Wife of former Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. resigns from council post

Chicago Tribune political editor Eric Krol phones in to discuss the resignation of Alderman Sandi Jackson and the future of the Chicago City Council. (Posted: January 11, 2013).

After weeks of rumors and equally strenuous denials, Sandi Jackson resigned as Chicago's 7th Ward alderman Friday, the latest chapter in the stunning, scandal-laced downfall of what had been one of the city's most prominent and powerful political duos.

The decision by Ald. Jackson, who was elected in 2007, came less than two months after husband Jesse Jackson Jr. quit the congressional seat he had held for 17 years amid ongoing federal ethics probes into his campaign finances and a diagnosis of bipolar depression.

In her resignation letter to Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Sandi Jackson alluded to her husband's medical problems by saying she was dealing with "very painful family health matters," making no mention of whether she had become ensnarled in his legal problems. She said the ward and the city "deserve a partner who can commit all of their energies to the business of the people."

"I value the public trust which has been bestowed upon me and take my responsibility to safeguard the interests of my constituents seriously," wrote Jackson, whose resignation is effective Tuesday. "Likewise, I am unapologetically a wife and a mother and I cannot deny my commitment to those most important personal responsibilities."

Ald. Jackson could not be reached for comment, and Jackson Jr. declined to comment at the couple's Washington home.

The mayor, in a statement, thanked Jackson for her service and leadership and said the process "to identify a replacement" will begin early next week. It will be Emanuel's first appointment of a City Council member since his 2011 election as mayor.

A month ago, political chatter swirled that she might seek the South Side and south suburban 2nd Congressional District seat given up by her husband. But Sandi Jackson denied she was interested in the job and vowed to stay on the City Council.

"I will finish my term. I intend to finish my term," she said then. "Unless something catastrophic happens — I could step outside and get hit by a bus today."

Then-Rep. Jackson Jr. appeared to try to shield his wife in his Thanksgiving eve resignation letter to Republican House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio. In the letter, Jackson Jr. publicly acknowledged for the first time that he was under federal criminal investigation into alleged misuse of campaign dollars.

"I am doing my best to address the situation responsibly, cooperate with the investigators, and accept responsibility for my mistakes, for they are my mistakes and mine alone," the former congressman wrote. "None of us is immune from our share of shortcomings or human frailties, and I pray that I will be remembered for what I did right."

For years, the former congressman had used his federal campaign fund to pay his wife hundreds of thousands of dollars as a political consultant. Since 2006, Jackson Jr.'s federal campaign fund has sent more than $280,000 to Sandi Jackson's two local campaign funds, state records show. Such transfers are legal.

Jackson Jr. had often noted his decision to run for Congress in 1995 was motivated by his wife, who had worked in Washington and on Democratic campaigns prior to their 1991 marriage. She previously had worked for the U.S. Export-Import Bank and was deputy director for training at the Democratic National Committee.

In February 2007, she was elected as 7th Ward alderman after defeating Darcel Beavers, the daughter of Cook County Commissioner William Beavers. Darcel Beavers had been appointed to the council by then-Mayor Richard Daley. Jackson later defeated Commissioner Beavers as Democratic ward committeeman.

Those victories were steps toward erasing once-powerful political rivals, including brothers William and Robert Shaw, and an attempt to create a dynasty of Jackson-backed politicians. Those Jackson Jr. allies, though, now largely have gone by the wayside, including former state Sen. James Meeks, former state Rep. David Miller of Lynwood and former state Rep. Robin Kelly of Matteson. Kelly is seeking Jackson's former congressional seat among 17 Democrats that have filed.

But the Jackson brand became tarnished in late 2008 when allegations surfaced that supporters of the then-congressman offered to raise up to $6 million for then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich in exchange for the governor appointing him to the Senate seat vacated by President Barack Obama's election.

Then-Rep. Jackson never was charged in the case that sent Blagojevich to prison, but a House ethics committee probe into the allegations was later eclipsed by a Washington-based federal criminal investigation of his campaign fund use.

In addition, Jackson Jr. apologized after reports surfaced in 2010 that a fundraiser had flown a female "social acquaintance" to Chicago at the congressman's request. Sandi Jackson issued her own statement at the time, saying the couple had for months been trying to deal quietly with the "painful and unfortunate situation."

Still, Jackson Jr. easily won re-election last year, despite having taken an initially undisclosed medical leave from Congress in June. His lone general election campaign outreach effort was an automated call to voters placed shortly before the election.

Since he stepped down, rumors persisted that Sandi Jackson also would vacate her aldermanic seat, which she held by traveling from the family's Washington home to attend City Council meetings. Her decision Friday was a surprise to some, not as much to others.

"I didn't see very many good things coming," Ald. Daniel Solis, 25th, said of the Jacksons' saga. "I thought it would get more and more publicity, and none of that would be flattering."

"She was one of my favorite colleagues," said Ald. Willie Cochran, 20th. "It makes me heavy-hearted because of the troubles her family is having."

Emanuel had been preparing for an eventual resignation, sources close to the mayor indicated. But the 7th Ward political territory has been decimated by what has happened to the Jacksons, as well as to William Beavers, who is facing federal corruption charges.

Emanuel spokeswoman Sarah Hamilton said the mayor "is looking for someone who has a history of community involvement and engagement" and is expected to set out his plans by early next week.

Tribune reporters David Kidwell and John Byrne in Chicago and Katherine Skiba from Washington contributed.

hdardick@tribune.com

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A sense of dread shrouds Nintendo’s Wii U

The latest Wii U sales numbers are out from Japan, the United States and the United Kingdom — and unease is deepening. In Japan, Famitsu Magazine reported Wii U weekly sales slipping to 70,000 units from 76,000 units during the important period ending in January 6. This is the week many Japanese teenagers spend their New Year’s money and sales of consoles tend to bounce. During the week, the portable 3DS sold 305,000 units, up sharply from the already impressive 266,000 units in the previous week. The seven-year-old Sony (SNE) PlayStation 3 managed to increase its sales to 64,000 units from 54,000 units. The equally ancient PSP climbed to 53,000 from 34,000. Even the star-crossed PS Vita managed to vault to 31,000 from 18,000.

[More from BGR: LG reportedly halts Nexus 4 production to make way for new Nexus device]

As Wii U sales are mired close to PlayStation 3 levels in Japan, it is getting hammered by the aging Microsoft (MSFT) Xbox 360 in America. NPD just reported that Xbox 360 moved 1.4 million units in December while Wii U limped through the holiday season with 460,000 units. This is below the 600,000 unit level that the earlier Wii console managed years ago against a much younger console competition in 2006. Back then, Wii launched head-to-head with Sony’s PlayStation 3 in the US market, and the Xbox 360 had been launched just one year earlier.

[More from BGR: BlackBerry Z10 shown off in leaked marketing materials]

In 2012, Wii U debuted against two rival home consoles that were more than half a decade old. The results are not pretty. Meanwhile in the U.K., the Wii U shifted 40,000 units during its launch weekend, but none of the titles cracked the top 10 of the GfK game software chart.

It is clear that the lack of compelling software is hurting Wii U right now. Nintendo (NTDOY) wanted to push it out well before the buzz around the next generations of Sony and Microsoft consoles started building. The problem with the rush is that Wii U is now facing several fallow months before big titles arrive. The January-April sales period could be spectacularly ugly and may cause real damage to Nintendo’s home console reputation if it leads to U.S. sales dipping below 300,000 a month and Japanese sales dipping below 30,000 a month. The danger here is that if consumers start suspecting that the Wii U is a lame duck, they may choose to wait for one of the big rival vendors to roll out some spectacular hardware next winter.

All in all, it’s hard to avoid the notion that the console gaming universe is shrinking. In the U.S., game software sales contracted by a disastrous 26% in December. PS Vita is in dire straits and may leave Nintendo’s 3DS as the only viable portable console in 2014. Wii U is wobbling badly, possibly leading to a 2014 scenario when only Sony and Microsoft are left standing in the home console battle. U.S. consumers are still wild about huge, violent console epics like Call of Duty, Assassin’s Creed and Halo. Those are titles that define PlayStation and Xbox. The casual gaming that defines Wii U is under siege by the smartphone/tablet gaming frenzy that shows no sign of abating.

This article was originally published on BGR.com

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“Gangster Squad” takes $650K in midnight showings, battle with “Zero Dark Thirty” awaits

NEW YORK (TheWrap.com) – Warner Bros.’ “Gangster Squad” grossed $ 650,000 in midnight showings Thursday night, a strong start to what should be a weekend-long fight for the box-office crown.

Ruben Fleischer’s tale of cops and organized crime in mid-20th century Los Angeles will duke it out with Kathryn Bigelow’s “Zero Dark Thirty,” the Oscar contender that expands to almost 3,000 screens this weekend.

Box office experts projected “Zero Dark Thirty” would eke out the win before the weekend began, though it remains a close race with both movies looking at openings of about $ 20 million.

“Gangster Squad,” which stars Josh Brolin, Ryan Gosling, Emma Stone and Sean Penn, has a breezy action feel, and runs under two hours. Despite a strong cast, reviewers have not responded warmly to the film, which charts at 43 percent on Metacritic and 34 percent on Rotten Tomatoes.

The Academy rewarded “Zero Dark Thirty” with five Oscar nominations on Thursday buffeting its pursuit of viewers despite its two hour and 37 minute length.

Warner Bros. did not immediately respond to TheWrap’s request for comment.

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No Jail Time for Doctor, 85, Convicted of Drug Charge

The former doctor sat in courton Friday waiting to be sentenced for a crime that breached every tenet of his professional code. He had run his house in Staten Island like a drug mill, selling the prescription painkiller oxycodone to all comers — including undercover federal agents. The guideline sentence for his crimes was up to six years.

But just by the look of the defendant, Felix Lanting, it seemed likely that he would never serve that much time. Frail and hunched-over at 85, he could only hope to live that long. And with a wife even frailer who depends on him for care, he posed a special challenge for the sentencing judge, Roslynn R. Mauskopf.

A lawyer for Mr. Lanting, James R. Froccaro, asked that his client receive no jail time at all.

“I’m agonizing about what to do,” said Judge Mauskopf, who presided over the case in United States District Court for the Eastern District.

Mr. Lanting’s crimes are typically committed by men a generation younger. A 2010 investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation found that in seven months, Mr. Lanting wrote and sold more than 3,000 prescriptions for oxycodone, an average of 15 per day, seven days a week.

Neighbors complained about the foot traffic. A relative of someone who overdosed on the pills attacked the front door of Mr. Lanting’s house with an ax. Mr. Lanting hired bouncers to protect his growing business, but they did not stop the undercover agents. When F.B.I. agents arrested him, they found $37,000 in cash and 100 solid silver bars. Eighty thousand dollars more turned up in a safe-deposit box.

In court on Friday, Mr. Lanting, who lost his medical license, stood and pleaded for his life and that of his wife. “I beg the court not to put me in jail because my wife will die,” he said. “I am the only one who is taking care of her.”

He began to cry. “I’m very sorry. I made a mistake. If I could undo it, I would. I’m begging you please.” Judge Mauskopf called a five-minute recess to think.

“If there ever were a case that cried out for mitigation, it is this one, based on the defendant’s age and based on the responsibilities to his wife,” Judge Mauskopf said when she returned. But she said she wanted to punish him.

She sentenced him to six months of house arrest, five years of probation and a $25,000 fine. She said Mr. Lanting might have to get someone else to take his wife to her medical visits.

“You need to feel the restrictions on your liberty,” she said. “The fine is meant to hurt and to punish you for what you did.”

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U.S. to review Boeing 787 design, safety

Two new incidents involving the Boeing 787 Dreamliner have been reported in Japan -- a crack in the cockpit and an oil leak. Norah O'Donnell reports.

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration said Friday it will launch a high-priority and comprehensive review of Chicago-based Boeing's new 787's critical systems, following a rash of malfunctions this week, such as a battery fire and fuel leaks. However, federal transportation officials also supported Boeing, saying repeatedly that the plane is safe.

"We are confident about the safety of this aircraft," said Federal Aviation Administrator Michael Huerta, adding that a priority in the review will be the plane's electrical systems. He said he would not speculate on how long the review would take.

The review, an unusual move for the FAA that will not ground planes or halt production of new 787s, will examine the plane's design, manufacture and assembly, said U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood.

"Through it, we will look for the root causes of recent events and do everything we can to make sure these events don't happen again," he said. "I believe this plane is safe and I would have absolutely no reservation of boarding one of these planes and taking a flight."

Boeing shares were down 2.5 percent in midday trading to $75.15.

The announcement comes amid yet more reports Friday of problems with the highly anticipated "Dreamliner" jet, including a cracked cockpit window and another oil leak on a Japanese carrier. They add to a rash of other reported problems this week, most seriously a battery fire on a parked 787 in Boston, an incident under investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board.

The plane model is in use in Chicago for temporary United Airlines flights between Chicago O'Hare and Houston. Chicago-based United has five other 787s in service domestically. "We continue to have complete confidence in the 787 and in the ability of Boeing, with the support of the FAA, to resolve these early operational issues," a United spokeswoman said. "We will support Boeing and the FAA throughout their review."

Next week, LOT Polish Airlines plans to begin operating the region's first regular flight on a 787 between O'Hare and Warsaw, Poland. That inaugural flight is still planned for Wednesday, a spokeswoman said. All told, Boeing has delivered 50 Dreamliners to customers around the world, many to Japanese carriers.

Aviation experts have said the planes are safe and that glitches are common on new models of planes, especially ones as revolutionary as the 787, which uses mostly composite materials instead of metals to create an aircraft that's more lighter, more fuel-efficient and more comfortable for passengers. However, other observers have said the concentration of problems in a short period and the media attention they garner is damaging the reputation of Boeing, which was already under scrutiny for delivering the Dreamliner to customers more than three years late. The plane's list price is about $207 million.

The latest problems came Friday, when Japanese carrier All Nippon Airways said a domestic flight from Tokyo landed safely at Matsuyama airport in western Japan after a crack developed on the cockpit windscreen, and the plane's return to Tokyo was cancelled.

"Cracks appear a few times every year in other planes. We don't see this as a sign of a fundamental problem" with Boeing aircraft, a spokesman for the airline said. The same airline later on Friday said oil was found leaking from an engine of a 787 Dreamliner after the plane landed at Miyazaki airport in southern Japan. An airline spokeswoman said it later returned to Tokyo after some delay. No one was injured in either incident.

Boeing said Friday the 787 logged 50,000 hours of flight, with more than 150 flights occurring daily, and that its performance has been on par with the Boeing 777, which it calls "the industry's best-ever introduction" of a new airplane. "More than a year ago, the 787 completed the most robust and rigorous certification process in the history of the FAA," Boeing said in a statement. "We remain fully confident in the airplane's design and production system."

Ray Conner, president and chief executive officer of Boeing Commercial Airplanes, said Friday that the recent problems were not caused by Boeing's outsourcing of production or by ramping up production too quickly.

"We are fully committed to resolving any issue that affects the reliability of our airlines," he said.

gkarp@tribune.com

Reuters contributed
 

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Ex-Sen. Bradley to walk Hobson down aisle to wed Lucas

Mellody Hobson, president of Ariel Investments, is the new chairman of After School Matters. (E. Jason Wambsgans / July 10, 2012)

By Cheryl V. Jackson




Special to the Tribune

8:08 p.m. CST, January 10, 2013

When Ariel Investments President Mellody Hobson weds cinematic icon George Lucas, the bride will be given away by former U.S. senator and New York Knicks star Bill Bradley.

“Bill is walking me down the aisle,” Hobson said Thursday night at Groupon headquarters, 600 W. Chicago Ave., during the company’s women mentoring program kickoff.

The Chicago executive said she met Bradley when she was 17, and he has been a mentor and father figure since. When he joined Starbucks’ board, he brought her along as a director.

When Hobson became engaged to the “Star Wars” creator, she informed Bradley it was time to step up.

“I told him, ‘Hey! You’ve got a job to do!’” she said. “He started crying.”

Hobson did not disclose where or when the wedding will take place.

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Baby Bones Found Scattered in Ancient Italian Village

SEATTLE — The death of an infant may not have been an occasion for mourning in ancient Italy, according to archaeologists who have found baby bones scattered on the floor of a workshop dating to the seventh century B.C.

The grisly finds consist of bone fragments uncovered over years of excavation at Poggio Civitate, a settlement about 15 miles (25 kilometers) from the city of Siena in what is now Tuscany. The settlement dates back to at least the late eighth century B.C. Archaeologists excavating the site have found evidence of a lavish residential structure as well as an open-air pavilion that stretches an amazing 170 feet (52 meters) long. Residents used this pavilion was as a workshop, manufacturing goods such as terracotta roof tiles.

In 1983, scientists uncovered a cache of bones on the workshop floor, consisting mostly of pig, goat and sheep remains. But among the bony debris was a more sobering find: two arm bones from an infant (or infants) who died right around birth.

In 2009, another baby bone surfaced at the workshop, this one a portion of the pelvis of a newborn. [See Images of the Infant Bones]

The bones “were either simply left on the floor of the workshop or ended up in an area with a concentration of discarded, butchered animals,” said Anthony Tuck, an archaeologist at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, who presented an analysis of the bones Friday (Jan. 4) at the annual meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America.

Abandoned bones

The discovery of the discarded infant bones in an area used for work could suggest that the people who labored in the workshop had little social status, Tuck said. They may have been slaves or servants whose lost infants would garner little sympathy from the community at large.

However, a third find complicates the picture. In 1971, archaeologists found an arm bone from another newborn or near-term fetus pushed up against the wall of the lavish residence along with other bones and debris. It seems as if someone swept the debris up against the wall, not differentiating between baby bones and garbage, Tuck said. [8 Grisly Archaeological Discoveries]

There’s no way to know whose infant came to rest up against the wall of a wealthy person’s home, said Tuck, who plans to submit the findings to the journal Etruscan Studies. Perhaps the infant belonged to a desperate servant, or perhaps to a member of the family. If so, it may be that even high-status families didn’t consider babies worth mourning when they died in infancy.

The possibility can sound horrifying to modern ears, Tuck said.

“This kind of new data makes people a bit uncomfortable,” he told LiveScience. “People have a tendency to romanticize the past, especially in a place like Tuscany. When we have direct evidence for this kind of behavior, it can be a little tricky to present.”

Death in infancy

Nevertheless, Tuck said, there is reason to think that people have not always given infants the same community status as adults or older children. However, baby bones tend not to preserve well, which makes it difficult to know how ancient Italians in Tuscany treated their deceased infants.

Very few signs of infant burial appear in central Italian cemeteries from this time period, though, Tuck said. The handful of coffins containing baby bones that have been found are loaded with ornaments and jewelry, suggesting that only families of great wealth could have given a lost baby an adult-style funeral.

Even in modern times, societies have sometimes seen babies as belonging to a different category than adults, Tuck said. In areas of extreme poverty and stress that have high infant mortality, the death of a newborn may not trigger many outward displays of mourning, he said.

And many cultures have naming traditions that only recognize the baby’s identity significantly after birth. For example, in traditional Jewish culture, a baby boy’s name isn’t revealed outside the family until the bris, or the ritual of circumcision eight days after birth. According to superstition, naming the baby before then would attract the attention of the Angel of Death.

The Maasai people of Africa give their newborns temporary names until a ceremony as late as age 3, in which the child receives a new name and has his or her head shaved to symbolize a fresh start in life.

On the other hand, not all ancient cultures differentiate between the burials of babies and adults. Stone Age infant graves found in Austria in 2006 date back to 27,000 years ago and contain the same beads and pigments as adult gravesites.

The people who lived in Poggio Civitate more than 2,000 years ago have left little evidence of how they viewed infants, but Tuck and his colleagues expect more finds to emerge as the researchers continue to dig in the Tuscany hills. More evidence that high- and low-class babies were buried differently would suggest that the civilization had a rigid hierarchy, they said.

Images of more than 25,000 objects recovered from the site can be found at Open Context, an open-source research database developed by the Alexandra Archive Institute.

Follow Stephanie Pappas on Twitter @sipappas or LiveScience @livescience. We’re also on Facebook & Google+.

Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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ABC Chief Says Network Needs Hits, Will Abandon “All-Star” Format for “Dancing”

NEW YORK (TheWrap.com) – ABC entertainment president Paul Lee summed up his fall season by saying his network has “a lot to shout about, and we also have a lot to do.”

Lee’s network finished the fall in fourth place in the key 18-49 demographic and third place in total viewers. He lamented the fall’s lack of any “big breakout hits on broadcast on any of the networks and on ABC in particular.”

NBC, which passed ABC and its other rivals to become fall’s top-rated network in 18-49, might dispute that: It has touted the new drama “Revolution” as a hit.

Lee assessed his network’s fall at a Television Critics Association panel on Thursday. He said he was particularly disappointed not to see better numbers for reality standby “Dancing With the Stars,” which adapted an “all-star” format in the fall and brought back former contestants. He said that for its spring cycle, the show would go back to recruiting fresh talent, in hopes of drawing a younger audience.

Looking for a positive spin on the disappointing ratings for the show – which still averages 16 million total viewers per episode – he said the dancing this fall may have been too good.

“It turns out people like to have bad dancing as much as they do good dancing,” he said.

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Fatally Ill, and Making Herself the Lesson

SOUTH HADLEY, Mass. — It was early November when Martha Keochareon called the nursing school at Holyoke Community College, her alma mater. She had a proposal, which she laid out in a voice mail message.

“I have cancer,” she said after introducing herself, “and I’m wondering if you’ll need somebody to do a case study on, a hospice patient.”

Perhaps some nursing students “just want to feel what a tumor feels like,” she went on. Or they could learn something about hospice care, which aims to help terminally ill people die comfortably at home.

“Maybe you’ll have some ambitious student that wants to do a project,” Ms. Keochareon (pronounced CATCH-uron) said after leaving her phone number. “Thank you. Bye.”

Kelly Keane, a counselor at the college who received the message, was instantly intrigued. Holyoke’s nursing students, like most, learn about cancer from textbooks. They get some experience with acutely ill patients during a rotation on the medical-surgical floor of a hospital. They practice their skills in the college’s simulation lab on sophisticated mannequins that can “die” of cancer, heart attacks and other ailments. But Ms. Keochareon, 59, a 1993 graduate of Holyoke’s nursing program, was offering students something unique: an opportunity not only to examine her, but to ask anything they wanted about her experience with cancer and dying.

“She is allowing us into something we wouldn’t ever be privy to,” Ms. Keane said.

So it was that a few weeks later, two first-year nursing students, Cindy Santiago, 26, and Michelle Elliot, 52, arrived at Ms. Keochareon’s tiny house, a few miles from the college. She was bedbound, cared for by a loyal band of relatives, hospice nurses and aides. Both students were anxious.

“Sit on my bed and talk to me,” Ms. Keochareon said. The students hesitated, saying they had been taught not to do that, to prevent transmission of germs. What they knew of nursing in hospitals — “I’m here to take your vitals, give you your medicine, O.K., bye,” as Ms. Santiago put it — was different, after all.

They had come with a list of questions. Ms. Keochareon was suffering from pancreatic cancer, and they had researched the disease ahead of time. They were particularly curious about why she had survived for so long. She had lived with her illness for more than six years — an extraordinary span for pancreatic cancer, which often kills within months after diagnosis.

Why, the students asked, had she managed to keep eating and keep on weight? What was she taking for the pain? How long had it taken for doctors to give her a diagnosis?

“They ask good questions,” Ms. Keochareon said one morning, her lips stained red from the liquid oxycodone she was sipping frequently between doses of other drugs. “I forget half the stuff I learned as a nurse, but I remember everything about pancreatic cancer. Because I’m living it.”

For Ms. Keochareon, this was a chance to teach something about the profession she had found late and embraced — she became a nurse at 40, after raising her daughter and working for years on a factory floor.

“When I was a nurse, it seemed like most of the other nurses were never too happy having a student to teach,” she said, lying in her bedroom lined with pictures of relatives, friends, and herself in healthier times. “I loved it.”

A Last Project

Now, her disease had left her passing the days watching Animal Planet, reading a book about heaven and calling friends — so much that her cordless phone never left her side. She also was planning meticulously for her death, down to the green wool cardigan and embroidered shirt she would be buried in. But Ms. Keochareon wanted more as she prepared to die. The project she envisioned would be not just for students, but also for her — a way to squeeze one more chapter out of life.

Spending time with the dying is not fundamental to nurse training, partly because there are not enough clinical settings to provide the experience. The End-of-Life Nursing Education Consortium, a project of the American Association of Colleges of Nursing, has provided training in palliative care to some 15,000 nurses and nursing instructors around the nation since 2000, focusing not just on pain management but also on how to help terminally ill patients and their families prepare for death.

In addition, some students do rotations with hospice nurses, said Pam Malloy, the project’s director. But Ms. Malloy said that nursing schools still do not focus on end-of-life care nearly as much as they should. “We live in a death-denying society, and that includes nursing,” she said. “People have begun to understand it’s important, but we’re nowhere where we need to be at this point.”

In their conversations with Ms. Keochareon, the students learned that her symptoms had included a burning sensation after eating, for which doctors prescribed an acid blocker. Then came wrenching abdominal pain, which she said doctors dismissed as psychosomatic. She also developed diabetes, another potential sign of pancreatic cancer, and itchiness, possibly from blocked bile ducts.

In 2006, after she had felt sick for several years, a doctor finally ordered a CT scan, and the cancer was diagnosed. Ms. Keochareon was 53 and working at a hospital in Charleston, S.C. She was told that she would probably die within a year or two.

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Boeing to cut 40% of jobs, space at Texas plant

Guest are reflected in a Dreamliner fuselage at the jet's debut July 8, 2007, at the Boeing plant in Everett, Wash. (Robert Sorbo/Reuters / January 10, 2013)

5:06 p.m. CST, January 10, 2013

Boeing Co. said it will cut a little more than 40 percent of jobs, or 160 positions, at its El Paso, Texas, plant in response to planned U.S. defense budget reductions.

The company said it will trim occupied square footage 50 percent at the plant by moving from three buildings to one. The plant in Texas manufactures electronics for a variety of Boeing products.

The cuts will be completed by the end of 2014, the company said.

Boeing announced a major restructuring of its defense division in November that would cut 30 percent of management jobs from 2010 levels, close facilities and consolidate several business units.

The company's shares closed at $77.09 on the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday.

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