A Minute With: Jessica Chastain on “Zero Dark Thirty”

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Jessica Chastain carries the weight of starring in one of the year’s most anticipated films, “Zero Dark Thirty,” about the decade-long hunt and eventual killing of Osama bin Laden.

Critics say Chastain pulls it off seamlessly as “Maya,” based on a real-life CIA agent who played a major role in tracking down bin Laden at his hideout in Pakistan.

As the film opens in limited U.S. release on Wednesday, Chastain, who is tipped as a likely best actress Oscar nominee for the role, talked to Reuters about playing a character she could not meet and why the film is an important look at America’s role in a dark war.

Q. What did you think when you saw this film finished?

A. “It is a tough one for me to watch, because there is so much responsibility with playing this woman. I find her to be incredible. And I didn’t want to change her story or make her a Hollywood version, with a lot of makeup. I didn’t want to trivialize what she did … I want her to like it, but I don’t know if she will ever see it.”

Q. How did you play someone you had never met?

A. “There was three months of working with (screenplay writer) Mark Boal, doing research, reading lists and talking to people. And then anything I could not solve through research, like what is her favorite candy – ’cause when we are all overseas we have something we do when we are homesick – I had to answer that question myself.”

Q. Boal hasn’t gone into too much detail about her?

A. “We have to protect her because she is an undercover CIA operative, still working.”

Q. What else did you know about her?

A. “When we finished the movie, when the Navy Seal book ‘No Easy Day’ came out. I raced to go read it, because I was like, ‘I need to know if my character is in the book!’ And they talk about Jen, the young CIA girl. Well, everything matched up. She was the only one that said 100 percent ‘he is there.’… They talked about how she had been on it close to a decade and they were only on it for 40 minutes. They said she was crying on the airplane afterwards.”

Q. During filming, were you ever worried about your safety, that the film might be misconstrued?

A. “As an actor you always worry about that. Because you think, maybe someone will see a film and they won’t understand the difference between acting and reality. The good thing is, what (director Kathryn Bigelow) and Mark have done, is that they have not made a propaganda film. They tried to make it as authentic as possible and respectful of the actual historical event as they could. That includes showing the intense interrogation techniques that were used. The end of the film – it’s not a lot of fist pumping and saying, ‘Here is our journey over 10 years and it was so difficult and we finally did it.’ It ends actually on a very different note.”

Q. Can you elaborate on that?

A. “Well, for me the whole thing is about the arc of this woman. She shows up in the beginning and she is wearing her best suit. She thinks she knows what she is in for, and she is completely out of her element. But over the 10 years, this woman, who has been trained to be unemotional and analytically precise … we see her struggling to keep it contained for 10 years and as she descends down the rabbit hole of the world she is in.

“So finally at the end when she is asked, ‘Where do you want to go?’ there is no way to answer that question. … She has no idea where she belongs, now that this is done. But not only does it speak in terms of that, but the movie ends with that question – where do you want to go? Where do we go now as a country? Where do we go as a society? It is not a movie that ends with an answer, and I find that powerful.”

Q. How did you cope with filming the torture scenes?

A. “We filmed in a real Jordanian prison, in the middle of nowhere. The environment wasn’t great, especially as a woman.

“They had a lot of trust between the actors, nothing was dangerous or unsafe. There was a lot of discussion to make sure that we weren’t doing something that was going to be salacious. They just wanted it to be accurate.

“I know I am playing a character who has trained to be unemotional. But I have spent my entire life allowing myself to be emotional, and allowing myself to feel everything. … There was actually one day that we were doing a scene, and I said, ‘I am sorry’ and I just had to walk away, and I just started crying … it was a very intense experience.”

Q. You are a top chance for Oscar nomination. Would that be more or less rewarding for this role?

A. “Because she is still an active member of the CIA and undercover, she can’t take credit for what she’s done. … And by making this film, it is my idea as a way of thanking her. It would be very emotional because of that.”

Q. You compare your character to getting lost down a CIA rabbit hole. What about your own dizzying rise as an actress?

A. “That’s a good question. I do think that next year I need to go somewhere for a month and be in a room by myself and be like, ‘Ok, what now Jessica?’ But I am nowhere near where she was at the end of this mission.”

(Reporting By Christine Kearney, editing by Jill Serjeant and Doina Chiacu)

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Global Update: African Children Still at Risk of Pneumonia Despite Ceramic Stoves

Small ceramic indoor stoves, such as those sold by women in AIDS self-help groups in Africa, do save fuel and cut down on eye-irritating smoke, a new study has found — but they do not save children from pneumonia.

The study, published in The American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, compared 168 households in rural Kenya that used either “upesi jiko” stoves or traditional three-stone indoor fires. The former — the name means “quick stove” in Swahili — has a locally made ceramic firebox that sells for $3. Clay and mud must be built up around it to insulate it and support the pot.

Since it uses less wood, it saves local forests. But it has no chimney, so the smoke stays indoors.

Biweekly visits by researchers found that children in both the stove and open-fire homes got pneumonia equally often. Pneumonia is a leading cause of death for infants in poor countries, and a 2008 study showed that the fine particles and toxic gases in cooking smoke inflame their lungs, doubling the pneumonia risk.

Two years ago, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton committed $50 million in American aid to help the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves get 100 million efficient stoves into households by 2020. But experts are still divided over which stove to pursue; chimneys do not solve all the problems, and stoves with fans burn more cleanly but are expensive and fragile.

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U.S. to sell GM stake in 15 months

The Treasury plans to sell its remaining stake in General Motors over the next 15 months, allowing the automaker to shed the stigma of being partly owned by the U.S. government.

GM said Wednesday it will spend $5.5 billion to buy back 200 million shares of its stock from the Treasury by the end of this year. The government, in turn, plans to sell its remaining stake of 300 million shares on the open market over the next 12 to 15 months.

GM will pay $27.50 for each share, about an 8 percent premium over Tuesday's closing price of $25.49. The shares shot up more than 8 percent in premarket trading to $27.57.

The deal almost certainly means that the government will lose billions on a $49.5 billion bailout that saved GM from being auctioned off in pieces during the financial crisis in 2008 and 2009. GM's buyback will cut the Treasury's stake to 19 percent from 26.5 percent. For it to break even, Treasury would have to sell the remaining 300 million shares for average of about $70.

For GM, getting the government out of its business removes a major business obstacle. GM Chief Financial Officer Dan Ammann told reporters that GM has market research showing that government ownership has held down sales of the company's cars and trucks.

"This is fundamentally good for the business," he said at a hastily called news conference Wednesday morning.

The government got its stake as part of the bailout of GM that began nearly four years ago.

The Treasury Department said in a statement that it would sell the remaining 19 percent stake "in an orderly fashion" within the next 12 to 15 months, subject to market conditions.

Treasury said it will have recovered more than $28.7 billion of its investment through repayments of loans, sales of stock, dividends, interest and other income after GM buys back the 200 million shares. But that leaves Treasury about $21 billion short of recouping its investment.

In 2008 and 2009, the U.S. Treasury bailed out GM to help stabilize and restructure the company at the trough of the financial crisis. The bailouts of GM and Chrysler were part of the $700 billion Trouble Asset Relief Program created by Congress during the financial crisis in the fall of 2008.

"The auto industry rescue helped save more than a million jobs during a severe economic crisis," said Timothy Massad, Treasury's assistant secretary for financial stability. "The government should not be in the business of owning stakes in private companies for an indefinite period of time."

Massad said that exiting the GM investment "is consistent with our dual goals of winding down TARP as soon as practicable and protecting taxpayer interests."

Although GM is paying a premium for the government shares, Ammann said it's still a good deal for GM shareholders. The number of shares on the market will reduced about 11 percent, which should increase the value of the remaining shares.

The move was approved by the GM board on Tuesday evening after the company got opinions from its management and financial advisers, GM said.

Government-ordered pay restrictions will remain in effect. But a ban on corporate jet ownership and requirements on manufacturing a certain percentage of GM cars and trucks in the U.S. will be lifted. GM says it already has exceeded the manufacturing requirements and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

The company said it has no immediate plans to buy or lease corporate jets.

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SWAT teams enter home in search for prison escapees

Chicago Tribune reporter Rosemary Regina Sobol has the latest details of two convicted bank robbers who escaped from the Metropolitan Correctional Center in downtown Chicago early this morning. (Posted on: Dec. 18, 2012.)

SWAT teams forced their way into a home in Tinley Park as authorities searched for two convicted bank robbers who escaped this morning from the federal Metropolitan Correctional Center in the Loop this morning.

No one was found in the home in the 6600 block of 175th Street, where a relative of one of the escapees, Mark Conley, is believed to live. But FBI officials said they believe Conley and the other inmate, Joseph "Jose" Banks, were there hours earlier.

FBI agents, joined by Tinley Park and Cook County sheriff's deputies, had gathered in a church parking next to the home as officers closed off local streets around 11 a.m. SWAT teams arrived soon afterward and officers, armed with assault rifles, entered the two-story wood frame home

Canine units could be seen going in and out of the home as a crowd of plainclothes officers stood outside during the search. The home is a block off Oak Park Avenue, a main street in Tinley's historic downtown.

Conley and Banks, known as the Second-Hand Bandit who was convicted just last week, were discovered missing from their cell at the federal jail at 71 W. Van Buren St. around  8:45 a.m., according to Central District Police Sgt. Michael Lazzaro. The inmates were last checked at 5 a.m., he said.

A rope could be seen dangling from about 15 stories up along the south side of the MCC, but police would not say whether it was involved in the escape. The rope appeared to be pieces tied together.

The two were reportedly last seen in the Tinley Park area, according to the FBI. It said they should be considered armed and dangerous.

Police cars also raced to the Greyhound station and checked passengers against photos of the inmates, officials said. No arrests were reported there.

Banks was described as black, 37, 5 feet 8 inches tall and weighing 160 pounds. Conley is 38, 6 feet and 185 pounds.

Banks, known as the Second-Hand Bandit, was convicted last week of two bank robberies and two attempted holdups. He made off with a nearly $600,000 in the heists, and authorities say $500,000 is still unaccounted for.

Banks was an aspiring clothing designer who claimed to be a "sovereign citizen" who could not be tried in a federal court. He acted as his own attorney and had to be restrained during his trial.

During closing arguments, Banks repeatedly interrupted Assistant U.S. Attorney Renato Mariotti, commenting on the evidence and suggesting photo lineups were rigged. Mariotti raised his voice over the interruptions to remind the jury of the evidence at trial, including $40,000 found in Banks' safe deposit box as well as a fake beard he wore in the robberies.

Security footage played for jurors showed Banks jumping bank counters and wielding a handgun as he ordered employees to open vaults and ATMs at the banks. In one video, a bank worker was shown hyperventilating on the floor of a cash room, clutching his chest and neck.

The other suspect was identified as Ken Conley, who pleaded guilty last October to robbing nearly $4,000 from a Homewood bank last year. He had lived in Tinley Park.

Conley robbed the MB Financial Bank branch at 2345 W. 184rd St. in Homewood on May 13, 2011. A floor host at a Chicago Heights strip club, he went back to work hours later to repay $500 he owed another club employee, authorities said. He was flashing a large amount of cash and was wearing the same black suit and white tie the bank robber wore, according to the criminal complaint.

Conley was caught by Chicago Heights police when he pointed a gun at someone while driving a gold Land Rover. Officers noticed he resembled the surveillance photos of the man who robbed the Homewood bank. Although the bank teller identified him and he was interviewed by authorities, he fled to California and was arrested there in September 2011.

A woman who answered at the home of a relative of Conley said it was "very upsetting for everyone" and declined further comment.

The last escape at the MCC was in 1985 when two convicted murderers enlarged a sixth-floor window and climbed down a 75-foot electrical cord attached to a floor buffer.

Bernard Welch and Hugh Colomb used a bar from exercise weights to knock out concrete and used hacksaw blades to cut metal away, enlarging a 3-inch window slit. The blade had been smuggled into the jail, authorities said.

Welch was serving a 143-year sentence for the 1980 murder of Dr. Michael Halberstam, a Washington, D.C. cardiologist and brother of Pulitzer Prize-winning author David Halberstam.

Colomb was convicted of killing an inmate and assaulting a guard in the federal penitentiary in Marion.

Both men were apprehended months later.

rsobol@tribune.com

Twitter: @RosemarySobol1

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Merry Christmas, America-Haters?

When TNT was preparing its annual special “Christmas in Washington” with the president of the United States, you’d think the last star musician they would consider to join the official caroling would be Psy, the South Korean rapper. What on Earth is Christmasy about this man’s invisible-horse-riding dance to his dorky disco-rap hit “Gangnam Style”? It’s not exactly the natural flip-side to “O Holy Night.” But TNT couldn’t resist this year’s YouTube sensation.

This inane publicity stunt backfired when the website Mediaite reported on Dec. 7 that Psy (real name: Park Jae-sang) had participated in a 2002 protest in which he crushed a model of an American tank with a microphone stand. But that’s nothing compared to the footage of a 2004 performance after a Korean missionary was slaughtered by Islamists in Iraq. These lyrics cannot be misunderstood.

“Kill those f—-ing Yankees who have been torturing Iraqi captives … Kill those f—-ing Yankees who ordered them to torture … Kill their daughters, mothers, daughters-in-law and fathers … Kill them all slowly and painfully.”

This isn’t just anti-American. It’s anti-human.

Guess where this story first surfaced in the American media? CNN, from the same corporate family tree as TNT. It was posted back on Oct. 6 on CNN’s iReport, an open-source online news feature that allows users to submit stories for CNN consideration.

The Korean one-hit wonder put out the usual abject careerist apology, but he weirdly said, “I’m deeply sorry for how these lyrics could be interpreted.” Those darn lyrics and those darn people who misinterpret lyrics about killing Yankees’ mothers. It is like Barack Obama expressing regret for the awful things said about Susan Rice, ignoring the awful things said by Susan Rice.

Psy is now a millionaire. As Jim Treacher wrote at the Daily Caller: “So far he’s made over $ 8 million from the song, about $ 3 million of it from the people he once wanted to kill.” Brad Schaeffer at Big Hollywood noted his own father fought for South Korea’s independence in the Korean War: “Had it not been for ‘f——-g Yankees’ like my Dad, this now-wealthy South Korean wouldn’t be ‘Oppan Gangnam Style’ so much as ‘Starving Pyongyang Style.’” (Gangnam is a posh district in the South Korean capital of Seoul.)

Despite the controversy, neither the Obama White House nor the TNT brass felt it was necessary to send Psy packing before the Dec. 9 taping. On Saturday, ABC reporter Muhammad Lila merely repeated, “the White House says the concert will go on and that President Obama will attend, saying that they have no control over who performs at that concert.”

What moral cowardice. On Monday morning, another pliant publicist, NBC correspondent Peter Alexander, calmly relayed that the White House did take control on the Psy front — on its own “We The People” website, where the people may post petitions to the president for their fellow citizens to sign. A petition asking Obama to dump Psy from the Christmas concert was itself dumped. Alexander explained: “But that petition was removed because the rules say the petitions only apply to federal actions. And, of course, the President had no say over who the private charity chose to invite.”

This is double baloney. The White House hasn’t removed silly “federal action” petitions like the one asking to “Nationalize the Twinkie Industry,” or one to “Secure resources and funding, and begin construction of a Death Star by 2016.” They removed one that they didn’t want people to sign.

As for Obama having “no say over” who appeared on the TNT show, the president could easily declare he wasn’t going to share a stage with this America-hater. Or he could have obviously placed one phone call to Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes (an Obama donor), and expressed the dismay of the President of the United States.

Instead, the Obamas came and honored Psy. Yes, the president honored a man who despised America enough to want its citizens slaughtered.

John Eggerton of Broadcasting and Cable magazine observed, “At the end of the taping, when the First Family customarily shakes hands and talks briefly with the performers, the First Lady gave Psy a hug, followed by a handshake from the President, who engaged Psy in a short, animated discussion — at one point Psy appeared to rock back with laughter — and patted the singer on the shoulder.”

I never thought I’d ever view a Christmas special featuring a hideous hater of America celebrated by the President of the United States.

L. Brent Bozell III is the president of the Media Research Center. To find out more about Brent Bozell III, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2012 CREATORS.COM

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HBO making “Game of Thrones”-themed beer

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Winter is coming – and so is a new line of beers based on HBO‘s fantasy drama “Game of Thrones.” Presumably, all will boast a full, robust head, perhaps resting on top of a spike.

HBO is teaming with Cooperstown, N.Y. brewery Ommegang for a line of brews centered around the series, the New York Times reports. The first beer, Iron Throne Blonde Ale, is slated to go on sale in March, in time for the March 31 premiere of the show’s third season.

It sounds like the perfect libation for watching the premiere from the comfort of your $ 30,000 Iron Throne replica.

A second “GoT”-themed beer will go on sale in fall 2013, with two more varieties expected to go on sale in conjunction with new seasons of the series.

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Mind: A Misguided Focus on Mental Illness in Gun Control Debate

The gunman, Adam Lanza, 20, has been described as a loner who was intelligent and socially awkward. And while no official diagnosis has been made public, armchair diagnosticians have been quick to assert that keeping guns from getting into the hands of people with mental illness would help solve the problem of gun homicides.

Arguing against stricter gun-control measures, Representative Mike Rogers, Republican of Michigan and a former F.B.I. agent, said, “What the more realistic discussion is, ‘How do we target people with mental illness who use firearms?’ ”

Robert A. Levy, chairman of the Cato Institute, told The New York Times: “To reduce the risk of multivictim violence, we would be better advised to focus on early detection and treatment of mental illness.”

But there is overwhelming epidemiological evidence that the vast majority of people with psychiatric disorders do not commit violent acts. Only about 4 percent of violence in the United States can be attributed to people with mental illness.

This does not mean that mental illness is not a risk factor for violence. It is, but the risk is actually small. Only certain serious psychiatric illnesses are linked to an increased risk of violence.

One of the largest studies, the National Institute of Mental Health’s Epidemiologic Catchment Area study, which followed nearly 18,000 subjects, found that the lifetime prevalence of violence among people with serious mental illness — like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder — was 16 percent, compared with 7 percent among people without any mental disorder. Anxiety disorders, in contrast, do not seem to increase the risk at all.

Alcohol and drug abuse are far more likely to result in violent behavior than mental illness by itself. In the National Institute of Mental Health’s E.C.A. study, for example, people with no mental disorder who abused alcohol or drugs were nearly seven times as likely as those without substance abuse to commit violent acts.

It’s possible that preventing people with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and other serious mental illnesses from getting guns might decrease the risk of mass killings. Even the Supreme Court, which in 2008 strongly affirmed a broad right to bear arms, at the same time endorsed prohibitions on gun ownership “by felons and the mentally ill.”

But mass killings are very rare events, and because people with mental illness contribute so little to overall violence, these measures would have little impact on everyday firearm-related killings. Consider that between 2001 and 2010, there were nearly 120,000 gun-related homicides, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. Few were perpetrated by people with mental illness.

Perhaps more significant, we are not very good at predicting who is likely to be dangerous in the future. According to Dr. Michael Stone, professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia and an expert on mass murderers, “Most of these killers are young men who are not floridly psychotic. They tend to be paranoid loners who hold a grudge and are full of rage.”

Even though we know from large-scale epidemiologic studies like the E.C.A. study that a young psychotic male who is intoxicated with alcohol and has a history of involuntary commitment is at a high risk of violence, most individuals who fit this profile are harmless.

Jeffery Swanson, a professor of psychiatry at Duke University and a leading expert in the epidemiology of violence, said in an e-mail, “Can we reliably predict violence?  ‘No’ is the short answer. Psychiatrists, using clinical judgment, are not much better than chance at predicting which individual patients will do something violent and which will not.”

It would be even harder to predict a mass shooting, Dr. Swanson said, “You can profile the perpetrators after the fact and you’ll get a description of troubled young men, which also matches the description of thousands of other troubled young men who would never do something like this.”

Even if clinicians could predict violence perfectly, keeping guns from people with mental illness is easier said than done. Nearly five years after Congress enacted the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, only about half of the states have submitted more than a tiny proportion of their mental health records.

How effective are laws that prohibit people with mental illness from obtaining guns? According to Dr. Swanson’s recent research, these measures may prevent some violent crime. But, he added, “there are a lot of people who are undeterred by these laws.”

Adam Lanza was prohibited from purchasing a gun, because he was too young. Yet he managed to get his hands on guns — his mother’s — anyway. If we really want to stop young men like him from becoming mass murderers, and prevent the small amount of violence attributable to mental illness, we should invest our resources in better screening for, and treatment of, psychiatric illness in young people.

All the focus on the small number of people with mental illness who are violent serves to make us feel safer by displacing and limiting the threat of violence to a small, well-defined group. But the sad and frightening truth is that the vast majority of homicides are carried out by outwardly normal people in the grip of all too ordinary human aggression to whom we provide nearly unfettered access to deadly force.

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McDonald's urging franchisees to open on Christmas

McDonald's Corp. is urging U.S. restaurant owners to take the unusual step of opening on Christmas Day to deliver the world's biggest hamburger chain with the gift of higher December sales, AdvertisingAge reported Monday.

The request -- which comes as McDonald's tangles with resurgent rivals such as Wendy's, Burger King and Yum Brands' Taco Bell chain -- would be a break from company tradition of closing on major holidays.

"Starting with Thanksgiving, ensure your restaurants are open throughout the holidays," Jim Johannesen, chief operations officer for McDonald's USA, wrote in a Nov. 8 memo to franchisees -- one of two obtained by AdvertisingAge.

"Our largest holiday opportunity as a system is Christmas Day. Last year, (company-operated) restaurants that opened on Christmas averaged $5,500 in sales," Johannesen said.

"The decision to open our restaurants on Christmas is in the hands of our owner/operators," McDonald's spokeswoman Heather Oldani told Reuters.

Don Thompson took over as chief executive at McDonald's in July and has the difficult task of growing sales from last year's strong results in a significantly more competitive environment.

McDonald's monthly global sales at established restaurants fell for the first time in nine years in October, but unexpectedly rebounded in November.

The November surprise was partly due to a 2.5 percent rise in sales at U.S. restaurants open at least 13 months.

"Our November results were driven, in part, by our Thanksgiving Day performance," Johannesen wrote in a Dec. 12 memo to franchisees.

Oldani said 1,200 more McDonald's restaurants were open on Thanksgiving this year versus last year -- not 6,000 more as AdvertisingAge reported.

Still, the company has a high hurdle when it comes to posting an increase in restaurant sales this month because its U.S. same-restaurant sales jumped 9.8 percent in December 2011.

"It's an act of desperation. The franchisees are not happy," said Richard Adams, a former McDonald's franchisee who now advises the chain's owner/operators.

The push to open on the holidays goes against McDonald's cultural history, said Adams. In his first published operations manual, McDonald's Corp. founder Ray Kroc said the company would close on Thanksgiving and Christmas to give employees time with their families, Adams said.

"We opened for breakfast on Thanksgiving the last couple years I was a franchisee. It was easy to get kids to work on Thanksgiving because they want to get away from their family, but not on Christmas," Adams said.

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Emanuel: Time for 'an assault weapons ban'

Mayor Rahm Emanuel today called for an assault weapons ban at the state and national levels and said it was time for a "vote of conscience" in Congress following the deadly assault on schoolchildren in Connecticut.

Speaking at a Chicago Police Department graduation and promotion ceremony this morning, the mayor did not address the political difficulty of the task. Congress allowed an assault-weapon ban to expire in 2004 and state efforts at gun control legislation have regularly failed in Springfield.

But he noted he worked in the Clinton White House when Bill Clinton signed an assault weapons ban.

"As somebody who stood by President Clinton's side to make sure we had a ban on assault weapons, I do not want to see more weapons on the street, more guns on the street. They make your job all that more difficult," Emanuel said.

"It's time that we as a city have an assault weapons ban, it's time that we as a state have an assault weapons ban, it's time that we as a country have an assault weapons ban," Emanuel said. "And I would hope the leadership in Congress now will have a vote of conscience. It is time to have that vote."

On Sunday, home-state President Barack Obama signaled he was open to a gun-control debate in his remarks to grieving parents and residents in Newtown, Conn., where 20 children and eight adults were killed in Friday’s attack by a man who police said was armed with a rifle and two handguns. U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois also called for a discussion on gun control.

The tragedy is expected to influence the coming gun-control debate at the state Capitol. Last week, a federal appeals court gave the state until June to come up with a new measure permitting the public possession of guns, as it threw out a half-century-old law that banned the practice.

Any issue involving guns in Illinois has been problematic -- one of the few topics symbolizing the state's urban-rural geographic divide. Top city politicians have pressed for strict gun control measures, facing push-back from the rural culture that holds people should have greater access to weapons.

The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling already had come against a backdrop of heightened anxiety about gun violence in Chicago, ranging from concerns about crime on tony Michigan Avenue to the city surpassing last year's total of 435 homicides by the end of October.

Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan is mulling whether to appeal the decision and try to preserve Illinois' status as the last state in the nation to have a comprehensive prohibition on possessing a loaded firearm outside the home.

hdardick@tribune.com

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RIM begins BlackBerry 10 tests with business, government clients

TORONTO (Reuters) – Research In Motion Ltd said on Monday that it had begun a “beta testing” program that allows 120 companies and government departments to try out its new BlackBerry 10 smartphones before their global launch on January 30.

The Canadian company, which is trying to reverse a sharp decline in market share for the BlackBerry, said the program would enable so-called enterprise customers in business and government to size up the BB10.

Features of the BB10 include the ability to separate personal and business information so that the user can store both without compromising security.

RIM has struggled in recent years to hold on to its base of enterprise customers, which typically pay a higher subscription fee than consumers, as their employees push to use devices such as Apple Inc’s iPhone for business as well as personal communications.

“This is a crucial step for us in getting our large enterprise customers ready to support BlackBerry 10 at the point of launch date, as opposed to post-launch date,” Bryan Lee, senior director for enterprise accounts, said in a phone interview.

RIM is providing the software and handsets at no charge, and the companies do not have to buy anything once the trial is finished.

The company plans to release its quarterly results on Thursday, and analysts expect it to report its third straight loss as it struggles to sell its older devices.

RIM made its name selling mobile email devices to bankers, lawyers and other professionals before expanding to sell phones to consumers.

The company said the BB10 testers were from financial, insurance, healthcare, manufacturing, media, and distribution industries and include 64 Fortune 500 companies, as well as government departments.

Lee would not identify any of the entities, beyond Integris Health and the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, which have both said they are testing the new devices.

The customers have installed test versions of RIM’s new server software, which manages iPhones and devices using Google Inc’s Android software as well as BlackBerrys, and will each receive two preproduction BlackBerry 10 handsets later this week.

RIM shares were down 2.1 percent at C$ 13.59 in morning Toronto Stock Exchange trading.

The stock has rallied from September’s multiyear lows around C$ 6.50 on a wave of optimism over the new devices, but the share price is still far below mid-2008 highs of around C$ 150.

(Reporting by Alastair Sharp; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn)

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