Boehner makes counteroffer on 'fiscal cliff'

WASHINGTON — Rejecting President Obama’s call to raise tax rates for the wealthy, House Republicans unveiled a counteroffer that would cut Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and other federal programs while raising new revenue by overhauling the tax code.

House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) and his GOP leadership team sent the White House the three-page offer Monday afternoon as the administration turned up the volume on their complaints that Republicans have been unwilling to put a serious proposal on the table.

“With the fiscal cliff nearing, our priority remains finding a reasonable solution that can pass both the House and Senate, and be signed into law in the next couple of weeks,” Boehner and the other leaders wrote in the letter to the president, describing a plan that draws from an earlier deficit-reduction proposal from Erskine Bowles, the Democratic former co-chairman of the president’s fiscal commission.

Noticeably missing from the counteroffer, which was also signed by Rep. Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) who had been Republican Mitt Romney’s vice-presidential running mate, was Ryan’s House-passed budget proposals for turning Medicare into a voucher-like program for the next generation of seniors.

QUIZ: How much do you know about the fiscal cliff?

“We recognize it would be counterproductive to publicly or privately propose entitlement reforms that you and the leaders of your party appear unwilling to support inn the near-term,” the letter said.

The Republican offer comes as talks to avert the year-end budget crisis that economists warn could derail the economy had hit a stalemate. Existing tax rates will increase Jan. 1, rising about $2,200 on average Americans in the new year, if nothing is done. Enormous budget cuts are scheduled days later, a one-two punch of economic contraction.

Obama has been fighting to preserve the lower tax rates for all but the wealthiest households, those earning more than $250,000 for couples and $200,000 for singles. The president has said the nation can no longer afford tax breaks for the wealthy that would cost about $900 billion over the decade. But Republicans are fighting to keep the tax breaks for all.

Monday, Republicans proposed capturing nearly the same amount of revenue by closing loopholes and limiting itemized deductions on the wealthiest households, while also launching a broader tax-reform process that would lower all tax rates.

Boehner and his team also proposed $1.4 trillion in savings from spending cuts — including healthcare reforms that could include raising the Medicare retirement age and asking wealthier seniors to pay higher Medicare premiums. They also proposed limiting the cost-of-living adjustments for Social Security recipients and others.

Cuts to the entitlement programs have long been discussed as part of a broad deficit-reduction deal, but they are politically unpleasant. By refusing to consider such changes, Democrats forced Republicans to put them on the table.

The Republican proposal is silent on issues Obama had proposed in his offer last week, including a continuation of the payroll tax break and long-term unemployment benefits.

Details of the proposal remain to be worked out, but Republicans suggested a two-part framework, with some of the tax-and-spending changes happening this year and the rest being made in 2013.

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Twitter: @LisaMascaroinDC

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'Bully,' 'Chasing Ice' are among Oscar contenders

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The anti-bullying film "Bully," the climate-change study "Chasing Ice" and the AIDS chronicle "How to Survive a Plague" are among 15 features on the short list for the Academy Award for best documentary.

Other contenders announced Monday are the Ethel Kennedy documentary "Ethel," the health care exploration "The Waiting Room" and the music portrait "Searching for Sugar Man," tracing the fate of acclaimed but obscure 1970s singer-songwriter Rodriguez.

The other documentaries are "Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry," ''Detropia," ''5 Broken Cameras," ''The Gatekeepers," ''The House I Live In," ''The Imposter," ''The Invisible War," ''Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God" and "This Is Not a Film."

Members of the academy's documentary branch will narrow the list to five nominees. Nominations come out Jan. 10, with the Oscar show following on Feb. 24.

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Well: A Royal Spotlight on a Rare Condition

News that the Duchess of Cambridge, the former Kate Middleton, is pregnant spurred headlines and excitement around the world on Monday, but the exuberance was tempered by word that the mother-to-be has been hospitalized with a rare form of severe morning sickness.

Most people have never heard of the condition, called hyperemesis gravidarum or H.G., now getting worldwide attention. To learn more, we spoke with Dr. Marlena Fejzo, an obstetrics researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles. Dr. Fejzo twice experienced H.G. during her own pregnancies and is an adviser and board member for the Hyperemesis Education and Research Foundation. We talked about the risks of H.G., why it happens and whether its occurrence can predict the sex of the baby.

Q.

What is hyperemesis gravidarum?

A.

It’s severe, debilitating nausea and vomiting in pregnancy that generally leads to more than 5 percent weight loss and requires fluid treatment. Sometimes, in more extreme cases, it requires nutritional supplements.

Q.

Are there treatments?

A.

Doctors try to give IV and anti-nausea medication at first. About 20 percent of the women who contact the Hyperemesis Education and Research Foundation require tube feeding. It’s very serious. They have to have a tube inserted above their heart. Blood tests have to be done every day, or every other day, and the bag of nutrients has to be monitored to make sure it’s personalized for the woman’s needs. But I don’t think Kate Middleton (based on news reports) has it that bad. She’s just gone in for the IV fluids.

Q.

How common is H.G.?

A.

It probably depends on how you define it. It’s generally defined in populations as 0.2 percent. A study from Shanghai, China, said that 10 percent of women get it or are hospitalized for it. Obviously anyone can get it, even a duchess.

Q.

What are the main symptoms and how is it different from regular morning sickness?

A.

The main signs are rapid weight loss and rapid dehydration, the inability to tolerate fluids, feeling lightheaded and weak, and persistent nausea and vomiting. It just doesn’t go away.

Q.

Are there risks or complications associated with H.G.?

A.

It used to be a major cause of death in women until the 1950s when they introduced IV fluids. There is a serious complication called Wernicke encephalopathy. It’s a serious neurological disorder that happens when you are not able to get enough thiamine (vitamin B-1), a vitamin that is needed for proper brain functioning. When it’s depleted you can get this serious neurological problem.

Wernicke encephalopathy is rare, but it would be preventable with a thiamine shot. If women come in with H.G., they shouldn’t just be treated with fluids, they need to have that thiamine shot. This complication typically leads to fetal death, and it’s serious for the mother too.

Q.

Are there long-term risks to the baby or the mother from H.G.?

A.

There is very little research on H.G. One paper that looked at extreme nausea and vomiting found that children had more attention problems and difficulty in task persistence at ages 5 and 12. We found an increased risk of preterm labor and preterm birth due to H.G.

We need to do more studies, and we are following up on these women. We’re running a huge study to identify the genes and risk factors involved. About 30 percent of women had a mother who had it, and 20 percent had a sister who had it. We’re looking for the genes, and hopefully from that we can find the cause. Now it’s treated with medications that are developed to treat the symptoms but not to treat the cause.

Two major studies just came out the past couple years that showed an increased risk of preterm birth in H.G. But the majority of babies are fine.

Q.

Does the onset of H.G. predict whether a woman is carrying a boy or girl?

A.

It occurs for both male and female fetuses, but is more common in women carrying female fetuses.

Q.

Is a woman at risk for it in a second pregnancy if she gets it in the first?

A.

Yes, the recurrence risk is upwards of 80 percent. There is a study that says it’s more common in first pregnancies, but I think a lot of women don’t have a second pregnancy after having it. It’s bad enough that women decide not to have another baby, or to adopt or find another way.

Q.

Why is raising awareness so important given that this is a temporary condition?

A.

It’s not necessarily a temporary condition. There are long-term effects to the fetus possibly, and there are long-term effects to the women. We also have an article on post-traumatic stress following pregnancies. When you’re suffering day after day at a time when you know nutrition is so important for your baby, its very traumatic for women. Even the medicines that help, they don’t cure it.

Also, there are a lot of misconceptions about it. A lot of women are treated really badly. They’re treated like they’re faking it or that they just don’t want their child. We have a lot of women who have lost pregnancy after pregnancy, or who had abortions because they just couldn’t tolerate it. There needs to be more awareness. There needs to be funding for research so women won’t be treated like this is all in their head, and the fact that the duchess has it is going to help.

Q.

What was your own experience with H.G.?

A.

That’s why I’m so motivated. I had H.G. in two pregnancies. In my first pregnancy, I had a healthy baby boy. In the second case I lost the baby at 15 weeks. I don’t have it in my family, but I wanted to see if it was genetic since I’m a geneticist. We started on a genetic and epigenetic study we’re doing now. We’re going to find the cause, we’re getting there, but it’s really good to have awareness like this, although I feel terrible for the duchess.

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Text messaging celebrates 20th anniversary

You might not believe it, but text messaging is already past its teen years.

The thumb-numbing communications format that has become a favorite of teenagers and created a language of its own turned 20 on Monday.

The very first SMS was sent out on Dec. 3, 1992 when English engineer Neil Papworth, while working at the English tech company Sema, wrote "Merry Christmas" on his computer and sent it off to Vodafone director Richard Jarvis. 

Quiz: What set the Internet on fire in 2012?

You can hear a little more about the original text message from the very first person to send one in this commercial below by Best Buy, which was released earlier this year.

Since that time, of course, text messaging has changed quite a bit. We've gone from T9 predictive text messaging, to full QWERTY keyboard devices such as BlackBerrys, touchscreen smartphones and most recently, we can tell our voice-dictation services such as Siri to write our messages for us.

Text messaging has also gone mainstream, from being an activity exclusive to teens and young adults to becoming an essential way to communicate for many older adults.

According to a study by Experian, a research and analysis firm, 85% of adults 18 to 24 in the U.S. text message. On average they send and receive nearly 4,000 messages each month. That's followed by adults 25 to 34, about 80% of whom send and receive more than 2,000 messages every month. Even adults 55 and older are sending and receiving about 500 text messages on a monthly basis, though only about 20% of them text.

In recent years, alternative, free Internet-based text messaging services such as Apple's iMessage, Facebook messages and apps like WhatsApp and textPlus have also grown in popularity and dug into the number of SMS-based messages we send.

According to Chetan Sharma, a consulting firm, the 2012 third quarter was the first time text messaging in the U.S. saw a decline in both volume and revenue. Chetan Sharma's report listed free alternatives as the major reason for the decline.

But regardless of what the future may hold, hppy bday, txting :).

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Pope Benedict XVI officially joins Twitter with live tweet event

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Yahoo: iPhone 5 top searched gadget, second overall to 'election'

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Northridge residents stunned by multiple slayings

Shane Grady woke up "from a dead sleep" early Sunday when he heard gunshots.

He dropped to the floor and looked out his window, but the traffic on Devonshire Street blocked his view.

"If there was yelling or screaming, I couldn't hear it," he said.

Police arrived minutes later and began canvassing the neighborhood, a helicopter flying low overhead. By mid-morning, detectives were still at the house across from Grady's, where four people were found shot dead.

Investigators are still working to determine a motive and found no weapon at the scene, LAPD Cmdr. Andrew Smith said. No suspects are in custody.

L.A. Councilman Mitchell Englander, whose district includes parts of the San Fernando Valley, said the incident appeared to be isolated. He said the home was believed to be an unlicensed boarding home with multiple tenants.

Neighbors said rooms at the home were rented out and the residents appeared to be single men who primarily kept to themselves. At least four people live in an upstairs area, they said, but they did not know how many boarders in all reside there.

The neighbors also said there was nothing unusual about the home, except for some occasional loud music.

One woman who lives around the block from the residence said she heard loud music and yelling from the house about 1:30 a.m. She fell asleep about an hour later but said the music was still playing.

"I just figured it was a party that was out of control," she said.

Others described the street as quiet, the kind where neighbors know one another and people walk to the Jewish temple just houses away from where the shooting occurred. There have been a few incidents — a car chase last summer, a murder 10 years back — they said, but nothing like this.

"It's usually sleepy-time America," said Richard Rutherford, 58.

Rutherford heard the shots as well. The helicopter that came next, he said, was so low it "was shaking the rooftop."

Jeff Kaye, 62, said the helicopters weren't unusual — the Devonshire police station is just a few blocks away. But the shootings were unusual, he said.

"It concerns you," he said. "You want to know what's going on."

Englander said he was "shocked" by the shootings.

"Typically, you don't have these kinds of incidents in this type of community," he said.

Grady said the same thing.

"How often in this neighborhood do you hear about four dead bodies?" Grady said.

Crime for last six months in Northridge:
Violent crimes (89)
   
Property crimes (895)
   
The violent crime rate for Northridge falls in the middle of all Los Angeles city neighborhoods, but homicide is rare in the community, according to LAPD data analyzed in The Times Crime L.A. database. In the previous six months, Northridge had one homicide among the 89 violent crimes reported. The location of the homicides discovered Sunday is on the border with Granada Hills, which typically has a much lower violent-crime rate than Northridge.

Since 2007 -- prior to Sunday's quadruple homicide -- Northridge had 11 homicides, all but one south of Nordhoff Street, according to L.A. County coroner's data compiled in The Times Homicide Report. The most recent took place Sept. 25, when Louis Villegas, 25, was fatally shot near Balboa Boulevard and Parthenia Street. Villegas was riding in a Lexus that had pulled over to the side of the road when a man approached and began shooting.

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Young down by boardwalk for benefit show

NEW YORK (AP) — Neil Young said Sunday that he couldn't see performing in the area devastated by Superstorm Sandy without doing something to help people who were affected by it.

Young and his longtime backing band, Crazy Horse, will hold a benefit concert for the American Red Cross' storm relief effort Thursday at the Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa in Atlantic City. The New Jersey coastline areas were hit hard by the storm in late October.

People in the New York area who suffered damage in the storm have been supporting him for 40 years, he said.

"I couldn't see coming back here and just playing and have it be business as usual," he said. Young is touring in the area, with concerts scheduled for Monday in Brooklyn and Tuesday in Bridgeport, Conn.

Minimum ticket prices for the standing-room show in Atlantic City will be $75 and $150, although Young notes there's no maximum. He hopes to raise several hundred thousand dollars for the Red Cross.

Young said he was invited to join the Dec. 12 benefit at New York's Madison Square Garden that will feature Bruce Springsteen, Paul McCartney, the Who, Kanye West and others, but had other obligations. Besides, there's enough star power there, he said.

"It wasn't going to make much difference whether I was there or not, so I decided to go someplace where I could make a difference," he said.

Young performed at a televised benefit in 2001 following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, memorably covering John Lennon's "Imagine."

Fans can expect a two-hour plus rock show on Thursday with opening band Everest. No special guests are planned, although Young issued an invitation to "anyone who wants to come in and play with us that we know and we know can play."

It's hard to resist wondering whether Young's epic "Like a Hurricane" will make it onto the set list, given the occasion.

"Anything's possible," Young said. "We have the equipment."

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Unboxed: Stand-Up Desks Gaining Favor in the Workplace

THE health studies that conclude that people should sit less, and get up and move around more, have always struck me as fitting into the “well, duh” category.

But a closer look at the accumulating research on sitting reveals something more intriguing, and disturbing: the health hazards of sitting for long stretches are significant even for people who are quite active when they’re not sitting down. That point was reiterated recently in two studies, published in The British Journal of Sports Medicine and in Diabetologia, a journal of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes.

Suppose you stick to a five-times-a-week gym regimen, as I do, and have put in a lifetime of hard cardio exercise, and have a resting heart rate that’s a significant fraction below the norm. That doesn’t inoculate you, apparently, from the perils of sitting.

The research comes more from observing the health results of people’s behavior than from discovering the biological and genetic triggers that may be associated with extended sitting. Still, scientists have determined that after an hour or more of sitting, the production of enzymes that burn fat in the body declines by as much as 90 percent. Extended sitting, they add, slows the body’s metabolism of glucose and lowers the levels of good (HDL) cholesterol in the blood. Those are risk factors toward developing heart disease and Type 2 diabetes.

“The science is still evolving, but we believe that sitting is harmful in itself,” says Dr. Toni Yancey, a professor of health services at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Yet many of us still spend long hours each day sitting in front of a computer.

The good news is that when creative capitalism is working as it should, problems open the door to opportunity. New knowledge spreads, attitudes shift, consumer demand emerges and companies and entrepreneurs develop new products. That process is under way, addressing what might be called the sitting crisis. The results have been workstations that allow modern information workers to stand, even walk, while toiling at a keyboard.

Dr. Yancey goes further. She has a treadmill desk in the office and works on her recumbent bike at home.

If there is a movement toward ergonomic diversity and upright work in the information age, it will also be a return to the past. Today, the diligent worker tends to be defined as a person who puts in long hours crouched in front of a screen. But in the 19th and early 20th centuries, office workers, like clerks, accountants and managers, mostly stood. Sitting was slacking. And if you stand at work today, you join a distinguished lineage — Leonardo da Vinci, Ben Franklin, Winston Churchill, Vladimir Nabokov and, according to a recent profile in The New York Times, Philip Roth.

DR. JAMES A. LEVINE of the Mayo Clinic is a leading researcher in the field of inactivity studies. When he began his research 15 years ago, he says, it was seen as a novelty.

“But it’s totally mainstream now,” he says. “There’s been an explosion of research in this area, because the health care cost implications are so enormous.”

Steelcase, the big maker of office furniture, has seen a similar trend in the emerging marketplace for adjustable workstations, which allow workers to sit or stand during the day, and for workstations with a treadmill underneath for walking. (Its treadmill model was inspired by Dr. Levine, who built his own and shared his research with Steelcase.)

The company offered its first models of height-adjustable desks in 2004. In the last five years, sales of its lines of adjustable desks and the treadmill desk have surged fivefold, to more than $40 million. Its models for stand-up work range from about $1,600 to more than $4,000 for a desk that includes an actual treadmill. Corporate customers include Chevron, Intel, Allstate, Boeing, Apple and Google.

“It started out very small, but it’s not a niche market anymore,” says Allan Smith, vice president for product marketing at Steelcase.

The Steelcase offerings are the Mercedes-Benzes and Cadillacs of upright workstations, but there are plenty of Chevys as well, especially from small, entrepreneurial companies.

In 2009, Daniel Sharkey was laid off as a plant manager of a tool-and-die factory, after nearly 30 years with the company. A garage tinkerer, Mr. Sharkey had designed his own adjustable desk for standing. On a whim, he called it the kangaroo desk, because “it holds things, and goes up and down.” He says that when he lost his job, his wife, Kathy, told him, “People think that kangaroo thing is pretty neat.”

Today, Mr. Sharkey’s company, Ergo Desktop, employs 16 people at its 8,000-square-foot assembly factory in Celina, Ohio. Sales of its several models, priced from $260 to $600, have quadrupled in the last year, and it now ships tens of thousands of workstations a year.

Steve Bordley of Scottsdale, Ariz., also designed a solution for himself that became a full-time business. After a leg injury left him unable to run, he gained weight. So he fixed up a desktop that could be mounted on a treadmill he already owned. He walked slowly on the treadmill while making phone calls and working on a computer. In six weeks, Mr. Bordley says, he lost 25 pounds and his nagging back pain vanished.

He quit the commercial real estate business and founded TrekDesk in 2007. He began shipping his desk the next year. (The treadmill must be supplied by the user.) Sales have grown tenfold from 2008, with several thousand of the desks, priced at $479, now sold annually.

“It’s gone from being treated as a laughingstock to a product that many people find genuinely interesting,” Mr. Bordley says.

There is also a growing collection of do-it-yourself solutions for stand-up work. Many are posted on Web sites like howtogeek.com, and freely shared like recipes. For example, Colin Nederkoorn, chief executive of an e-mail marketing start-up, Customer.io, has posted one such design on his blog. Such setups can cost as little as $30 or even less, if cobbled together with available materials.

UPRIGHT workstations were hailed recently by no less a trend spotter of modern work habits and gadgetry than Wired magazine. In its October issue, it chose “Get a Standing Desk” as one of its “18 Data-Driven Ways to Be Happier, Healthier and Even a Little Smarter.”

The magazine has kept tabs on the evolving standing-desk research and marketplace, and several staff members have become converts themselves in the last few months.

“And we’re all universally happy about it,” Thomas Goetz, Wired’s executive editor, wrote in an e-mail — sent from his new standing desk.

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Port-strike talks continue even on Sunday, but stalemate goes on

At least they are talking, even on Sunday.

Labor contract negotiations are set to resume today in the now six-day-old strike at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. Talks had continued past 9 p.m. Saturday night.

The strike, by the 800-member International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 63 Office Clerical Unit, has shut down 10 of the 14 cargo container terminals at the nation's busiest seaport complex.

The labor fight pits the union against a group of shipping lines and cargo terminal operators calling themselves the Los Angeles/Long Beach Harbor Employers Assn.

The strike is considered a potentially disastrous event for the Southern California economy because the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach are the leading contributors to the region's goods movement industry that employs about 595,000 people.

Last year, the two ports handled 39.5% of the total value of all cargo container imports entering the U.S. from origins worldwide, according to Jock O'Connell, international trade economist and adviser to Beacon Economics.

The union, which handles the vast amount of paperwork associated with the ports' container cargo, has been working without a contract since June 30, 2010.

The strike has crippled the port because of support from the ILWU dockworkers, who have 50,000 members on the U.S. West Coast, in Canada and in Hawaii. The dockworkers negotiate their contracts separately, but the 10,000 members who work at the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports have honored the smaller union's picket lines.

As a result, seven of the eight cargo container terminals at the Port of Los Angeles remain closed. Three of the six cargo container terminals at the Port of Long Beach are also closed.

The union says that its main issue is what it claims is the outsourcing of its jobs, which are being lost through attrition, retirements, illnesses or other reasons.

The shipping lines and terminal operators say the union's outsourcing claims are bogus and say they have offered "absolute job security."

The employers have repeatedly said the union members are the highest-paid clerical workers in the U.S., having a total compensation package of $165,000 a year, including wages, benefits, pension contributions and paid vacation. That package would be worth $195,000 a year under management's new offer, the employers have said.

On Saturday, the union offered a rebuttal, saying that the employers' claims were misleading. Wages reached $40 to $41 an hour, for an annual pay level of $80,000 to $82,200 a year, not counting overtime, retirement or benefits. The union has asked for a 2.5% raise, said union spokesman Craig Merrilees.

Merrilees added that the union has had one pay increase in the past four years.

Since the strike started, nine ships have either diverted at sea or briefly anchored outside the ports before leaving to unload at another harbor.

There were no new ship diversions reported on Sunday, said Capt. Dick McKenna, executive director of the Marine Exchange of Southern California, which tracks vessel movements.

Other than the lightly manned picket lines, the ships were the biggest evidence of the strike on Sunday.

Nine cargo container ships were anchored offshore Sunday: the APL London; the Hanjin ships Constantza, Algeciras and Chongqing; the Hyundai Hong Kong; the Ital Contessa; the Kota Wangsa; the Maersk Merlion; and the Liberian-flagged Talassa.

Normally, those ships would have gone straight to dock for unloading, but there is no room for them yet because of the strike.

Three more container ships are due to arrive today and 11 more container ships are scheduled to arrive on Monday.

ALSO:

New airline fees discussed

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Port talks shift into higher gear, but strike continues

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Belcher talked to Chiefs officials, walked away, then shot himself

Kansas City Chiefs linebacker Jovan Belcher killed his girlfriend then took his own life outside the team's training facility, police say. (Fox 4, KCMO)

Kansas City, Mo., police released new details Saturday afternoon in the murder-suicide of Kansas City Chiefs linebacker Jovan Belcher, who authorities said shot his girlfriend before killing himself at the team’s practice facility earlier in the day.

About 8 a.m., Belcher, 25, pulled up to the facility, about a quarter-mile away from Arrowhead Stadium, and spoke with Chiefs coach Romeo Crennel and team General Manager Scott Pioli before police arrived, police said.

“They probably had a four- or five-minute conversation before he took his life,” said Kansas City Police Department spokesman Darin Snapp.

PHOTOS: Jovan Belcher's NFL career

Belcher, who just minutes earlier fatally shot his 22-year-old girlfriend, Kasandra Perkins, in the home they shared about five miles away, did not try to go into the practice facility for a team meeting scheduled for 9:30 a.m., police said. Police estimated there were about 20 people at the facility at the time.

He parked his car awkwardly in front of the practice facility's glass doors and got out, police said. Stadium security could tell “something was up” and called police, Snapp said. Crennel and Pioli then came outside to talk to Belcher, who was holding a gun to his head, police said.

The two told police they never felt they were in danger.

Belcher was “pretty much thanking them for everything they’d done for him since he’s been a Chief,” Snapp said.

When officers arrived, Belcher turned and walked west toward the empty parking lot, shooting himself after walking about 30 feet.

About the same time, Perkins was being taken to the hospital. She died about 30 minutes after the shooting, Snapp said.

The couple had a 3-month old daughter who was in the house at the time of the shooting but was in another room, Snapp said. Belcher’s mother had recently moved into the home from New York and called police, he said.

“Every couple has their issues and I was just over there a few days ago and everything was fine, they seemed happy,” Brianne York, a friend of Perkins', said in a video on the Kansas City Star’s website. “She was very loving. I don’t know why he would want to hurt her like that.”

Belcher and Perkins reportedly had a tumultuous relationship. Police said the couple had been fighting in the hour leading up to the shooting, but declined to say what it was about. Perkins was from Texas and Belcher was from Long Island, N.Y. He played football for the University of Maine before joining the Chiefs four years ago as an undrafted free agent.

The death has rocked the Kansas City and NFL communities.

Kansas City Mayor Sly James met with Pioli at the stadium after the shooting.

“Think about your worst nightmare and multiply it by five,” James told the Star. “Put somebody you know and love into that situation, and give them a gun, and stand three feet away from them and watch them kill themselves.... It’s unfathomable.”

Chiefs owner Clark Hunt released a statement on behalf of the team.

“The entire Chiefs family is deeply saddened by today’s events, and our collective hearts are heavy with sympathy, thoughts and prayers for the families and friends affected by this unthinkable tragedy. We sincerely appreciate the expressions of sympathy and support we have received from so many in the Kansas City and NFL communities, and ask for continued prayers for the loved ones of those impacted.

“We will continue to fully cooperate with authorities and work to ensure that the appropriate counseling resources are available to all members of the organization.”

Chiefs players reacted on Twitter.

“I am devastated and heartbroken,” offensive lineman Jeff Allen wrote. “I’m sending prayers out to everyone involved. Always show love and never be afraid to talk.”

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The 20 Most-Shared Ads of 2012

1. Kony 2012 (Invisible Children)

Most Americans had never heard of Joseph Kony, the head of the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda, before. This March video from advocacy group Invisible Children changed that.

Click here to view this gallery.

[More from Mashable: The 12 Most Memorable Marketing Campaigns of 2012]

Is Kony 2012 an ad? If so, it was the most-viral ad of the year. If not, it was just an extremely effective advocacy video and a Belgian video for cable network TNT was actually the most-viral ad of 2012.

Unruly, which keeps tabs on viral video activity, thinks Kony is, so it tops this year’s list. Indeed, Kony’s numbers are pretty staggering — 10 million shares and 94 million views on YouTube make it the Gangnam Style of charity videos. Not bad for a 30-minute film that doesn’t have a cat in sight and doesn’t introduce a new dance move.

[More from Mashable: 14 Bizarrely Awesome Rap Cover Videos]

Speaking of which, there are two tributes to Carly Rae Jepsen‘s “Call Me Maybe” on this list. There are also a few examples of borrowed equity, including Hobbit director Peter Jackson (for Air New Zealand), OK Go (Chevrolet), James Bond (Coke Zero) and various European soccer stars for Nike. There are also viral ad stalwarts Ken Block and GoPro. As usual, though, there are a lot of surprises. Who would have guessed, for instance, that a public service announcement for Melbourne Metro (as in Melbourne, Australia), would rack up 30 million views in less than a month?

This story originally published on Mashable here.

Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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