DealBook: Confirmation Hearing for Mary Jo White Said to Be Scheduled for March

Mary Jo White appears poised to face a Senate confirmation hearing next month, a crucial step for the former federal prosecutor on her path to becoming the top Wall Street regulator.

Ms. White, whose nomination to lead the Securities and Exchange Commission has lingered for over a month, plans to testify in March before the Senate Banking Committee, three Congressional officials briefed on the matter said on Monday. The committee has not set a firm date for the confirmation hearing, the officials said, though lawmakers have tentatively scheduled her to appear the week of March 11.

At the hearing, one official said, Ms. White will most likely join Richard Cordray, who is in line to become director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. In January, when the White House nominated Ms. White to the S.E.C. spot, it reappointed Mr. Cordray to a position he has held for the last year under a temporary recess appointment.

The Senate last year declined to confirm him in the face of Republican and Wall Street opposition to the newly created consumer bureau. Republicans are likely to voice similar skepticism at the hearing next month.

While some officials have quietly expressed concerns about Ms. White’s role as a Wall Street defense lawyer, her nomination is not expected to face major complications. An S.E.C. spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The timetable laid out on Monday offers Ms. White additional weeks to prepare. Over the last couple of weeks, she has received multiple briefings from agency staff members about new securities rules and the structure of the stock market, an official said. The briefings will in part prepare her for the confirmation hearing, which is expected to cover a broad scope of topics.

While Ms. White is a skilled litigator, she lacks experience in financial rule-writing and regulatory minutiae, a potential stumbling block for her nomination. Lawmakers also expect to raise questions about her movements through the revolving door that bridges government service and private practice. Some Democrats, a person briefed on the matter said, will question whether she is cozy with Wall Street.

In private practice, Ms. White defended some of Wall Street’s biggest names, including Kenneth D. Lewis, a former chief of Bank of America. As the head of litigation at Debevoise & Plimpton, she also represented JPMorgan Chase and the board of Morgan Stanley. Her husband, John W. White, is co-chairman of the corporate governance practice at Cravath, Swaine & Moore, where he represents many of the companies that the S.E.C. regulates.

(Ms. White has agreed to recuse herself from many matters that involve former clients, while her husband has agreed to convert his partnership at Cravath from equity to nonequity status.)

Despite some reservations, she is expected to receive broad support on Capitol Hill. When President Obama nominated her last month, Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York was one of several Democrats to praise her prosecutorial prowess, calling her “tough as nails” during stints as a federal prosecutor in Brooklyn and as the first female United States attorney in Manhattan.

While she handled some white-collar and securities cases, her specialty was terrorism and organized crime. As a federal prosecutor in New York City for more than a decade, she helped oversee the prosecution of the crime figure John Gotti and directed the case against those responsible for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. She also supervised the original investigation into Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda.

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Airlines get early jump on fare hikes in 2013

When a trade group for corporate travel managers recently predicted airfares would rise in 2013, the group probably didn't expect the hikes to be launched so quickly.

Domestic airfares are expected to jump 4.6% in 2013, while international rates will probably rise 8.3%, according to a survey of travel managers by the GBTA Foundation, an arm of the Global Business Travel Assn.

The group attributed the increase to rising demand from companies ready to take advantage of new business opportunities in a strengthening economy.

Only a week after the group issued its prediction, Delta Air Lines Inc., the nation's second-largest air carrier, initiated a fare hike of $4 to $10, specifically designed to hit business travelers who book within seven days of their flight.

By the end of last week, every major carrier had matched Delta's increase, according to FareCompare, a website that keeps track of such hikes. JetBlue Airways Corp. expanded the hike to include flights booked beyond the seven-day period.

The increase is the first of 2013 to take hold.

If the past is any indication, expect to see new hikes every two months or so. In 2012, the nation's major airlines adopted seven hikes out of 15 attempts.

For hotel guests, water pressure is key concern

Despite all the money and effort hotels put into selecting comfortable beds and soft pillows, a new study suggests that hotel guests are more likely to choose a hotel based on the water pressure in the shower.

A Boston marketing and public relations company has analyzed what people say about hotels by studying more than 18,000 online conversations for a six-month period on various social websites, blogs and forums.

The company, Brodeur Partners, used for the first time what it calls "conversational relevance" to measure how much people talk about a hotel and how much of it is positive.

What do they say?

When it came to positive overall comments, the Hilton, Marriott and Four Seasons hotel chains got the highest scores in the study.

Conversations about the rooms centered around the size, followed by discussions about connectivity and technology, the study found. When guests had conversations about what they like to see or feel in the room, most of the talk was about the shower, specifically the water pressure, surpassing talk about the bed or the sheets.

Jerry Johnson, head of planning for Brodeur Partners, said the advantage of analyzing online conversations is that "you are measuring behavior. You are hearing real honest conversations."

Hotels, he said, may respond to the study by improving whatever hotel feature guests are saying is lacking, perhaps even installing new shower heads.

Hotel chain responds to online reviews

About three years ago, the economy hotel chain Red Roof Inn tested out a new in-room feature in its Columbus, Ohio, hotel.

In addition to installing outlets near the desks in the rooms, the hotel added several outlets on the nightstand so travelers could keep their portable devices charging near the bed.

By monitoring comments on the travel review website TripAdvisor, the hotel chain found that the extra plugs were a big hit with travelers. The hotel decided to install them throughout the chain.

"It's a simple thing but it's extremely meaningful to the traveler," hotel chain President Andy Alexander said.

For the third year in a row, Red Roof Inn recently earned the highest customer satisfaction score among economy hotels in an analysis by Market Metrix, a San Francisco Bay Area hotel market research company.

Alexander attributes the chain's high score to its efforts to follow and respond to online reviews.

It's because of guest comments, he said, that Red Roof has tried other improvements, such as installing wood floors in the rooms and vessel sinks in the bathrooms.

What's next? Alexander said the hotel chain offers free wireless Internet to all guests but might consider offering higher speed Wi-Fi to members of its loyalty program.

"You can't stand still," he said.

hugo.martin@latimes.com

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Spotify Officially Coming to Ford

Spotify is coming to the Fiesta. And the Mustang. And every Ford with a Sync AppLink infotainment system, marking the first time the popular music-streaming service has been baked into a car.

The subscription service will be available in every Applink-equipped Ford when it launches in the United States next month, while Europe gets its own version later this year.

In addition to having access to Spotify’s catalog of over 20 million songs, drivers will be able to access their music library, shared playlists, genre and radio stations, all through the Sync head-unit or using voice controls.

One of the cooler features is the ability for drivers to switch to a playlist that’s been recommended by a friend as soon as the tracks are received. “You have been sent a new playlist,” the system will ask, “would you like to play it?” Boom. Social music just came to your car.

Spotify is the latest audio app to be admitted to the AppLink fray, joining Pandora, Slacker, Amazon Cloud Player, MOG and Rhapsody, among others.

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Shia LaBeouf and Alec Baldwin “Incompatible”? Actor tweets about exit From “Orphans”

(Please note that this story contains strong language in paragraphs 10 and 21.)

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Shia LaBeouf is taking a cue from his former co-star Alec Baldwin and using Twitter to defend his actions – in this case his split from “Orphans” on Broadway.

The show, which begins previews in less than a month, was to be the “Transformers” star’s Great White Way debut. In a brief statement Wednesday, the actor’s departure was attributed to those pesky “creative differences.”

But LaBeouf, whose propensity to over-share has gotten him in trouble in the past, took to Twitter within hours of the announcement to post private emails from the show’s director Daniel Sullivan and co-stars Baldwin and Tom Sturridge.

He also mused about the role of theater in society and posted his audition video for the show (he’s twitchy, intense and, it must be said, pretty convincing as a criminal with a short fuse).

The correspondence does little to clarify the reasons for his abrupt exit, though his exchange with Sullivan hints at chemistry issues with Baldwin.

“I’m too old for disagreeable situations,” Sullivan writes. “You’re one hell of a great actor. Alec is who he is. You are who you are. You two are incompatible. I should have known it. This one will haunt me. You tried to warn me. You said you were a different breed. I didn’t get it.”

But an individual close to the production told TheWrap that the split had nothing to do with Baldwin; it was due to conflicts between the star and the show’s producers, Frederick Zollo and Robert Cole.

Spokespeople for the production did not respond to requests for comment.

In his emails, LaBeouf also demonstrates a flair for the dramatic that New York theater critics will be denied an opportunity to see in the flesh.

“My dad was a drug dealer,” LaBeouf writes. “He was a shit human. But he was a man. He taught me how to be a man. What I know of men Alec is.”

“A man owns up,” he adds. “That’s why Mark McGuire is not a man.”

If the message from Baldwin is to be believed, LaBeouf’s former cast-mate wishes him well.

After LaBeouf apologizes for creating a “disagreeable situation,” Baldwin assures him he doesn’t have an “unkind word to say about you.”

“I’ve been through this before,” Baldwin writes. “It’s been a while. And perhaps some of the particulars are different. But it comes down to the fact that what we all do now is critical. Perhaps especially for you. When the change comes, how do we handle it, whether it be good or bad? What do we learn?”

A spokesman for Baldwin declined to comment and a spokeswoman for LaBeouf did not respond to requests for comment.

Sturridge also is complimentary in his note to LaBeouf.

“I was stunned by the work you were doing, the performance you were giving,” he writes.”I think you lifted the play to a place higher than maybe it even deserved to be.”

This is not the first time that LaBeouf has gotten in trouble for running his mouth off in public. In the past he irritated Steven Spielberg by speaking ill of their collaboration on “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull”; said Oliver Stone played too nice when they teamed up on “Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps,” and once revealed that he hooked up with “Transformers” co-star Megan Fox when she was on a break from her husband Brian Austin Green.

His frank talk and propensity to criticize former collaborators has inspired at least one high-profile rebuke.

Harrison Ford told Details Magazine that he was displeased by his co-stars comments about the Indiana Jones sequel.

“I think I told him he was a f—ing idiot,” Ford said. “As an actor, I think it’s my obligation to support the film without making a complete ass of myself.”

On Wednesday and Thursday, LaBeouf also took the opportunity to share some colorful thoughts about acting, as well as some historical lessons of questionable veracity.

“Actors used to be buried with a stake through the heart,” he tweeted. “Those peoples performances so troubled on-lookers that they feared their ghosts.”

Oh, and based on his messages with Rick Sordelet, the show’s fight director and a faculty member at Yale University’s drama school, an MFA may be in LaBeouf’s future…possibly one from a certain New Haven-based institute of higher learning.

In a message, Sordelet hails LaBeouf’s work ethic and says he has been in touch with the head of the school’s acting program about having him matriculate.

“It must have been difficult for others in the room to be schooled by someone who’s raw talent and enthusiasm out matched theirs,” Sordelet writes.

Sounds like somebody might be passing James Franco on the quad some day soon.

Celebrity News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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‘Bloodless’ Lung Transplants for Jehovah’s Witnesses

Eric Kayne for The New York Times

SHARING HOME AND FAITH A Houston couple hosted Gene and Rebecca Tomczak, center, in October so she could get care nearby.

HOUSTON — Last April, after being told that only a transplant could save her from a fatal lung condition, Rebecca S. Tomczak began calling some of the top-ranked hospitals in the country.

She started with Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, just hours from her home near Augusta, Ga. Then she tried Duke and the University of Arkansas and Johns Hopkins. Each advised Ms. Tomczak, then 69, to look somewhere else.

The reason: Ms. Tomczak, who was baptized at age 12 as a Jehovah’s Witness, insisted for religious reasons that her transplant be performed without a blood transfusion. The Witnesses believe that Scripture prohibits the transfusion of blood, even one’s own, at the risk of forfeiting eternal life.

Given the complexities of lung transplantation, in which transfusions are routine, some doctors felt the procedure posed unacceptable dangers. Others could not get past the ethics of it all. With more than 1,600 desperately ill people waiting for a donated lung, was it appropriate to give one to a woman who might needlessly sacrifice her life and the organ along with it?

By the time Ms. Tomczak found Dr. Scott A. Scheinin at The Methodist Hospital in Houston last spring, he had long since made peace with such quandaries. Like a number of physicians, he had become persuaded by a growing body of research that transfusions often pose unnecessary risks and should be avoided when possible, even in complicated cases.

By cherry-picking patients with low odds of complications, Dr. Scheinin felt he could operate almost as safely without blood as with it. The way he saw it, patients declined lifesaving therapies all the time, for all manner of reasons, and it was not his place to deny care just because those reasons were sometimes religious or unconventional.

“At the end of the day,” he had resolved, “if you agree to take care of these patients, you agree to do it on their terms.”

Ms. Tomczak’s case — the 11th so-called bloodless lung transplant attempted at Methodist over three years — would become the latest test of an innovative approach that was developed to accommodate the unique beliefs of the world’s eight million Jehovah’s Witnesses but may soon become standard practice for all surgical patients.

Unlike other patients, Ms. Tomczak would have no backstop. Explicit in her understanding with Dr. Scheinin was that if something went terribly wrong, he would allow her to bleed to death. He had watched Witness patients die before, with a lifesaving elixir at hand.

Ms. Tomczak had dismissed the prospect of a transplant for most of the two years she had struggled with sarcoidosis, a progressive condition of unknown cause that leads to scarring in the lungs. The illness forced her to quit a part-time job with Nielsen, the market research firm.

Then in April, on a trip to the South Carolina coast, she found that she was too breathless to join her frolicking grandchildren on the beach. Tethered to an oxygen tank, she watched from the boardwalk, growing sad and angry and then determined to reclaim her health.

“I wanted to be around and be a part of their lives,” Ms. Tomczak recalled, dabbing at tears.

She knew there was danger in refusing to take blood. But she thought the greater peril would come from offending God.

“I know,” she said, “that if I did anything that violates Jehovah’s law, I would not make it into the new system, where he’s going to make earth into a paradise. I know there are risks. But I think I am covered.”

Cutting Risks, and Costs

The approach Dr. Scheinin would use — originally called “bloodless medicine” but later re-branded as “patient blood management” — has been around for decades. His mentor at Methodist, Dr. Denton A. Cooley, the renowned cardiac pioneer, performed heart surgery on hundreds of Witnesses starting in the late 1950s. The first bloodless lung transplant, at Johns Hopkins, was in 1996.

But nearly 17 years later, the degree of difficulty for such procedures remains so high that Dr. Scheinin and his team are among the very few willing to attempt them.

In 2009, after analyzing Methodist’s own data, Dr. Scheinin became convinced that if he selected patients carefully, he could perform lung transplants without transfusions. Hospital administrators resisted at first, knowing that even small numbers of deaths could bring scrutiny from federal regulators.

“My job is to push risk away,” said Dr. A. Osama Gaber, the hospital’s director of transplantation, “so I wasn’t really excited about it. But the numbers were very convincing.”

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Haruhiko Kuroda Expected to Be Named Head of Bank of Japan

TOKYO — A financial policy expert and harsh critic of the Bank of Japan’s efforts to combat deflation is set to be the government’s choice to take over the nation’s central bank.

Toru Hanai/Reuters

Haruhiko Kuroda is a harsh critic of the Bank of Japan’s track record on deflation.

The official, Haruhiko Kuroda, a veteran of global financial circles and current head of the Asian Development Bank, will be nominated as the bank’s governor to take over next month, according to a ruling party lawmaker with knowledge of those plans.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has instructed ruling party officials to start negotiating with opposition parties to clear the way for Mr. Kuroda’s appointment, which must be approved by a divided parliament, the lawmaker said.

“This is a critical time for Japan’s economy, and we must avoid, at all costs, a failure to gain parliamentary approval for this appointment,” NHK, the public broadcaster, quoted Mr. Abe as telling ruling party executives Monday morning.

With Mr. Kuroda at its helm, the bank could take much bolder steps to kick-start economic growth. Mr. Kuroda has publicly criticized the Bank of Japan for not going far enough to fight deflation, and has urged the bank to adopt inflation targets and to expand an asset-buying program to pump more cash into the Japanese economy.

Mr. Kuroda’s global experience — as vice minister for international affairs at Japan’s powerful Finance Ministry from 1999 to 2003, and as president of the Manila-based Asian Development Bank starting in 2005 — could also help Tokyo navigate foreign criticism that its monetary policies are intended to weaken the yen to give Japanese exporters a competitive edge.

The yen has weakened by over 10 percent in the last three months as Mr. Abe laid out his monetary agenda, pushing the outgoing central bank governor, Masaaki Shirakawa, to start taking a more aggressive monetary stance. But Mr. Abe had indicated that a change at the bank’s top ranks was needed to break with the bank’s cautious past. On Monday, the yen fell to a 33-month low.

Kikuo Iwata, a professor at Gakushuin University in Tokyo and another vocal critic of the central bank, is set to be tapped for one of its two deputy governor spots, according to the lawmaker. Mr. Iwata is the author of several books, including “Stop Deflation, Now” and “Is the Bank of Japan Really Trustworthy?”

Mr. Kuroda beat out a fellow former senior Finance Ministry official, Toshiro Muto, who had strong backing among both bureaucrats and local politicians but lacks the top-level global contacts. Mr. Muto was also viewed as being more cautious than Mr. Kuroda on monetary policy.

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Athletes cash in on California's workers' comp

SACRAMENTO — In his seven-year career with the Denver Broncos, running back Terrell Davis, a former Super Bowl Most Valuable Player, dazzled fans with his speed and elusiveness.

At the end of his rookie year in 1995, he signed a $6.8-million, five-year contract. Off the field he endorsed Campbell's soup. And when he hung up his cleats, he reported for the National Football League Network and appeared in movies and TV shows.

So it may surprise Californians to find out that in 2011, Davis got a $199,000 injury settlement from a California workers' compensation court for injuries related to football. This came despite the fact Davis was employed by a Colorado team and played just nine times in California during an 88-game career, according to the NFL.

Davis was compensated for the lifelong effects of multiple injuries to the head, arms, trunk, legs and general body, according to California workers' compensation records.

He is not alone.

Over the last three decades, California's workers' compensation system has awarded millions of dollars in benefits for job-related injuries to thousands of professional athletes. The vast majority worked for out-of-state teams; some played as little as one game in the Golden State.

All states allow professional athletes to claim workers' compensation payments for specific job-related injuries — such as a busted knee, torn tendon or ruptured spinal disc — that happened within their borders. But California is one of the few that provides additional payments for the cumulative effect of injuries that occur over years of playing.

A growing roster of athletes are using this provision in California law to claim benefits. Since the early 1980s, an estimated $747 million has been paid out to about 4,500 players, according to an August study commissioned by major professional sports leagues. California taxpayers are not on the hook for these payments. Workers' compensation is an employer-funded program.

Now a major battle is brewing in Sacramento to make out-of-state players ineligible for these benefits, which are paid by the leagues and their insurers. They have hired consultants and lobbyists and expect to unveil legislation next week that would halt the practice.

"The system is completely out of whack right now," said Jeff Gewirtz, vice president of the Brooklyn Nets — formerly the New Jersey Nets — of the National Basketball Assn.

Major retired stars who scored six-figure California workers' compensation benefits include Moses Malone, a three-time NBA most valuable player with the Houston Rockets, Philadelphia 76ers and other teams. He was awarded $155,000. Pro Football Hall of Fame wide receiver Michael Irvin, formerly with the Dallas Cowboys, received $249,000. The benefits usually are calculated as lump-sum payments but sometimes are accompanied by open-ended agreements to provide lifetime medical services.

Players, their lawyers and their unions plan to mount a political offensive to protect these payouts.

Although the monster salaries of players such as Los Angeles Lakers guard Kobe Bryant and Denver Broncos quarterback Peyton Manning make headlines, few players bring in that kind of money. Most have very short careers. And some, particularly football players, end up with costly, debilitating injuries that haunt them for a lifetime but aren't sufficiently covered by league disability benefits.

Retired pros increasingly are turning to California, not only because of its cumulative benefits but also because there's a longer window to file a claim. The statute of limitations in some states expires in as little as a year or two.

"California is a last resort for a lot of these guys because they've already been cut off in the other states," said Mel Owens, a former Los Angeles Rams linebacker-turned-workers' compensation lawyer who has represented a number of ex-players.

To understand how it works, consider the career of Ernie Conwell. A former tight end for the St. Louis Rams and New Orleans Saints, he was paid $1.6 million for his last season in 2006.

Conwell said that during his 11-year career, he underwent about 18 surgeries, including 11 knee operations. Now 40, he works for the NFL players union and lives in Nashville.

Hobbled by injuries, he filed for workers' compensation in Louisiana and got $181,000 in benefits to cover his last, career-ending knee surgery in 2006, according to the Saints. The team said it also provided $195,000 in injury-related benefits as part of a collective-bargaining agreement with the players union.

But such workers' compensation benefits paid by Louisiana cover only specific injuries. So, to deal with what he expects to be the costs of ongoing health problems that he said affect his arms, legs, muscles, bones and head, Conwell filed for compensation in California and won.

Even though he played only about 20 times in the state over his professional career, he received a $160,000 award from a California workers' compensation judge plus future medical benefits, according to his lawyer. The Saints are appealing the judgment.

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That Syncing Feeling

“Smart, or stylish?” That’s the question facing casual watch aficionados looking for a new, high-tech addition to their collection.

On one hand (er, wrist), you’ve got the Pebble and other smartwatch upstarts, which come with built-in smartphone connectivity, customizable screens, and burgeoning developer communities eager to feed their app ecosystems. They also, by and large, look like uninspired pieces of mass-produced Chinese plastic, and that’s because they are.

On the “stylish” end of the spectrum is … not much. Except this: Citizen’s Eco-Drive Proximity.

The Citizen learns the current time from your phone, and the watch’s hands spin around to the correct positions.

By all outward appearances, the Proximity looks like any another chronograph in a sea of handsome mechanical watches. It has all the features you’d expect, including a 24-hour dial, day and date, perpetual calendar and second time zone. But housed within its slightly oversized 46mm case is a Bluetooth 4.0 radio, so it’s capable of passing data over the new low-energy connectivity standard appearing in newer smartphones, including the iPhone 5 and 4S. And for now, the Promixity is only compatible with those Apple devices.

Initial pairing is relatively easy. After downloading Citizen’s notably low-rent iOS app, you can link the watch to your phone with a few turns and clicks on the crown.

The gee-whiz feature is the automatic time sync that takes place whenever you land in a different time zone. Once connected, the Citizen learns the current time from your phone, and the watch’s hands spin around to the correct positions — a welcome bit of easy magic, considering the initial setup is a tedious finger dance.

The watch can also notify you of incoming communications. Once you’ve configured the mail client (it only supports IMAP accounts), you’ll get notified whenever you get a new e-mail — there’s a slight vibration and the second hand sweeps over to the “mail” tab at the 10-o’clock position. If a phone call comes in, the second hand moves to the 11-o’clock marker. If the Bluetooth connection gets lost because the watch or phone is outside the 30-foot range, you get another vibration and the second hand moves to the “LL” indicator. And really, that’s the extent of the functionality around notifications.

But notable in its absence is the notification I’d like the most: text message alerts. And it’s not something Citizen will soon be rectifying because the dials and hardware aren’t upgradable.

I also experienced frequent connection losses, particularly when attending a press conference with scads of Mi-Fis and tethered smartphones around me. This caused dozens of jarring vibrations both on my wrist and in my pocket, followed by a raft of push notifications on my phone informing me of the issue. Reconnecting is easy (and generally happens automatically), but the lack of stability in certain environments matched with the limited capabilities of the notifications had me forgetting to reconnect and not even worrying about it later on.

But actually, I’m OK with that. I still like the fact that it never needs charging. Even though there aren’t any solar cells visible on the dial, the watch does have them. They’re hidden away beneath the dial, and yet they still work perfectly. And even when its flagship connectivity features aren’t behaving, it’s still a damn handsome watch. It feels solid, and it looks good at the office, out to dinner, or on the weekend — something very few other “smart” watches on the market can claim.

However, those things can be said of almost all of Citizen’s EcoDrive watches. The big distinguishing feature here is the Bluetooth syncing and notifications, and they just don’t work that well.

WIRED A smart watch you won’t be embarrassed to wear. Charges using light. Combines classic styling with cutting-edge connectivity. Subtle notifications keep you informed without dominating your attention.

TIRED Loses Bluetooth connection with disturbing frequency. Limited notification abilities. No text message alerts. Janky iPhone app.

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“Scary Spice” Mel B joins “America’s Got Talent” panel

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Former Spice Girl Mel B will join the judging panel on summer TV talent show “America‘s Got Talent,” broadcaster NBC said on Thursday.

The 37-year-old Briton, known by the nickname Scary Spice when she was part of the chart-topping 1990s British girl band, will replace Sharon Osbourne who quit the series in a dispute with NBC over their decision to drop her son Jack from another reality show.

Mel B, whose full name is Melanie Brown, will join “shock jock” Howard Stern, who has agreed to return for his second season, and comedian Howie Mandel.

“This exciting addition of the dynamic Mel B to our lineup of judges promises that fans will see a strong, talented and opinionated woman match up against our equally outspoken judges Howard Stern and Howie Mandel,” NBC president of alternative programming Paul Telegdy said in a statement.

Mel B said she was thrilled to join the talent show, adding in a statement, “It’s so exciting to be bringing some Girl Power to the panel!”

The singer recently finished a two-season stint as a judge on singing contest “The X Factor,” which like “America’s Got Talent” was created by British entrepreneur Simon Cowell.

NBC said nationwide auditions for the new season of “America’s Got Talent” will start on March 4 in New Orleans.

The network is seeking to turn around a fall in audiences last year when the finale in September was watched by a record low of under 11 million viewers, according to ratings data.

The show remained the top-rated summer series among adults aged 18-49, the demographic most coveted by advertisers.

NBC attributed the overall 2012 audience decline partly to an earlier start that pitted “Got Talent” against end-of-season original programming in May and the start of new TV shows in September.

(Reporting by Mike Collett-White and Jill Serjeant; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

Music News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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The Texas Tribune: Advocates Seek Mental Health Changes, Including Power to Detain

Matt Rainwaters for Texas Monthly

The Sherman grave of Andre Thomas’s victims.

SHERMAN — A worried call from his daughter’s boyfriend sent Paul Boren rushing to her apartment on the morning of March 27, 2004. He drove the eight blocks to her apartment, peering into his neighbors’ yards, searching for Andre Thomas, Laura Boren’s estranged husband.

Expanded coverage of Texas is produced by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit news organization. To join the conversation about this article, go to texastribune.org.

For more articles on mental health and criminal justice in Texas, as well as a timeline of the Andre Thomas case: texastribune.org

Matt Rainwaters for Texas Monthly

Laura Boren

He drove past the brightly colored slides, swings and bouncy plastic animals in Fairview Park across the street from the apartment where Ms. Boren, 20, and her two children lived. He pulled into a parking spot below and immediately saw that her door was broken. As his heart raced, Mr. Boren, a white-haired giant of a man, bounded up the stairwell, calling out for his daughter.

He found her on the white carpet, smeared with blood, a gaping hole in her chest. Beside her left leg, a one-dollar bill was folded lengthwise, the radiating eye of the pyramid facing up. Mr. Boren knew she was gone.

In a panic, he rushed past the stuffed animals, dolls and plastic toys strewn along the hallway to the bedroom shared by his two grandchildren. The body of 13-month-old Leyha Hughes lay on the floor next to a blood-spattered doll nearly as big as she was.

Andre Boren, 4, lay on his back in his white children’s bed just above Leyha. He looked as if he could have been sleeping — a moment away from revealing the toothy grin that typically spread from one of his round cheeks to the other — except for the massive chest wound that matched the ones his father, Andre Thomas (the boy was also known as Andre Jr.), had inflicted on his mother and his half-sister as he tried to remove their hearts.

“You just can’t believe that it’s real,” said Sherry Boren, Laura Boren’s mother. “You’re hoping that it’s not, that it’s a dream or something, that you’re going to wake up at any minute.”

Mr. Thomas, who confessed to the murders of his wife, their son and her daughter by another man, was convicted in 2005 and sentenced to death at age 21. While awaiting trial in 2004, he gouged out one of his eyes, and in 2008 on death row, he removed the other and ate it.

At least twice in the three weeks before the crime, Mr. Thomas had sought mental health treatment, babbling illogically and threatening to commit suicide. On two occasions, staff members at the medical facilities were so worried that his psychosis made him a threat to himself or others that they sought emergency detention warrants for him.

Despite talk of suicide and bizarre biblical delusions, he was not detained for treatment. Mr. Thomas later told the police that he was convinced that Ms. Boren was the wicked Jezebel from the Bible, that his own son was the Antichrist and that Leyha was involved in an evil conspiracy with them.

He was on a mission from God, he said, to free their hearts of demons.

Hospitals do not have legal authority to detain people who voluntarily enter their facilities in search of mental health care but then decide to leave. It is one of many holes in the state’s nearly 30-year-old mental health code that advocates, police officers and judges say lawmakers need to fix. In a report last year, Texas Appleseed, a nonprofit advocacy organization, called on lawmakers to replace the existing code with one that reflects contemporary mental health needs.

“It was last fully revised in 1985, and clearly the mental health system has changed drastically since then,” said Susan Stone, a lawyer and psychiatrist who led the two-year Texas Appleseed project to study and recommend reforms to the code. Lawmakers have said that although the code may need to be revamped, it will not happen in this year’s legislative session. Such an undertaking requires legislative studies that have not been conducted. But advocates are urging legislators to make a few critical changes that they say could prevent tragedies, including giving hospitals the right to detain someone who is having a mental health crisis.

From the time Mr. Thomas was 10, he had told friends he heard demons in his head instructing him to do bad things. The cacophony drove him to attempt suicide repeatedly as an adolescent, according to court records. He drank and abused drugs to try to quiet the noise.

bgrissom@texastribune.org

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