phone call to the London hospital where the pregnant Duchess of Cambridge was being treated were deeply apologetic Monday as they described how their joke ended up going too far.

The phone call — in which they impersonated Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Charles — went through, and their station broadcast and even trumpeted the confidential information received. Whatever pride there had been over the hoax was obliterated by worldwide public outrage after Friday's death of Jacintha Saldanha, the first nurse they talked to.

"There's not a minute that goes by that we don't think about her family and what they must be going through," 2DayFM radio host Mel Greig told Australia's "A Current Affair," her voice shaking. "And the thought that we may have played a part in that is gut-wrenching."

Police have not disclosed the cause of Saldanha's death, but many have assumed it was related to the stress from the call. An autopsy is being held Tuesday.

Prime Minister David Cameron said at a luncheon Monday that "the suicide of this nurse, who worked incredibly hard and obviously was incredibly dedicated ... is an absolute tragedy."

His office later said Cameron's comment was not an official acknowledgment that the death was a suicide.

Greig and co-host Michael Christian spoke publicly about the prank for the first time in the televised interview. Another interview on rival show "Today Tonight" also aired Monday.

The hoax has sparked broad outrage, with the hosts receiving death threats and demands they be fired.

The radio station's owner said Greig and Christian were receiving psychological counseling to deal with the tragedy. A British lawmaker said he wished that much was being done for Saldanha's grieving family.

"They are devastated by what has happened," said Labour legislator Keith Vaz, who has visited Saldanha's husband and two children at their home in Bristol, southwest England.

"They want the facts to be established so that they can effectively grieve," Vaz said. "What is needed, clearly, is an inquiry by the hospital into how this tragic case happened."

Both DJs apologized for the hoax and cried when asked about the moment they learned that the Saldanha was dead. But neither described having reservations before the hoax tape was broadcast; they said higher-ups at the station had made the decision to air it.

"We didn't have that discussion," Greig said.

Southern Cross Austereo, the parent company of 2DayFM, released a statement Monday saying that Greig and Christian's show had been terminated and there would be a company-wide suspension of prank calls. The DJs themselves remain suspended.

Saldanha, 46, had transferred their call last week to a fellow nurse caring for the duchess, who was being treated for acute morning sickness at King Edward VII Hospital in London. That nurse said the former Kate Middleton "hasn't had any retching with me and she's been sleeping on and off."

Three days later, Saldanha was found dead at the hospital's nurses' accommodation.

The DJs said when the idea for the call came up in a team meeting, no one expected that they would actually be put through to the duchess' ward.

"We just assumed we'd get cut off at every single point and that'd be it," Christian said.

"The joke 100 percent was on us," he said. "The idea was never, 'Let's call up and get through to Kate,' or 'Let's speak to a nurse.' The joke was our accents are horrible, they don't sound anything like who they're intended to be."

Southern Cross Austereo CEO Rhys Holleran has called Saldanha's death a tragedy but defended the prank as a standard part of radio culture. He has also insisted the station had not broken any laws. He told Fairfax Radio on Monday that his station had tried at least five times to contact the London hospital to discuss the prank before it aired, but never succeeded.

When asked why the company made the attempts, Holleran replied "because we did want to speak with them about it." When pressed as to whether this meant the station had reservations about the pre-recorded prank, Holleran said only, "I think that that's a process that we follow and we have checks and balances on all those things."

The King Edward VII Hospital denied that its management had been contacted by the radio station.

"Following the hoax call, the radio station did not speak to anyone in the hospital's senior management or anyone at the company that handles our media inquiries," the hospital said in a statement.

It also announced a memorial fund to help support the nurse's family, with the hospital making the first donation.

Saldanha's children and husband, Ben Barboza, on Monday visited the hospital, which said it was offering assistance to the family.

Barboza expressed his sadness on his Facebook page with a short note "Obituary Jacintha."

"I am devastated with the tragic loss of my beloved wife Jacintha in tragic circumstances," he wrote. He said she will be laid to rest in Shirva, India.

Meanwhile, there were indications that the Duchess of Cambridge still struggled with acute morning sickness over the weekend when her husband, Prince William, cancelled a Sunday night engagement.

Palace officials said no final decision had been made on whether Kate would attend Wednesday's British premiere of "The Hobbit," where she and William are to be the guests of honor.

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Associated Press writers Jill Lawless, Gregory Katz and Danica Kirka in London contributed to this report.

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'Skyfall' launches back to top spot with $10.8M

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The James Bond blockbuster "Skyfall" has risen back to the No. 1 spot at the weekend box office, taking in $10.8 million.

That brought its domestic total to $261.4 million and its worldwide haul to a franchise record of $918 million.

The top 20 movies at U.S. and Canadian theaters Friday through Sunday, followed by distribution studio, gross, number of theater locations, average receipts per location, total gross and number of weeks in release, as compiled Monday by Hollywood.com are:

1. "Skyfall," Sony, $10,780,201, 3,401 locations, $3,170 average, $261,400,281, five weeks.

2. "Rise of the Guardians," Paramount, $10,400,618, 3,639 locations, $2,858 average, $61,774,192, three weeks.

3. "The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn — Part 2," Summit, $9,156,265, 3,646 locations, $2,511 average, $268,691,029, four weeks.

4. "Lincoln," $8,916,813, 2,014 locations, $4,427 average, $97,137,447, five weeks.

5. "Life of Pi," Fox, $8,330,764, 2,946 locations, $2,828 average, $60,948,293, three weeks.

6. "Playing For Keeps," FilmDistrict, $5,750,288, 2,837 locations, $2,027 average, $5,750,288, one week.

7. "Wreck-It Ralph," Disney, $4,859,368, 2,746 locations, $1,770 average, $164,402,934, six weeks.

8. "Red Dawn," FilmDistrict, $4,236,105, 2,754 locations, $1,538 average, $37,240,920, three weeks.

9. "Flight," Paramount, $3,130,305, 2,431 locations, $1,288 average, $86,202,541, six weeks.

10. "Killing Them Softly," Weinstein Co., $2,806,901, 2,424 locations, $1,158 average, $11,830,638, two weeks.

11. "Silver Linings Playbook," Weinstein Co., $2,171,665, 371 locations, $5,854 average, $13,964,405, four weeks.

12. "Anna Karenina," Focus, $1,544,859, 422 locations, $3,661 average, $6,603,042, four weeks.

13. "The Collection," LD Entertainment, $1,487,655, 1,403 locations, $1,060 average, $5,455,328, two weeks.

14. "Argo," Warner Bros., $1,482,346, 944 locations, $1,570 average, $103,160,015, nine weeks.

15. "End of Watch," Open Road Films, $751,623, 1,259 locations, $597 average, $39,989,766, 12 weeks.

16. "Hitchcock," Fox Searchlight, $712,544, 181 locations, $3,937 average, $1,661,670, three weeks.

17. "Talaash," Reliance Big Pictures, $449,195, 161 locations, $2,790 average, $2,397,909, two weeks.

18. "Taken 2," Fox, $387,227, 430 locations, $901 average, $137,700,304, 10 weeks.

19. "Pitch Perfect," Universal, $305,765, 387 locations, $790 average, $63,517,408, 11 weeks.

20. "The Sessions," Fox, $218,973, 197 locations, $1,112 average, $4,948,342, eight weeks.

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Online:

http://www.hollywood.com

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Universal and Focus are owned by NBC Universal, a unit of Comcast Corp.; Sony, Columbia, Sony Screen Gems and Sony Pictures Classics are units of Sony Corp.; Paramount is owned by Viacom Inc.; Disney, Pixar and Marvel are owned by The Walt Disney Co.; Miramax is owned by Filmyard Holdings LLC; 20th Century Fox and Fox Searchlight are owned by News Corp.; Warner Bros. and New Line are units of Time Warner Inc.; MGM is owned by a group of former creditors including Highland Capital, Anchorage Advisors and Carl Icahn; Lionsgate is owned by Lions Gate Entertainment Corp.; IFC is owned by AMC Networks Inc.; Rogue is owned by Relativity Media LLC.

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Surprise: New insurance fee in health overhaul law

WASHINGTON (AP) — Your medical plan is facing an unexpected expense, so you probably are, too. It's a new, $63-per-head fee to cushion the cost of covering people with pre-existing conditions under President Barack Obama's health care overhaul.

The charge, buried in a recent regulation, works out to tens of millions of dollars for the largest companies, employers say. Most of that is likely to be passed on to workers.

Employee benefits lawyer Chantel Sheaks calls it a "sleeper issue" with significant financial consequences, particularly for large employers.

"Especially at a time when we are facing economic uncertainty, (companies will) be hit with a multi-million dollar assessment without getting anything back for it," said Sheaks, a principal at Buck Consultants, a Xerox subsidiary.

Based on figures provided in the regulation, employer and individual health plans covering an estimated 190 million Americans could owe the per-person fee.

The Obama administration says it is a temporary assessment levied for three years starting in 2014, designed to raise $25 billion. It starts at $63 and then declines.

Most of the money will go into a fund administered by the Health and Human Services Department. It will be used to cushion health insurance companies from the initial hard-to-predict costs of covering uninsured people with medical problems. Under the law, insurers will be forbidden from turning away the sick as of Jan. 1, 2014.

The program "is intended to help millions of Americans purchase affordable health insurance, reduce unreimbursed usage of hospital and other medical facilities by the uninsured and thereby lower medical expenses and premiums for all," the Obama administration says in the regulation. An accompanying media fact sheet issued Nov. 30 referred to "contributions" without detailing the total cost and scope of the program.

Of the total pot, $5 billion will go directly to the U.S. Treasury, apparently to offset the cost of shoring up employer-sponsored coverage for early retirees.

The $25 billion fee is part of a bigger package of taxes and fees to finance Obama's expansion of coverage to the uninsured. It all comes to about $700 billion over 10 years, and includes higher Medicare taxes effective this Jan. 1 on individuals making more than $200,000 per year or couples making more than $250,000. People above those threshold amounts also face an additional 3.8 percent tax on their investment income.

But the insurance fee had been overlooked as employers focused on other costs in the law, including fines for medium and large firms that don't provide coverage.

"This kind of came out of the blue and was a surprisingly large amount," said Gretchen Young, senior vice president for health policy at the ERISA Industry Committee, a group that represents large employers on benefits issues.

Word started getting out in the spring, said Young, but hard cost estimates surfaced only recently with the new regulation. It set the per capita rate at $5.25 per month, which works out to $63 a year.

America's Health Insurance Plans, the major industry trade group for health insurers, says the fund is an important program that will help stabilize the market and mitigate cost increases for consumers as the changes in Obama's law take effect.

But employers already offering coverage to their workers don't see why they have to pony up for the stabilization fund, which mainly helps the individual insurance market. The redistribution puts the biggest companies on the hook for tens of millions of dollars.

"It just adds on to everything else that is expected to increase health care costs," said economist Paul Fronstin of the nonprofit Employee Benefit Research Institute.

The fee will be assessed on all "major medical" insurance plans, including those provided by employers and those purchased individually by consumers. Large employers will owe the fee directly. That's because major companies usually pay upfront for most of the health care costs of their employees. It may not be apparent to workers, but the insurance company they deal with is basically an agent administering the plan for their employer.

The fee will total $12 billion in 2014, $8 billion in 2015 and $5 billion in 2016. That means the per-head assessment would be smaller each year, around $40 in 2015 instead of $63.

It will phase out completely in 2017 — unless Congress, with lawmakers searching everywhere for revenue to reduce federal deficits — decides to extend it.

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Obama blasts Michigan right-to-work bills

President Barack Obama at the Daimler Detroit Diesel plant in Redford, Mich., on Monday. (Jason Reed/Reuters)

President Barack Obama traveled to the Daimler Detroit Diesel plant in Redford, Mich., Monday to issue a speech on the economy, pressure Republicans in Congress to raise taxes on the nation's top earners, and highlight Daimler's new $120 million investment in the plant.

But it was the president's criticism of Michigan's right-to work legislation that stole the show for the audience of Daimler union employees.

"What we shouldn't be doing is trying to take away your rights to bargain for better wages," the president told the audience, which immediately roared with cheers, applause and whistles. "These so-called right-to-work laws, they don't have to do with economics, they have everything to do with politics." They're about "giving you the right to work for less money," he added, noting that Michigan's history shows how unions have helped "build a better America."

New state right-to-work legislation, which forbids requiring all employees who benefit from a labor contract to pay union dues, is scheduled to move through the Michigan Legislature for final action this week. Republican Gov. Rick Snyder has pledged to sign the final version.

Activists have mobilized against the legislation, which they view to be an anti-union effort, resulting in a state Capitol lockdown last Thursday.

The president's comments Monday were his first public statements on the situation in Michigan.
His appearance was pegged to Daimler's announcement of its investment in the Detroit Diesel plant, which created 115 good, new "union" jobs, the president said. "That's great for this plant, good for this community, but it's also good for American manufacturing."

The president highlighted the plant as a symbol of how American manufacturing and auto industries are rebounding and growing in the new global economy.

"The competitive balance is tipping a little," the president said.

Obama appealed to the audience, which he characterized as middle-class, on the issue of the "fiscal cliff" by warning that the average middle-class family stands to pay $2,200 more in taxes next year if the automatic spending cuts and tax increases go into effect Jan. 1.

The president said America will head into a "downward spiral" if this happens, and placed the onus once again on Republicans to resolve the crisis by agreeing to raise taxes on households making more than $250,000.

"We've got to get past this whole situation where we've manufactured crises because of politics," Obama said.

Obama met Sunday with House Republican Speaker John Boehner, the GOP's lead voice on "fiscal cliff" negotiations, but no details of that conversation have been offered.

White House spokesman Jay Carney, during Monday's briefing on Air Force One en route to Michigan, also would not reveal any information. "I won't characterize yesterday's meeting or other conversations, but the president does believe we can reach an agreement," Carney said.

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