Slim majority supports L.A. sales tax increase

A Los Angeles sales tax hike being promoted as vital to preserving public safety and helping end years of budget deficits is drawing support from a narrow majority of likely voters, according to a new USC Price/L.A. Times poll.

Fifty-three percent of surveyed voters said they definitely or probably would vote for Proposition A, which is on Tuesday's ballot and would raise $200 million a year by boosting the city's sales tax rate by half a cent to 9.5%, one of the highest in the state.

About 41% of respondents said they expected to vote against the measure, while 6% were undecided. The results offer hope to Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and other backers of Proposition A, which needs 50% plus one of the vote to pass.

GRAPHIC: Contributions to Yes on Prop. A

Because of the poll's 4.4-percentage-point margin of error, support could dip below 50% and passage can't be taken for granted, said Dan Schnur, director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at USC. "On one hand, [Proposition A] enjoys a fairly sizable lead in the polls," he said. "On the other hand, margins this close to 50% should always be cause for concern for an initiative's proponents."

The bipartisan USC Sol Price School of Public Policy/L.A. Times Los Angeles City Primary Poll canvassed 500 likely voters between Feb. 24 and 27. The poll was conducted jointly by the Benenson Strategy Group, a Democratic firm, and M4 Strategies, a Republican company.

Backers of Proposition A — using contributions from labor unions, billboard companies and real estate interests needing City Hall approvals — have been airing TV ads featuring images of accident victims being rushed to hospitals and a grim-faced Police Chief Charlie Beck warning that "public safety is now in danger."

Beck also has been warning at news conferences and in interviews that the Los Angeles Police Department will lose 500 officers if voters reject the tax increase.

Opponents, who lack the money to mount an advertising campaign, say voters are being asked to pay for bad City Hall spending decisions, including a deal that gives civilian city employees a 25% pay hike over seven years.

Some warn that city leaders will only give away the added sales tax collections by pursuing a proposed phase-out of the business receipts tax. The top five candidates for mayor have come out against Proposition A, and the poll results suggest that was politically wise. Close to half of respondents said they would be less likely to vote for a mayoral candidate who supports the sales tax increase.

The poll indicates that the Proposition A language that city officials put on voters' ballots could end up pushing it to victory, said Chris St. Hilaire, chief executive of M4 Strategies, which helped conduct the poll.

The ballot title calls it the "neighborhood public safety and vital city services funding and accountability measure" and says it would help maintain 911 emergency and other services.

Retired nurse Annette Koppel, 80, voted by mail for the sales tax increase, but only reluctantly. Although she is living on a fixed income, Koppel — a victim of a carjacking in the late 1980s — said she worries about a decrease in the number of police, firefighters and paramedics.

"Without them, what are we going to do?" she asked.

Some, including a former top budget advisor to Villaraigosa who is now running for City Council, have questioned whether the budget crisis is as severe as city officials say.

James Cotton, 84, of Winnetka told The Times that he voted against the sales tax increase even though his daughter is an employee in the Fire Department. Cotton said lawmakers should look for other ways of balancing the budget and making better choices about how to spend taxpayer funds.

"I'm of the opinion that a lot of the money could be better spent," said Cotton, adding that the measure would hurt businesses and residents on fixed incomes.

The push for a sales tax increase is being led by City Council President Herb Wesson, who has helped raise more than $1.2 million for the pro-Proposition A campaign. More than one out of every four dollars has come from labor unions, most of them representing city employees. Service Employees International Union, which represents civilian city employees, has given $100,000. Its members at City Hall received a 3.75% pay increase last summer and are in line for another 1.75% raise in July and a 5.5% pay hike on Jan. 1, 2014.

As of Friday afternoon, real estate interests and billboard companies had provided one-third of the money collected in support of Proposition A, according to Ethics Commission records. Several donors are waiting for the City Council to approve their projects or have already received permission to use tax revenue to finance their projects.

The single biggest donor has been NFL stadium developer Anschutz Entertainment Group, which has received a series of lucrative deals with City Hall over the last decade. The company was given the right to keep up to $270 million in tax revenue generated by its hotels at the LA Live entertainment complex over 25 years.

AEG is also seeking to run the city's Convention Center.

The company, its top executive and its lawyers have given a combined $126,000 to get the measure passed, according to campaign reports.

david.zahniser@latimes.com

kate.linthicum@latimes.com

Times researcher Maloy Moore contributed to this report.

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Evernote Hack Exposes User Data, Forces Extensive Password Resets

Evernote joins Twitter, Apple, and Facebook on the list of tech companies hacked in recent weeks.

Evernote “has discovered and blocked suspicious activity on the Evernote network that appears to have been a coordinated attempt to access secure areas of the Evernote Service,” according to a statement posted on the company’s website earlier today. “As a precaution to protect your data, we have decided to implement a password reset.”

About 50 million passwords have been changed following the breach.

The hackers accessed usernames, email addresses and encrypted passwords. The company is now requiring its users to update their passwords. To facilitate this, Evernote is releasing app updates.

The company claims they’ve found “no evidence” that user content was changed or lost nor that payment information was accessed.

Some users, however, said they had to resync their off-line content as a result of the hack in the Evernote forum.

In a statement sent to CNET, a company representative claims the company caught the hackers early and that they “believe this activity follows a similar pattern of the many high profile attacks on other Internet-based companies that have taken place over the last several weeks.”

The rep went on to say Evernote is “actively communicating to our users about this attack through our blog, direct e-mails, social media, and support.” The Evernote homepage implies email notifications have been sent to users. This author has not yet received one at time of publishing.

The company thinks “creating strong, new passwords will help ensure that user accounts remain secure.” But that’s questionable. Wired’s Mat Honan has suggested abandoning passwords altogether in favor of alternative methods for keeping data secure after he was hacked earlier this summer.

Reactions to the news have quickly spread through Twitter. One user noted, “I’ve had that disturbing feeling this was inevitable.” Patrick LaForge, an editor at the New York Times quipped, “The least the Evernote hackers could do is organize my folders of random clipping and wine label photos.”

This hack comes a day after Evernote made changes to its privacy policies, user guidelines and terms of service.

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Cellar victim Kampusch raped, starved in film of ordeal

VIENNA (Reuters) – A new film based on the story of Austrian kidnap victim Natascha Kampusch shows her being repeatedly raped by the captor who beat and starved her during the eight-and-a-half years that he kept her in a cellar beneath his house.

Kampusch was snatched on her way to school at the age of 10 by Wolfgang Priklopil and held in a windowless cell under his garage near Vienna until she escaped in 2006, causing a sensation in Austria and abroad. Priklopil committed suicide.

Kampusch had always refused to respond to claims that she had had sex with Priklopil, but in a German television interview on her 25th birthday last week said she had decided to reveal the truth because it had leaked out from police files.

The film, “3,096 Days” – based on Kampusch’s autobiography of the same name – soberly portrays her captivity in a windowless cellar less than 6 square metres (65 square feet) in area, often deprived of food for days at a time.

The emaciated Kampusch – who weighed just 38 kg (84 pounds) at one point in 2004 – keeps a diary written on toilet paper concealed in a box.

One entry reads: “At least 60 blows in the face. Ten to 15 nausea-inducing fist blows to the head. One strike with the fist with full weight to my right ear.”

The movie shows occasional moments that approach tenderness, such as when Priklopil presents her with a cake for her 18th birthday or buys her a dress as a gift – but then immediately goes on to chide her for not knowing how to waltz with him.

GREY AREAS

Antonia Campbell-Hughes, who plays the teenaged Kampusch, said she had tried to portray “the strength of someone’s soul, the ability of people to survive… but also the grey areas within a relationship that people don’t necessarily understand.”

The British actress said she had not met Kampusch during the making of the film or since. “It was a very isolated time, it was a bubble of time, and I wanted to keep that very focused,” she told journalists as she arrived for the Vienna premiere.

Kampusch herself attended the premiere, looking composed as she posed for pictures but declining to give interviews.

In an interview with Germany’s Bild Zeitung last week, she said: “Yes, I did recognize myself, although the reality was even worse. But one can’t really show that in the cinema, since it wasn’t supposed to be a horror film.”

The movie, made at the Constantin Film studios in Bavaria, Germany, also stars Amy Pidgeon as the 10-year-old Kampusch and Danish actor Thure Lindhardt as Priklopil.

“I focused mainly on playing the human being because… we have to remember it was a human being. Monsters do not exist, they’re only in cartoons,” Lindhart said.

“It became clear to me that it’s a story about survival, and it’s a story about surviving eight years of hell. If that story can be told then I can also play the bad guy.”

The director was German-American Sherry Hormann, who made her English-language debut with the 2009 move “Desert Flower”, an adaptation of the autobiography of Somali-born model and anti-female circumcision activist Waris Dirie.

“I’m a mother and I wonder at the strength of this child, and it was important for me to tell this story from a different perspective, to tell how this child using her own strength could survive this atrocious martyrdom,” Hormann said.

The Kampusch case was followed two years later by that of Josef Fritzl, an Austrian who held his daughter captive in a cellar for 24 years and fathered seven children with her.

The crimes prompted soul-searching about the Austrian psyche, and questions as to how the authorities and neighbors could have let such crimes go undetected for so long.

The film goes on general release on Thursday.

(Reporting by Georgina Prodhan, Editing by Paul Casciato)

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England Develops a Voracious Appetite for a New Diet

LONDON — Visitors to England right now, be warned. The big topic on people’s minds — from cabdrivers to corporate executives — is not Kate Middleton’s increasingly visible baby bump (though the craze does involve the size of one’s waistline), but rather a best-selling diet book that has sent the British into a fasting frenzy.

“The Fast Diet,” published in mid-January in Britain, could do the same in the United States if Americans eat it up. The United States edition arrived last week.

The book has held the No. 1 slot on Amazon’s British site nearly every day since its publication in January, according to Rebecca Nicolson, a founder of Short Books, the independent publishing company behind the sensation. “It is selling,” she said, “like hot cakes,” which coincidentally are something one can actually eat on this revolutionary diet.

With an alluring cover line that reads, “Lose Weight, Stay Healthy, Live Longer,” the premise of this latest weight-loss regimen — or “slimming” as the British call “dieting” — is intermittent fasting, or what has become known here as the 5:2 diet: five days of eating and drinking whatever you want, dispersed with two days of fasting.

A typical fasting day consists of two meals of roughly 250 to 300 calories each, depending on the person’s sex (500 calories for women, 600 for men). Think two eggs and a slice of ham for breakfast, and a plate of steamed fish and vegetables for dinner.

It is not much sustenance, but the secret to weight loss, according to the book, is that even after just a few hours of fasting, the body begins to turn off the fat-storing mechanisms and turn on the fat-burning systems.

“I’ve always been into self-experimentation,” said Dr. Michael Mosley, one of the book’s two authors and a well-known medical journalist on the BBC who is often called the Sanjay Gupta of Britain.

He researched the science of the diet and its health benefits by putting himself through intermittent fasting and filming it for a BBC documentary last August called “Eat, Fast and Live Longer.” (The broadcast gained high ratings, three million viewers, despite running during the London Olympics. PBS plans to air it in April.)

“This started because I was not feeling well last year,” Dr. Mosley said recently over a cup of tea and half a cookie (it was not one of his fasting days). “It turns out I was suffering from high blood sugar, high cholesterol and had a kind of visceral fat inside my gut.”

Though hardly obese at the time, at 5 feet 11 inches and 187 pounds, Dr. Mosley, 55, had a body mass index and body fat percentage that were a few points higher than the recommended amount for men. “Given that my father had died at age 73 of complications from diabetes, and I was now looking prediabetic, I knew something had to change,” he added.

The result was a documentary, almost the opposite of “Super Size Me,” in which Dr. Mosley not only fasted, but also interviewed scientific researchers, mostly in the United States, about the positive results of various forms of intermittent fasting, tested primarily on rats but in some cases human volunteers. The prominent benefits, he discovered, were weight loss, a lower risk of cancer and heart disease, and increased energy.

“The body goes into a repair-and-recover mode when it no longer has the work of storing the food being consumed,” he said.

Though Dr. Mosley quickly gave up on the most extreme forms of fasting (he ate little more than one cup of low-calorie soup every 24 hours for four consecutive days in his first trial), he finally settled on the 5:2 ratio as a more sustainable, less painful option that could realistically be followed without annihilating his social life or work.

“Our earliest antecedents,” Dr. Mosley argued, “lived a feast-or-famine existence, gorging themselves after a big hunt and then not eating until they scored the next one.” Similarly, he explained, temporary fasting is a ritual of religions like Islam and Judaism — as demonstrated by Ramadan and Yom Kippur. “We shouldn’t have a fear of hunger if it is just temporary,” he said.

What Dr. Mosley found most astounding, however, were his personal results. Not only did he lose 20 pounds (he currently weighs 168 pounds) in nine weeks, but his glucose and cholesterol levels went down, as did his body fat. “What’s more, I have a whole new level of energy,” he said.

The documentary became an instant hit, which in turn led Mimi Spencer, a food and fashion writer, to propose that they collaborate on a book. “I could see this was not a faddish diet but one that was sustainable with long-term health results, beyond the obvious weight-loss benefit,” said Ms. Spencer, 45, who has lost 20 pounds on the diet within four months and lowered her B.M.I. by 2 points.

The result is a 200-page paperback: the first half written by Dr. Mosley outlining the scientific findings of intermittent fasting; the second by Ms. Spencer, with encouraging text on how to get through the first days of fasting, from keeping busy so you don’t hear your rumbling belly, to waiting 15 minutes for your meal or snack.

She also provides fasting recipes with tantalizing photos like feta niçoise salad and Mexican pizza, and a calorie counter at the back. (Who knew a quarter of a cup of balsamic vinegar dressing added up to a whopping 209 calories?)

In London, the diet has taken off with the help of well-known British celebrity chefs and food writers like Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, who raved about it in The Guardian after his sixth day of fasting, having already lost eight pounds. (“I feel lean and sharper,” he wrote, “and find the whole thing rather exhilarating.”)

The diet is also particularly popular among men, according to Dr. Mosley, who has heard from many of his converts via e-mail and Twitter, where he has around 24,000 followers. “They find it easy to work into their schedules because dieting for a day here and there doesn’t feel torturous,” he said, adding that couples also particularly like doing it together.

But not everyone is singing the diet’s praises. The National Health System, Britain’s publicly funded medical establishment, put out a statement on its Web site shortly after the book came out: “Despite its increasing popularity, there is a great deal of uncertainty about I.F. (intermittent fasting) with significant gaps in the evidence.”

The health agency also listed some side effects, including bad breath, anxiety, dehydration and irritability. Yet people in London do not seem too concerned. A slew of fasting diet books have come out in recent weeks, notably the “The 5:2 Diet Book” and “The Feast and Fast Diet.”

There is also a crop of new cookbooks featuring fasting-friendly recipes. Let’s just say, the British are hungry for them.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: March 2, 2013

An earlier version of this article misstated part of the name of the national healthcare organization in Britain. It is the National Health Service, not the National Health System. The article also misidentified the Balsamic product that has 209 calories per cup. It is Balsamic vinegar dressing, not Balsamic vinegar.

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Sequestration Takes Effect, but Impact Is Not Immediate

WASHINGTON — University officials, city managers, day care providers and others spent Saturday assessing how they would absorb their part of the across-the-board cuts in federal spending that began taking effect over the weekend.

But even as the institutions that depend on federal money nervously took stock, most Americans were largely unaffected by the cuts, at least for now. At Los Angeles International Airport, John Konopka, 45, suffered no delays as he arrived from Atlanta.

“This is just another travel day,” Mr. Konopka said. “I think all of it’s been talked up a bit, way too politically, to make it seem a lot worse than it is. I don’t think it’s going to be the gloom and doom that some people are saying it would be.”

Others were less sanguine. Joel Silver, 63, a retiree from the Bronx, said he feared the cuts would affect the most vulnerable. He said he was angry that President Obama and lawmakers had not prevented what he called “an invented crisis.”

“What’s the point of a Congress?” he asked. “Aren’t they supposed to sit down and talk about things and figure them out? The economy was just recovering and now it’s going to slide back.”

Across the country, the impact of sequestration, as the cuts are known, appeared to be as varied as the thousands of federal programs, big and small, that now have shrunken pots of money from which to draw.

In Baltimore, the mayor called for an emergency cabinet meeting to discuss the reductions in federal money and their impact on a city that already has a projected deficit of $750 million over the next decade.

At research universities, administrators sent e-mails to faculty members and students warning that changes were coming. Samuel L. Stanley Jr., the president of Stony Brook University, said the institution would lose $7.6 million in “vital federal funding” for research grants and other programs. The University of California, Berkeley, warned that “as sequestration translates into fewer federal grants, the campus will be forced to hire fewer researchers.”

The Air Force Thunderbirds, the elite team of F-16 pilots who perform flight maneuvers at air shows around the country, announced on their Web site that all of their shows had been canceled starting April 1.

Federal officials began sending letters to governors, informing them of smaller grants. Shaun Donovan, the secretary of housing and urban development, wrote to Gov. John R. Kasich of Ohio, “You can expect reductions totaling approximately $35 million.”

In a 70-page report to Congress accompanying the sequestration order and detailing the reductions — agency by agency and program by program — Jeffrey D. Zients, Mr. Obama’s budget director, called them “deeply destructive to national security, domestic investments and core government functions.”

Among the $85 billion in cuts for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30: $3 million less for Pacific coastal salmon recovery; $148 million less for the patent office; a $1 million cut in support by the Defense Department for international sporting competitions; $289 million less for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; a $1 million cut in the Interior Department’s helium fund; and $16 million less for the Sept. 11 victim compensation fund.

But even as the reductions became official, the result of a stalemate between Mr. Obama and Congressional Republicans over increasing taxes, some of the immediate impact was difficult to see.

The process of trimming government budgets is slow and cumbersome, involving notifications to unions about temporary furloughs, reductions in overtime pay and cuts in grant financing to state and local programs. Less federal money will, over time, mean fewer government contracts with private companies. Reduced overtime pay for airport security checkpoint officers will make lines longer, eventually.

And so as the first weekend began for the new, slimmer government, little of that was evident yet.

At Kennedy International Airport in New York, travelers who arrived extra early were greeted by short lines, not the drastic delays that federal transportation officials have said could emerge as security officers are furloughed to save money.

“The check-in was fine, at least for now. I’m surprised,” said Chris Achilefu, 45, who arrived at the airport four hours before his flight to Lagos, Nigeria. Normally Mr. Achilefu, an automotive exporter who lives in Upper Darby, Pa., would arrive two hours early, but he said he was concerned about lines.

“I was listening to what the president said yesterday, that it won’t kick in right away,” he said. “Hopefully the two parties will come together, hopefully they will resolve it before another month.”

At the main San Ysidro port of entry between Mexico and San Diego, traffic moved smoothly late Friday night, just hours after the sequestration began, and border lines had only a few dozen vehicles in each lane.

Vendors who line the street where cars sometimes idle for hours waiting to enter the United States perked up when they heard about the cuts.

“That’s good for business,” said Emilio Gomez, an employee at a stand selling rugs, china figurines and soda. “When people are waiting, they get bored and they buy more stuff.”

In his weekly address on Saturday, Mr. Obama acknowledged that not everyone would be affected equally. “While not everyone will feel the pain of these cuts right away, the pain will be real,” he said. “Many middle-class families will have their lives disrupted in a significant way.”

In the Republican response to Mr. Obama’s address, Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington also called the cuts “devastating,” but said that Republicans in the House would not yield on taxes. “Spending is the problem, which means cutting spending is the solution,” she said. “It’s that simple.”

Reporting was contributed by Robbie Brown from Atlanta; Will Carless from San Ysidro, Calif.; Ian Lovett from Los Angeles; and Marc Santora and Ravi Somaiya from New York.

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Bell jurors ordered to begin anew after panelist is dismissed

After nearly five days of deliberations, jurors in the Bell corruption trial were ordered Thursday to begin anew after a member of the panel was dismissed for misconduct and replaced by an alternate.

The original juror, a white-haired woman identified only as Juror No. 3, told Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Kathleen Kennedy she had gone onto a legal website to look up jury instructions and then asked her daughter to help find a definition for the word "coercion."

Although all but one defense attorney requested that the woman stay, Kennedy said the juror needed to be removed. "She has spoken about the deliberations with her daughter, she has conducted research on the Internet, and I've repeatedly, repeatedly throughout this trial — probably hundreds of times — cautioned the jury not to do that," the judge said.

The removal came after jurors notified the judge that they were deadlocked and that continued deliberations seemed fruitless.

It was unclear how to interpret the day's events, whether the dismissed juror had been a lone holdout or an indication of a fractured jury.

The juror started to tell the judge which way she was leaning in the case, saying she had gone online "looking to see at what point can I get the harassment to stop.... How long do I have to stay in there and deliberate with them when I have made my decision that I didn't think there was —"

Kennedy cut her off before she could finish.

The woman clasped her hands over her mouth and said, "I'm sorry."

Two defense attorneys thought she was leaning toward acquittal and wanted her to stay. "I would have preferred the deadlock to a guilty verdict," said Alex Kessel, the attorney for George Mirabal, one of six former council members charged with misappropriation of public funds.

The council members are charged with inflating their salaries in what prosecutors contend was a far-reaching web of corruption in which fat paychecks were placed ahead of the needs of the city's largely immigrant, working-poor constituents.

When attorneys and defendants were summoned to the courtroom Thursday morning, they were initially told that the jury appeared to be deadlocked.

"Your honor, we have reached a point where as a jury we have fundamental disagreements and cannot reach a unanimous verdict in this case," read a note signed by two jurors, including the foreman, that was given to Kennedy.

A note from another juror alerted the judge that Juror No. 3 had consulted an outside attorney. That did not appear to be the case, but her other actions were revealed under questioning from the judge.

The same juror made a tearful request Monday to be removed from the panel because she felt others were picking on her. Kennedy told the woman that although discussions can get heated, it was important to continue deliberating.

On Thursday, however, the juror again broke into tears and said she had spoken with her daughter about "the abuse I have suffered." She said her daughter told her, "Mom, they're trying to find the weak link."

The woman said she had turned to the Internet to better understand the rules about jury deliberations and came across the word "coercion." After her daughter helped her look up the word's definition, she wrote it down on a piece of paper and brought it with her to court. When the judge asked to see the paper she went into the jury room to retrieve it.

The woman later left the courtroom in tears.

With an alternate in place, Kennedy told the panel to act as if the earlier deliberations had not taken place. The alternate had sat in the jury box during the four-week trial but did not take part in deliberations.

Former council members Luis Artiga, Victor Bello, George Cole, Oscar Hernandez, Teresa Jacobo and Mirabal are accused of drawing annual salaries of as much as $100,000 a year by serving on boards that did little work and seldom met, part of a scandal that drew national attention to the small city in 2010.

Prosecutors said that Bell's charter follows state law regarding council members' compensation. In a city the size of Bell, council members should be paid no more than $8,076 a year.

The trial began in late January, and the case went to the jury last Friday.

As the jury resumed deliberations in downtown Los Angeles, the verdict was clearly in on the streets of Bell.

One resident unfurled old protest banners and signs from the days when the pay scandal was first exposed and then called former members of an activist group that had led the charge for reform in the city.

"We're holding our breaths and waiting," Denise Rodarte, a member of the grassroots group Bell Assn. to Stop the Abuse, said in regard to a verdict.

"It's cut and dry: Local elected officials were supposed to make a certain amount of money, and they made a lot more."

corina.knoll@latimes.com

jeff.gottlieb@latimes.com

Times staff writer Ruben Vives contributed to this report.

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New York by Gehry: This Building of the Week Has Curves

Each week, Wired Design brings you a photo of one of our favorite buildings, showcasing boundary-pushing architecture and design involved in the unique structures that make the world's cityscapes interesting. Check back Fridays for the continuing series, and feel free to make recommendations in the comments, by Twitter, or by e-mail.

Pritzker Prize-winning architect Frank Gehry went residential for the first time on his tower at 8 Spruce Street, completed in 2011 just outside the financial district in New York City. The tallest apartment building in the western hemisphere (for now) at 870 feet, the New York by Gehry incorporates the architect's iconic curved steel exterior, rippling and reflective, like a wave in the sky.

In addition to pricey apartments — upwards of $40,000 a month for penthouses — the bottom floors of the tower houses a public school. The building's design is meant to make residents feel they could step right out into space, and from afar, the wavy metal has the same effect on the eyes.

Top photo: Courtesy of Gehry Partners, LLP

Bottom photo: dbox

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Cellar victim Kampusch raped, starved in film of ordeal

VIENNA (Reuters) – A new film based on the story of Austrian kidnap victim Natascha Kampusch shows her being repeatedly raped by the captor who beat and starved her during the eight-and-a-half years that he kept her in a cellar beneath his house.

Kampusch was snatched on her way to school at the age of 10 by Wolfgang Priklopil and held in a windowless cell under his garage near Vienna until she escaped in 2006, causing a sensation in Austria and abroad. Priklopil committed suicide.

Kampusch had always refused to respond to claims that she had had sex with Priklopil, but in a German television interview on her 25th birthday last week said she had decided to reveal the truth because it had leaked out from police files.

The film, “3,096 Days” – based on Kampusch’s autobiography of the same name – soberly portrays her captivity in a windowless cellar less than 6 square metres (65 square feet) in area, often deprived of food for days at a time.

The emaciated Kampusch – who weighed just 38 kg (84 pounds) at one point in 2004 – keeps a diary written on toilet paper concealed in a box.

One entry reads: “At least 60 blows in the face. Ten to 15 nausea-inducing fist blows to the head. One strike with the fist with full weight to my right ear.”

The movie shows occasional moments that approach tenderness, such as when Priklopil presents her with a cake for her 18th birthday or buys her a dress as a gift – but then immediately goes on to chide her for not knowing how to waltz with him.

GREY AREAS

Antonia Campbell-Hughes, who plays the teenaged Kampusch, said she had tried to portray “the strength of someone’s soul, the ability of people to survive… but also the grey areas within a relationship that people don’t necessarily understand.”

The British actress said she had not met Kampusch during the making of the film or since. “It was a very isolated time, it was a bubble of time, and I wanted to keep that very focused,” she told journalists as she arrived for the Vienna premiere.

Kampusch herself attended the premiere, looking composed as she posed for pictures but declining to give interviews.

In an interview with Germany’s Bild Zeitung last week, she said: “Yes, I did recognize myself, although the reality was even worse. But one can’t really show that in the cinema, since it wasn’t supposed to be a horror film.”

The movie, made at the Constantin Film studios in Bavaria, Germany, also stars Amy Pidgeon as the 10-year-old Kampusch and Danish actor Thure Lindhardt as Priklopil.

“I focused mainly on playing the human being because… we have to remember it was a human being. Monsters do not exist, they’re only in cartoons,” Lindhart said.

“It became clear to me that it’s a story about survival, and it’s a story about surviving eight years of hell. If that story can be told then I can also play the bad guy.”

The director was German-American Sherry Hormann, who made her English-language debut with the 2009 move “Desert Flower”, an adaptation of the autobiography of Somali-born model and anti-female circumcision activist Waris Dirie.

“I’m a mother and I wonder at the strength of this child, and it was important for me to tell this story from a different perspective, to tell how this child using her own strength could survive this atrocious martyrdom,” Hormann said.

The Kampusch case was followed two years later by that of Josef Fritzl, an Austrian who held his daughter captive in a cellar for 24 years and fathered seven children with her.

The crimes prompted soul-searching about the Austrian psyche, and questions as to how the authorities and neighbors could have let such crimes go undetected for so long.

The film goes on general release on Thursday.

(Reporting by Georgina Prodhan, Editing by Paul Casciato)

Movies News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Well: A Rainbow of Root Vegetables

This week’s Recipes for Health is as much a treat for the eyes as the palate. Colorful root vegetables from bright orange carrots and red scallions to purple and yellow potatoes and pale green leeks will add color and flavor to your table.

Since root vegetables and tubers keep well and can be cooked up into something delicious even after they have begun to go limp in the refrigerator, this week’s Recipes for Health should be useful. Root vegetables, tubers (potatoes and sweet potatoes, which are called yams by most vendors – I mean the ones with dark orange flesh), winter squash and cabbages are the only local vegetables available during the winter months in colder regions, so these recipes will be timely for many readers.

Roasting is a good place to begin with most root vegetables. They sweeten as they caramelize in a hot oven. I roasted baby carrots and thick red scallions (they may have been baby onions; I didn’t get the information from the farmer, I just bought them because they were lush and pretty) together and seasoned them with fresh thyme leaves, then sprinkled them with chopped toasted hazelnuts. I also roasted a medley of potatoes, including sweet potatoes, after tossing them with olive oil and sage, and got a wonderful range of colors, textures and tastes ranging from sweet to savory.

Sweet winter vegetables also pair well with spicy seasonings. I like to combine sweet potatoes and chipotle peppers, and this time in a hearty lentil stew that we enjoyed all week.

Here are five colorful and delicious dishes made with root vegetables.

Spicy Lentil and Sweet Potato Stew With Chipotles: The combination of sweet potatoes and spicy chipotles with savory lentils is a winner.

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Roasted Carrots and Scallions With Thyme and Hazelnuts: Toasted hazelnuts add a crunchy texture and nutty finish to this dish.

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Carrot Wraps: A vegetarian sandwich that satisfies like a full meal.

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Rainbow Potato Roast: A multicolored mix that can be vegan, or not.

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Leek Quiche: A lighter version of a Flemish classic.

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Bits Blog: Judge Slashes Jury Award in Apple-Samsung Case

8:45 p.m. | Updated

A federal judge on Friday weakened the blow from Apple’s legal victory in a patent case against Samsung, lopping more than 40 percent off the damages a jury awarded Apple last year.

The ruling did not shift the case — one of the most closely watched in the high-tech industry — in Samsung’s favor. While Apple has lost other skirmishes against Samsung in courts around the world, the jury award in this case has been the biggest victory for either side so far.

Even at a reduced level, these would be among the highest damages in a patent dispute.

The judge ordered a new trial to recalculate a portion of those damages, leaving open the possibility that some of them could be restored.

She also indicated that Apple was entitled to additional damages for sales of Samsung products that have occurred since the jury’s decision last summer, which could further swell the amount Apple is owed by Samsung.

Tech companies around the world are waging legal battles over patents as they compete for supremacy in the lucrative smartphone market. Apple and Samsung are the most prominent combatants in that war; the two companies divide most of the profits in the surging mobile phone market.

Samsung has soared to the No. 1 spot in the smartphone business in recent years, but Apple says that it is, in part, because the company has swiped many of Apple’s ideas.

In her review of the jury’s decisions, which originally awarded Apple more than $1 billion for patent violations by Samsung in its mobile products, Judge Lucy H. Koh of the United States District Court in San Jose, Calif., knocked those damages down by $450 million, to $599 million. The new trial will determine how much of the $450 million, if any, should be restored.

“It will be years before the parties exhaust all of their litigation avenues and options,” said Alan M. Fisch, an intellectual property lawyer with Fisch Hoffman Sigler in Washington, who is not involved in the case. “Still, some form of patent cross-license between the two would not be an unsurprising final result.”

None of Judge Koh’s opinion changed the jury’s finding that Samsung violated a series of Apple patents in its smartphone and tablet products. But the judge took issue with how the jury calculated the damages Apple was entitled to from the Samsung devices named in the case, more than two dozen of them in all.

In her 27-page opinion, Judge Koh said that the jury failed to follow her instructions in calculating damages for a certain class of patents, known as utility patents.

She also decided in Samsung’s favor in a dispute between the two parties over when Apple notified Samsung that it was infringing Apple’s intellectual property. Evidence of such notice dates are important because they help determine how hefty the damages are in a court case, once the party being notified is found guilty of infringement.

Judge Koh chided Apple for using an expert in the case who used an “aggressive notice date” — meaning, an early one — to calculate damages.

“The need for a new trial could have been avoided had Apple chosen a more circumspect strategy or provided more evidence to allow the jury or the court to determine the appropriate award for a shorter notice period,” she said in her ruling.

Steve Dowling, a spokesman for Apple, declined to comment.

In a statement, Adam Yates, a Samsung spokesman, said that the company was pleased with the judge’s decision and that it intended to seek further review of the remaining award.

Apple and Samsung, meanwhile, continue to fight ferociously in the smartphone market, where Samsung has steadily worked its way to the No. 1 position over the last few years. In the fourth quarter, Samsung accounted for 29 percent of global smartphone shipments, while Apple accounted for 21.8 percent, according to IDC.

Mark A. Lemley, a professor at Stanford Law School, called the judge’s decision “an extremely careful and thorough opinion on a very difficult and interrelated set of issues.”

Mr. Lemley predicted that Samsung would eventually win some reduction in the original $1 billion award, but “almost certainly” less than the $450 million that Judge Koh reduced it by on Friday.

“We’ll need a new trial to figure that out,” said Mr. Lemley, who has done legal work in the past for Google, maker of the Android operating system involved in the Samsung case and others. “Judge Koh has encouraged both sides to appeal first. That may clarify some questions, but it is unlikely to prevent a new trial, just delay it some.”

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