Recipes for Health: Apple Pear Strudel — Recipes for Health

Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times

This strudel is made with phyllo dough. When I tested it the first time, I found that I had enough filling for two strudels. Rather than cut the amount of filling, I increased the number of strudels to 2, as this is a dessert you can assemble and keep, unbaked, in the freezer.

Filling for 2 strudels:

1/2 pound mixed dried fruit, like raisins, currants, chopped dried figs, chopped dried apricots, dried cranberries

1 1/2 pounds apples (3 large) (I recommend Braeburns), peeled, cored and cut in 1/2-inch dice

1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

2 tablespoons unsalted butter for cooking the apples

1/4 cup (50 grams) brown sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg

1/4 cup (30 grams) chopped or slivered almonds

3/4 pound (1 large or 2 small) ripe but firm pears, peeled, cored and cut in 1/2-inch dice

For each strudel:

8 sheets phyllo dough

7/8 cup (100 grams) almond powder, divided

1 1/2 ounces butter, melted, for brushing the phyllo

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Line 2 sheet pans with parchment.

2. Place the dried fruit in a bowl and pour on hot or boiling water to cover. Let sit 5 minutes, and drain. Toss the apples with the lemon juice.

3. Heat a large, heavy frying pan over high heat and add 2 tablespoons butter. Wait until it becomes light brown and carefully add the apples and the sugar. Do not add the apples until the pan and the butter are hot enough, or they won’t sear properly and retain their juice. But be careful when you add them so that the hot butter doesn’t splatter. When the apples are brown on one side, add the vanilla, cinnamon, nutmeg and almonds, flip the apples and continue to sauté until golden brown, about 5 to 7 minutes. Stir in the pears and dried fruit, then scrape out onto one of the lined sheet pans and allow to cool completely. Divide into two equal portions (easiest to do this if you weigh it).

4. Place 8 sheets of phyllo dough on your work surface. Cover with a dish towel and place another, damp dish towel on top of the first towel. Place a sheet of parchment on your work surface horizontally, with the long edge close to you. Lay a sheet of phyllo dough on the parchment. Brush lightly with butter and top with the next sheet. Continue to layer all eight sheets, brushing each one with butter before topping with the next one.

5. Brush the top sheet of phyllo dough with butter. Sprinkle on half of the almond powder (50 grams). With the other half, create a line 3 inches from the base of the dough, leaving a 2 1/2-inch margin on the sides. Top this line with one portion of the fruit mixture. Fold the bottom edge of the phyllo up over the filling, then fold the ends over and roll up like a burrito. Using the parchment paper to help you, lift the strudel and place it on the other parchment-lined baking sheet. Brush with butter and make 3 or 4 slits on the diagonal along the length of the strudel. Repeat with the other sheets of phyllo to make a second strudel. If you are freezing one of them, double-wrap tightly in plastic.

6. Place the strudel in the oven and bake 20 minutes. Remove from the oven, brush again with butter, rotate the pan and return to the oven. Continue to bake for another 20 to 25 minutes, or until golden brown. Remove from the heat and allow to cool for at least 15 minutes. Serve warm or room temperature.

Yield: 2 strudels, each serving 8

Advance preparation: The fruit filling will keep for a couple of days in the refrigerator. The strudel can be baked a few hours before serving it. Recrisp in a medium oven for 10 minutes. It can also be frozen before baking, double-wrapped in plastic. Transfer directly from the freezer to the oven and add 10 minutes to the baking time.

Nutritional information per serving: 259 calories; 13 grams fat; 4 grams saturated fat; 3 grams polyunsaturated fat; 5 grams monounsaturated fat; 15 milligrams cholesterol; 34 grams carbohydrates; 4 grams dietary fiber; 91 milligrams sodium; 4 grams protein

Martha Rose Shulman is the author of “The Very Best of Recipes for Health.”

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The Shrewd Shopper Carries a Smartphone

Tim Gruber for The New York Times

From left, Tara Niebeling, Sarah Schmidt, Bridget Jewell and Erin Vande Steeg are members of the social media team at the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minn.

Retailers are trying to lure shoppers away from the Internet, where they have increasingly been shopping to avoid Black Friday madness, and back to the stores. The bait is technological tools that will make shopping on the busiest day of the year a little more sane — and give shoppers an edge over their competition.

Those with smartphones in hand will get better planning tools, prices and parking spots. Walmart has a map that shows shoppers exactly where the top Black Friday specials can be found. A Mall of America Twitter feed gives advice on traffic and gifts, and the Macy’s app sends special deals for every five minutes a shopper stays in a store.

“The crazy mad rush to camp out and the crazy mad rush to hit the doorbusters have really made people think, ‘I’m just going to stay home on Black Friday,’ ” said Carey Rossi, editor in chief of ConsumerSearch.com, a review site. “This is going to invite some people back and say, ‘You know what? It doesn’t have to be that crazy.’ ”

Part of the retailers’ strategy is to slap back at online stores like Amazon.com, which last year used apps to pick off shoppers as they browsed in physical stores. But the stores are also recognizing that shopping on the Friday after Thanksgiving need not require an overnight wait in line, a helmet and elbow pads. A smartphone gives shoppers enough of an edge.

“This takes away that frantic Black Friday anxiety,” said Lawrence Fong, co-founder of BuyVia, an app that sends people price alerts and promotions. “While there’s a sport to it, life’s a little too short.”

Denise Fouts, 45, who works repairing fire and water damage in Chandler, Ariz., was already using apps, including Shopkick, Target’s app and one called Black Friday, before Thanksgiving to prepare for Black Friday. “There still are going to be the crowds, but at least I already know ahead of time what I’m going specifically for,” Ms. Fouts said.

Last week, Macy’s released an update to its app with about 300 Black Friday specials and their location. In the Herald Square store, for instance, the $49.99 cashmere sweater specials will be in the Broadway side of the fifth-floor women’s department.

“With the speed that people are shopping with on Black Friday, they need to be really efficient about how they’re spending their time,” said Jennifer Kasper, group vice president for digital media at Macy’s.

When shoppers keep the app open, Macy’s will start sending special deals to the phone every five minutes. The deals are not advertised elsewhere.

Walmart has had an app for several years, but recently introduced an in-store mode, which shows things like the current circular or food tastings when a shopper is near a certain location. Twelve percent of Walmart’s mobile revenue now comes from when a person is inside a store.

For Black Friday, the app will have a map of each store, with the precise location of the top sale items — so planners can determine the best way to run. “The blitz items are not where you think they would be, because for traffic reasons, maybe the hot game console is in the lawn and garden center,” said Gibu Thomas, senior vice president for mobile and digital for Walmart Global eCommerce.

Target is also testing a way-finding feature on its app at stores that include some in Seattle, Chicago and Los Angeles. If a shopper types in an item, the app will give its location.

Other app makers are betting that shoppers want apps that pull in information from many stores.

RedLaser, an eBay app, lets shoppers use their phones to compare prices and recently started using location data to give shoppers personalized promotions when they walk into stores, including items not on store shelves at Best Buy, for instance. RetailMeNot, which offers e-commerce coupons, now has offline coupons that will pop up on users’ cellphones when they step near 500 malls on Black Friday.

“Consumers are not going to download 40 different apps for 40 different stores,” said Cyriac Roeding, co-founder of Shopkick, a location-based app that gives shoppers points, redeemable for perks, when they walk into stores or scan certain items.

For Black Friday, Shopkick is publishing what it calls a little black book with the top doorbusters. Shoppers will earn extra points and rewards for shopping on Black Friday.

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LAPD plans major presence for Black Friday

Black Friday is a day for burning off those Thanksgiving calories with some intense Christmas shopping. But for the Los Angeles Police Department, it's become a day of surveillance, crowd control and crime-suppression tactics.

Helicopters will buzz above some shopping centers, and below, a cavalry of LAPD officers will patrol on bikes and horses. From store rooftops, officers will scan the crowds below looking for unruly behavior. Electronic signs near stores will warn customers about becoming victims of theft as they navigate the mass of humanity looking for bargains.

The deployments are part of a new strategy by the LAPD to deal with the retail roller derby that comes after Thanksgiving. In addition to stationing officers around shopping centers, the LAPD has been visiting stores across the city this week, talking to managers about the psychology of the frantic shopper.

Officials said the push was prompted by a series of incidents at Black Friday sales, notably one last year at a Porter Ranch Wal-Mart in which two dozen people were injured when a woman unleashed pepper spray during a frantic battle for some discounted video games.

LAPD Cmdr. Andy Smith said he hopes people will behave. But "like Chief [Charlie] Beck says, we are not in the optimism business."

The LAPD would not say exactly how many officers it will deploy Friday, but the number is expected to be considerable. In the Valley division, for example, officials have put together detailed tactical plans for each major shopping center, using mobile command posts and both officers and cadets.

"For some people, shopping is a competitive sport," Smith said. "But it should not be a contact sport."

Even some big retailers — which for years fueled the shopping frenzy with aggressive marketing and deep discounts — are trying to rein in some of the excitement they create this year.

Fernando Reyes, manager of the Wal-Mart in Porter Ranch where the pepper spray incident occurred, said his main goal is to avoid a repeat of the chaos. He has met with the LAPD and plans new crowd-control strategies, including setting up special check-out lines for some sales items.

The store also plans to give out vouchers to shoppers for "door buster" merchandise to avoid people jockeying for the limited supplies. If a customer did not get such a voucher, Reyes said there should be a "reasonable expectation" that they won't get the sales item.

The LAPD has talked to other retailers about creating "time-specific entry passes" that would stagger the number of shoppers who are inside the store at any given time. In a flier the department is handing out to store managers, officials note that "this process has been very successful at many of the major theme parks and can help to ensure organized, safe entry into your business."

The LAPD has also suggested that retailers avoid stacking sales items on pallets "to mitigate crowd aggression."

Despite all the headlines, Black Friday misbehavior is still relatively rare. Police report a scattering of brawls, assaults and various larcenies each year. But it's the headlines that people remember. A few years ago, gunfire erupted in a crowded Palm Desert Toys R Us, killing two people. Four years ago, a Long Island, N.Y., Wal-Mart employee was trampled to death by a crush of customers who toppled large glass doors.

Aimee Drolet Rossi, a consumer psychologist at UCLA's Anderson School of Management, said it should not be surprising that some people act out on Black Friday. Research on rats and monkeys has shown that they become more aggressive when placed in a crowded situation, and Rossi said humans are no different.

"Crowding leads people to behave less altruistically, in part because people's sense of responsibility lags when a lot of other people are around," she said. "People assume that other people will step up to help someone who is in distress."

She also said research shows that people are less likely to make eye contact with people in crowded situations, and this can cause them to make bad decisions.

Retailers bear some of the responsibility for what's happened, she said.

"They set up this environment that encourages this competitive shopping ...." Rossi said. "They offer only 10 TV sets at the ridiculously low price. It's really no surprise people get upset when they don't get one."

This year, some stores are actually opening on Thanksgiving Day, and people are already lined up.

Tony Juarez, a 30-year-old North Hollywood resident, has been camping outside the Porter Ranch Best Buy for a week. It's been an eight-year tradition for Juarez and his friends, who set up a makeshift campsite with portable chairs, blankets and a heater. A few feet away, other campers actually brought tents.

This year, Juarez is hoping to score some cut-priced TVs and laptops. A few years ago, he got a $200 Toshiba laptop and is still crowing about the bargain.

He was at the Best Buy when the pepper spray incident occurred at the Wal-Mart next door. He watched, stunned, as a stampede of shoppers streamed out of the store and scores of police arrived.

This year, he's definitely noticed more police presence at the shopping center, and that has been comforting.

"We are seeing an LAPD car every five minutes. It's definitely safer," he said.

But more police isn't enough for South L.A. resident Lynnette Jordan, who plans to stay away from the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw mall on Friday.

"You are still going to deal with folks basically fighting to get into the door to get the item they so desperately want," Jordan said. "No matter what, some people will act the fool because that's what they do."

andrew.blankstein@latimes.com

hector.becerra@latimes.com

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6 actually useful smartphone apps to get you through Black Friday

Gracefully navigate the shopping madness by doing a little prep work on your iPhone or Android before you leave the house

Ah, the holidays! Big-box stores compete with online behemoths for customers, while customers compete with each other to get the best Black Friday savings. And, in a new digital twist, Black-Friday-focused apps are competing with one another for downloads. Developers are creating all sorts of helpful ways for customers to sniff out bargains, track spending, and manage their nephew’s wish list. Now that The Week has advised you on Black Friday “deals” to avoid, here’s a rundown of some of the more helpful apps out there: 

Black Friday by BradsDeals
The folks behind BradsDeals.com, a site known for tracking down coupons and discounts, put together this helpful Black Friday app that shows you all the leaked ads and discounted items from 100 major retailers like Sears, Kohls, and Macy’s. Who needs a newspaper? (iPhone-only)

Black Friday Deal Finder by Fat Wallet
Search for deals using variables like free shipping, doorbusters, online availability, rebates, and more. Useful for planning but also recommended for any quick-witted shopper who wants to do in-store product comparisons. (iPhone-only)

Black Friday app from DealNews
Both PC World and PC Magazine voted DealNews tops in its category thanks to its exhaustive, well-organized catalog. Like the other apps, this one lets you browse “leaked” and “confirmed” ads from major retailers so you can plot out your plan of attack beforehand. (iPhone, Android)

ShopSavvy Barcode Scanner
Use your phone’s camera to scan products for instant price comparisons — no need to painstakingly input your search queries while angry shoppers slam you with their carts. If there’s a better deal around you or online, this app will let you know. (iPhone, Android)

Wunderlist
Was it your nephew Charlie who wanted the new Call of Duty game? Or was that your boss’ son Jimmy? Instead of checking your list twice, try WunderList, a super-simple task management tool that syncs lists on your desktop, iPhone, and more. (iPhone, Android) 

Mint.com Personal Finance
The whirlwind holiday shopping season can make it difficult to keep your finances in check. One solution: Mint, a virtual-money manager that automatically keeps tabs on your bank and credit card accounts to help you master your budget with a friendly, easy-to-use interface. Best of all, it’s useful well after January rolls around; no wonder TIME Magazine named it one of the 50 best iPhone apps out there. (iPhone, Android)

SEE ALSO: Get rich quick: 6 people who accidentally found a fortune

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McCartney, Houston, Dylan lead Grammy Hall of Fame inductees

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Music by Paul McCartney, Bob Dylan, Elton John and late singers Whitney Houston and James Brown will be inducted into the 2013 Grammy Hall of Fame, The Recording Academy said on Wednesday.

Paul McCartney & Wings‘ 1973 album “Band on the Run,” long credited with reigniting McCartney’s career following the Beatles’ split in 1970, was one of the 27 new inductees into the Grammy Hall of Fame, on display at the Grammy Museum in downtown Los Angeles.

Houston‘s self-titled 1985 debut album was also named an inductee, following the singer’s sudden death aged 48 in February this year. Australian hard-rock band AC/DC’s top-selling 1980 “Back in Black” album was also named a new entry.

The Recording Academy, which also runs the Grammy awards, picks songs and albums from all genres that are at least 25 years old, with either “qualitative or historical significance” to be considered annually for the Grammy Hall of Fame by a committee.

“Memorable for being both culturally and historically significant, we are proud to add (the 2013 inductees) to our growing catalog of outstanding recordings that have become part of our musical, social and cultural history,” The Recording Academy President and CEO Neil Portnow said in a statement.

As well as albums, the Grammy Hall of Fame also includes songs of historic and cultural significance and the inductees for 2013 see a range of classic American songs.

Iconic Dylan song “The Times They Are A-Changing” from 1964, R&B singer Ray Charles’ 1961 tune “Hit the Road Jack,” Rat Pack star Frank Sinatra’s 1980 “Theme from ‘New York, New York’”, and ‘Godfather of soul’ James Brown‘s 1965 classic “I Got You (I Feel Good)” were all honored.

Other 2013 inductees include Elton John‘s 1970 self-titled second album and American debut, Billy Joel’s 1973 hit “The Piano Man” and Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton’s 1953 R&B classic “Hound Dog,” later covered by Elvis Presley.

(Reporting By Eric Kelsey; Editing by Piya Sinha-Roy and Andrew Hay)

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Well: Officials Warn Against Baby Sleep Positioners

Health officials are warning parents not to use a special device designed to help keep babies in certain positions as they sleep. The device, called a sleep positioner, has been linked to at least 13 deaths in the last 15 years, officials with two federal agencies said on Wednesday.

“We urge parents and caregivers to take our warning seriously and stop using these sleep positioners,” Inez Tenenbaum, the chairman of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, said in a statement.

The sleep positioner devices come primarily in two forms. One is a flat mat with soft bolsters on each side. The other, known as a wedge-style positioner, looks very similar but has an incline, keeping a child in a very slight upright position.

Makers of the devices claim that by keeping infants in a specific position as they sleep, they can prevent several conditions, including acid reflux and flat head syndrome, a deformation caused by pressure on one part of the skull. Many are also marketed to parents as a way to help reduce a child’s risk of sudden infant death syndrome, or SIDS, which kills thousands of babies every year, most between the ages of 2 months and 4 months.

But the devices have never been shown in studies to prevent SIDS, and they may actually raise the likelihood of sudden infant death, officials say. One of the leading risk factors for sudden infant death is placing a baby on his or her stomach at bedtime, and health officials have routinely warned parents to lay babies on their backs. They even initiated a “Back to Sleep” campaign in the 1990s, which led to a sharp reduction in sudden infant deaths.

With the positioner devices, if an infant rolls onto the stomach, the child’s mouth and nose can press up against a bolster or some other part of the device, leading to suffocation. Even if placed on the back, a child can move up or down in the positioner, “entrapping its face against a bolster or becoming trapped between the positioner and the crib side,” Gail Gantt, a nurse consultant with the Food and Drug Administration, said in an e-mail. Or the child might scoot down the wedge in a way that causes the child’s mouth and nose to press into the device.

“The baby’s movement may also cause the positioner to flip on top of the baby, trapping the baby underneath the positioner or between the positioner and the side of the crib,” she said.

Of the 13 babies known to have suffocated in a sleep positioner since 1997, most died after they rolled from their sides onto their stomachs. The Consumer Product Safety Commission has also received dozens of reports of babies who were placed on their sides or backs, “only to be found later in hazardous positions within or next to the product,” the F.D.A. said in a statement.

Many baby books for new parents specifically urge against using sleep positioners, and the American Academy of Pediatrics does not support their use for SIDS prevention. Though the F.D.A. has never approved the positioners for the prevention of SIDS, it has in the past approved a number of the devices for the prevention of gastroesophageal reflux disease and flat head syndrome. But the agency said that in light of the new safety data, it believed any benefits from using the devices were outweighed by the risk of suffocation.

As of Wednesday, the agency is explicitly advising parents to stop using sleep positioners, and it has asked manufacturers of the devices to submit clinical data showing that the benefits of their products outweigh the risk of serious harm. In addition to avoiding the devices, experts say, parents should keep things like pillows, comforters, quilts and bumpers away from their infants and their cribs. Soft bedding can increase the likelihood of a baby suffocating.

“The safest crib is a bare crib,” Dr. Susan Cummins, a pediatric expect with the F.D.A., said in a statement. “Always put your baby on his or her back to sleep. An easy way to remember this is to follow the ABC’s of safe sleep – Alone on the Back in a bare Crib.”

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DealBook: Judge Approves Hostess Brands' Plan to Close Down

A federal bankruptcy judge approved Hostess Brands’ plans to wind itself down, officially putting the Twinkies brand on the auction block.

In granting Hostess’s motion, Judge Robert D. Drain of the Federal Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York cited the need for a quick and orderly shuttering of the company to avoid letting its assets molder. The alternative, a less-structured Chapter 7 liquidation would be far worse.

“This estate will suffer substantial diminution if this wind-down plan is not quickly implemented,” he said. “It appears to me that the debtors have taken the right course.”

Judge Drain’s motion spells the almost certain end of Hostess, an 82-year-old bakery that survived the Great Depression, numerous wars and countless low-carb diets. But the company, whose stable of sugary confections also include Ho Hos and Ding Dongs, struggled for more than a decade with the public’s increasing fondness for lower-calorie, less-processed snacks.

During a hearing that stretched for more than four hours, company executives and advisers espoused a simple message: expedited sales of the company’s brands will raise the maximum amount of money possible. And letting Hostess begin shutting its doors for good sooner would be kinder to employees.

Advisers sounded confident that the liquidation process, which is expected to take about a year, could yield big recoveries for creditors.

“Since we filed motion, we have received a flood of inquiries and think there can be a healthy competition,” Heather Lennox, a lawyer for the company, said at Wednesday’s hearing.

Hostess’ chief executive, Gregory Rayburn, testified in court on Wednesday that he needed to lay off 15,000 of the company’s 18,500 employees that afternoon, so that they could begin applying for unemployment benefits. Such speed, he said, was necessary for maximizing the value of what remained of the 82-year-old company.

“From this point forward, I need two things to happen,” he said. “I need to maximize the value of the estate, and I need to do the best thing for the employees.”

He also asked the court to quickly approve Hostess’s plans to liquidate, given that the value of its brands and assets had begun deteriorating since factory production lines shut down on Friday.

“The longer you’re off the shelf, the less value you’re going to get,” Mr. Rayburn said.

An investment banker for Hostess contended that, at this point, the company could fetch significant sums for its host of sugary treats. Joshua Scherer of Perella Weinberg Partners testified that over the course of the 10-month-old Chapter 11 case, he had received six takeover bids — though none were acceptable.

Since Hostess announced its intentions to liquidate, it has received expressions of interest from a wide range of potential buyers. Without naming names, Mr. Scherer said that they included regional bakeries. national competitors and retail customers along the lines of Wal-Mart Stores and Kroger.

The banker added that his firm plans to reach out to approximately 145 financial firms, including private equity shops and liquidators, to gauge their interest. Investment concerns like Sun Capital Partners and C. Dean Metropoulos & Company, the owner of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer, have already said that they were interested in buying some or all of Hostess’s remains.

(Sun Capital has said that it would like to buy all of Hostess, not only preserving the company but also improving its toxic relationship with employee unions.)

Mr. Scherer said that he expected asset sales to reap “significant values,” perhaps more than $1 billion.

The hearing followed a last-minute mediation session between Hostess and its bakery employees union on Tuesday. That gathering, convened at the behest of Judge Drain, was meant to resolve a nearly two-week-old strike that company executive said fatally crippled its operations.

But after several hours of negotiations, the mediation talks collapsed.

“I wanted to acknowledge the tragedy that’s taking place here,” Richard Seltzer, a lawyer for the Teamsters, one of the company’s major unions, said in court.

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Feds charge former hedge fund manager in big insider-trading case

WASHINGTON -- Federal prosecutors on Tuesday charged a former hedge fund portfolio manager with securities fraud in connection with what they said was the most lucrative insider-trading case ever prosecuted.

In complaints filed in New York, authorities said investment advisors and hedge funds made more than $276 million in illegal profits or avoided losses by trading before the announcement in 2008 of negative results from clinical trials for an Alzheimer's disease drug being developed by Elan Corp. and Wyeth.

Prosecutors charged Mathew Martoma, a former portfolio manager at CR Intrinsic, an unregistered investment adviser, with securities fraud for allegedly illegally using information about the clinical trial results that he obtained from a neurologist at a hospital involved in the testing.

The criminal complaint did not name the neurologist, which it said was a cooperating witness in the case.

The Securities and Exchange Commission filed a a related civil suit Tuesday against Martoma, CR Intrinsic and Dr. Sidney Gilman, a neurology professor at the University of Michigan Medical School. The SEC suit said Gilman was chairman of the safety monitoring committee overseeing the clinical trials of the Alzheimer's drug.

Martoma met Gilman some time between 2006 and 2008 through paid consultations, the SEC complaint says. "During these consultations, Gilman provided Martoma with material, nonpublic information about the ongoing trial," the SEC complaint said.

In mid-July 2008, "Gilman provided Martoma with the actual, detailed results of the clinical trial" before an official announcement on July 29, 2008, the SEC said.

The FBI, SEC and U.S. attorney's office in New York scheduled a 12:30 p.m. EST news conference to discuss the case.

"The charges unsealed today describe cheating coming and going – specifically, insider trading first on the long side, and then on the short side, on a scale that has no historical precedent," said Preet Bharara, U.S. attorney for Manhattan.  "As alleged, by cultivating and corrupting a doctor with access to secret drug data, Mathew Martoma and his hedge fund benefited from what might be the most lucrative inside tip of all time."

Follow Jim Puzzanghera on Twitter and Google+.

Also:

Senate moves insider trading bill to Obama's desk.

Baseball star Eddie Murray settles insider-trading investigation.

Former Goldman Sachs director Rajat Gupta guilty of insider trading.

http://articles.latimes.com/2012/aug/17/business/la-fi-sec-murray-20120818

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Camembert to clocks: Dali’s genius on show in Paris

PARIS (Reuters) – The broadest-ever retrospective of Salvador Dali, opening in Paris this week, seeks to move beyond the shameless self-promotion that the 20th century Surrealist was often derided for and stress his indelible influence on artists today.

Once dubbed “Avida Dollars” for his love of money, Dali is regarded by some as little more than a marketing product, his Spanish home an obligatory tourist stop, his trademark melting watches the inspiration for money-spinning souvenirs.

But a new show at the Pompidou Centre lays bare the extent of his creative genius, exploring how his experiments with painting, cinema, advertising and installations influenced movements from Pop Art to today’s performance art.

The show, which runs from November 21 to March 25, is set to be a blockbuster of the Parisian art calendar. The last Dali retrospective at the Pompidou in 1979 remains the most visited exhibition in the museum’s history.

“There’s this vision we have of there being a good Dali, the Surrealist, and then the one who came after, who made money,” said exhibition curator Jean-Michel Bouhours.

“We needed to go beyond this distinction between the good and the bad and show how the experimental Dali was extraordinarily important in the history of art and the artistic models that developed in the 60s and 70s.”

The exhibition features some 200 works by the Spanish master, including the famous 1931 “The Persistence of Memory” with melting pocket watches, which Dali said was inspired by watching camembert cheese liquefying in the sun.

Also on show are dozens of works on paper, projects for stage and screen, photographs and films such as the 1929 “Un Chien Andalou“, written with Spanish director Luis Bunuel.

His designs for ballet, decorative arts and even a pavilion for the 1939 New York World Fair earned him the derision of fellow Surrealists such as Andre Breton.

But Dali saw mass media as a more efficient way than painting of getting across his “paranoid critique” of the world.

His 1935 installation, “Mae West’s Face Which May be Used As An Apartment” with its lip-shaped sofa showed an obsession with celebrity that would later influence the Pop Art of Andy Warhol.

Born Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dali in 1904 in the Catalan town of Figueres, Spain, Dali remains a controversial artist, loved for his creative genius but dismissed by some as a madman and hated for his at times grotesque artistic vision.

Although an anarchist in his youth and deeply attached to his native Catalonia, he was criticized for later declaring himself a monarchist, turning to religion and moving closer to the post-war authoritarian regime of Francisco Franco.

His love of show business and manic declarations such as “Surrealism is me”, alienated many. But he is cited as an influence for many artists such as Damien Hirst and Jeff Koons.

Dali died of heart failure in Figueres in 1989, seven years after the death of his wife and muse Gala.

(Reporting By Vicky Buffery, editing by Paul Casciato)

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Global Update: Meningitis Vaccine Gets Longer Window Without Refrigeration

In what may prove to be a major advance for Africa’s “meningitis belt,” regulatory authorities have decided that a new meningitis vaccine could be stored without refrigeration for up to four days.

The announcement was made last week at a conference in Atlanta of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. While a few days may seem trivial, the hardest part of protecting poor countries is often keeping a vaccine cold while moving it from electrified cities to villages with no power. In antipolio drives, for example, the freezers, generators and fuel needed to make ice for the shoulder bags of vaccinators can cost more than the vaccine.

The new vaccine, MenAfriVac, made in India for 50 cents a dose, was introduced in 2010. In bad years, epidemics during the hot harmattan winds have killed as many as 25,000 Africans and disabled 50,000 more. In Chad this year, vaccination drove down cases to near zero in districts where it was used, while others nearby had serious outbreaks.

Experts decided that the vaccine is safe for four days as long as it stays below 104 degrees.

While temperatures get higher than that in Africa, said Dr. Godwin Enwere, medical director for the Meningitis Vaccine Project, teams normally get the vaccine out of coolers at dawn, drive to villages and finish before the day heats up. Other experts said it should be kept in the shade and monitored with colored paper “dots” that darken after hours in the heat.

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