Handset makers scurry to join Year of the Phablet

SINGAPORE/HONG KONG (Reuters) – Call it phablet, phonelet, tweener or super smartphone, but the clunky mobile phone – closer in size to a tablet than the smartphone of a couple of years back – is here to stay.

A surprise hit of 2012, it is drawing in more users, more handset makers and is shaping the way we consume content.

“We expect 2013 to be the year of the phablet,” said Neil Mawston, UK-based executive director of Strategy Analytics‘ global wireless practice.

While Samsung Electronics Co Ltd has blazed a trail with its once-mocked Galaxy Note devices, now other manufacturers are scurrying to catch up.

At this week’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Chinese telecommunications giants ZTE Corp and Huawei Technologies Co Ltd will launch their own.

ZTE, which collaborated with Italy’s designer Stefano Giovannoni for the Nubia phablet, is scheduled to launch its 5-inch Grand S, while Huawei brings out the Ascend Mate, sporting a whopping 6.1-inch screen, making it only slightly smaller than Amazon’s Kindle Fire tablet.

“Users have realized that a nearly 5-inch screen smartphone isn’t such a cumbersome device,” said Joshua Flood, senior analyst at ABI Research in Britain.

Driving the phablet’s shift to the mainstream is a confluence of trends. Users prefer larger screens because they are consuming more visual content on mobile devices than before, and using them less for voice calls – the phablet’s weak spot.

And as WiFi-only tablets become more popular, so has interest among commuters in devices that combine the best of both, while on the move.

According to the latest Ericsson Mobility Report, the monthly data traffic for every smartphone will rise fourfold between now and 2018 to 1,900 megabytes.

The upshot is a market for phablets that will quadruple in value to $ 135 billion in three years, according to Barclays. Shipments of gadgets that are 5 inches or bigger in screen size will surge by nearly nine-fold to 228 million during the same period, though estimates vary because no one can agree on where smartphones stop and phablets start.

But that’s the point, some say.

“I think phone size was a preconceived notion based on voice usage,” said John Berns, a Singapore-based executive who works in the information technology industry. He recently upgraded his Note for the newer Note 2 and bought another for his girlfriend for Christmas. “Smaller was better until phones got smart, became visual.”

Samsung has been both the engine and beneficiary. While other players shipped devices with larger screens earlier – Dell Inc launched its Streak in 2010 – it was only when the Korean behemoth launched the Galaxy Note in late 2011, with its 5.3-inch screen, that users took an interest.

“The Streak was launched at a time when 3-inch smartphones were standard and the leap to a 5-inch Streak was a jump too far for consumers,” says Strategy Analytics’ Mawston.

“The Galaxy Note was launched when 4-inch smartphones had become commonplace, and the leap to 5-inch was no longer such a chasm.”

THE BIGGER, THE BETTER

Since then Samsung has bet big on bigger: its updated Note has a 5.5-inch screen and its flagship Galaxy S3 – the best-selling smartphone in the third quarter of 2012 – has a screen that puts it in the phablet category for some analysts.

Samsung accounted for around three quarters of all phablets shipped last year, according to Barclays’ Taipei-based analyst Dale Gai.

Samsung’s marketing heft has paved the way for others. LG Electronics Inc accounted for 14 percent of shipments in the third quarter of last year, according to Strategy Analytics.

HTC Corp’s 5-inch Butterfly – called the Droid DNA in the United States – has been selling well in places where Samsung is less dominant, according to Taipei-based Yuanta Securities analyst Dennis Chan. The first batch sold out soon after its December launch in Taiwan.

“I don’t think we can say that Samsung invented phablets,” said Lv Qianhao, head of handset strategy at ZTE. “But it did do a lot to promote this product category, which helped create tremendous demand.”

Phablets are also proving popular in emerging markets.

A poll of nearly 5,000 readers of Yahoo’s Indonesian website chose Samsung’s Galaxy Note 2 as their favorite mobile phone of 2012, ahead of the iPhone 5.

Kristian Tjahjono, a technology journalist who posted the poll, said phablets were a natural fit for Indonesians who liked tablets but also liked making phone calls.

But while those in such markets who can afford them are going for the high-end devices, the door is opening for cheaper models. Tjahjono pointed to Lenovo’s 5-inch S880, which has a lower resolution screen and sells for about $ 250, which is around a third of the price of Galaxy Note 2.

SWEET SPOT

Falling component prices will add to demand. The total cost of an upper-end phablet, its bill of materials, will likely fall to 2,000 yuan ($ 323) this year, says Gai from Barclays, and will halve within two years.

“One thousand yuan is a very sweet spot for China,” he said.

India is also a fan.

Vivek Deshpande, who manages global strategy for Shenzhen-based mobile phone maker Zopo, says that while the Indian and Chinese markets are different, they both share a common appetite for aspirational devices: phones big enough for their owners to show off. This is changing the direction of lower end players.

“Zopo’s primary focus is now on phablets,” said Deshpande.

Even Samsung is pushing its own creation downmarket: In Las Vegas it will unveil the Galaxy Grand, a 5-inch device that lacks some of the resolution and muscle of its bigger brethren but will be aimed at markets like India. There is a version offering a dual SIM slot, a popular feature for those wanting to arbitrage cheaper call and data plans.

As phablets slide into the mainstream, handset makers are trying to find ways of differentiating.

As well as hiring Italian designer Giovannoni better known for his minimalist, sleek bathrooms, ZTE also came up with an onscreen keypad that inclines to one side of the screen, depending on whether the user is left- or right-handed.

Samsung, however, not only has first mover advantage, it can also build on its expertise in display.

Barclay’s Gai says Samsung is expected to introduce a thinner, unbreakable AMOLED screen which will leave room for bigger batteries.

“That will put Samsung in good stead to still dominate the market,” he said. Despite pressure in China, Gai estimates Samsung’s share of smartphones with 5-inch or larger screens to fall only from 73 percent in 2012 to 58 percent in 2016, which is still the lion’s share.

By then consumers will see the phablet for what it is, says Horace Dediu, a Finnish analyst who runs a technology blog asymco.com. Its rise is part of a wider march of computing power into wherever we reside – the living room, the train, bed or work.

“It makes sense that we’re moving towards a time where we are served not by a computer or a netbook or a phone, but rather that we have these screens scattered around and available for us to play with,” he said. “In a way the phablet is not a bulky phone but a very delicate computer.”

(Editing by Emily Kaiser)

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NBC execs say it’s not a ‘shoot-’em-up’ network

PASADENA, Calif. (AP) — NBC executives said Sunday they are conscious about the amount of violence they air in the wake of real-life tragedies like the Connecticut school shooting, but have made no changes in what has gone on the air or what is planned.

NBC isn’t a “shoot-’em-up” network, said network entertainment President Jennifer Salke.

The level of violence on television, in movies and video games has been looked at as a contributing factor — along with the availability of guns and a lack of mental health services — in incidents such as the Dec. 14 attack in a Newtown, Conn., school where 20 first-graders and six educators were killed.

Like many in Hollywood, NBC questioned a link between what is put on the air and what is happening in society.

“It weighs on all of us,” said NBC Entertainment Chairman Robert Greenblatt. “Most of the people at this network have children and really care about the shows that we’re putting out there. It’s always something that’s been on our mind but this brought it to the forefront.”

NBC hasn’t needed to take any tangible steps like minimizing violence in its programming or deemphasizing guns, Salke said, because NBC didn’t have much violence on the air. It might be different “if we were the ‘shoot-’em-up’ network, she said.

She didn’t name such a network, but said violence might be an issue on a network that airs many crime procedural shows. That’s a staple of CBS’ lineup. Greenblatt, who was head of Showtime when the “Dexter” series about a serial killer was developed, said CBS’ “Criminal Minds” is “worse than ‘Dexter’ ever was.”

Within an hour after both executives spoke, NBC showed reporters at a news conference highlights of its show “Revolution” that included a swordfight, a standoff between two men with guns, a bloodied man, a building blown up with a flying body and a gunfight.

Later clips of the upcoming series “Deception” featured several shots of a bloodied, dead body.

NBC also is developing a drama, “Hannibal,” based on one of fiction’s most indelible serial killers, Hannibal Lecter. An airtime for the show hasn’t been scheduled, but it could come this spring or summer.

Salke said there is more violence in Fox’s upcoming drama “The Following,” also about a serial killer, than there will be in “Hannibal.” Much of the violence in the upcoming NBC show, created by former “Heroes” producer Bryan Fuller, is implied and not gratuitous.

“We respect the talent and like what he is doing, so we are standing behind him,” Salke said. She said there’s been a spate of programs about creepy killers because they’ve been such indelible characters.

Greenblatt said he wasn’t trying to be glib, but one of the best tonics for people upset about real-life violence is to watch an episode of NBC’s “Parenthood.” He said it’s a great example of a family that loves each other and grapples with many issues.

“Ultimately, I think you feel good at the end of the day,” he said.

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Drug-Testing Company Tied to N.C.A.A. Draws Criticism

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A wall in one of the conference rooms at the National Center for Drug Free Sport displays magazine covers, each capturing a moment in the inglorious history of doping scandals in sports.

Steve Hebert for The New York Times

The National Center for Drug Free Sport, in Kansas City, Mo., tries to deter doping with programs for high school, college and professional leagues.

Monica Almeida/The New York Times

Don Catlin, formerly of U.C.L.A.’s Olympic Analytical Lab, has raised questions about drug testing at colleges.

The images show Ben Johnson, the sprinter who lost his 1988 Olympic gold medal after testing positive; and Barry Bonds, the tarnished home run king; and Lyle Alzado, one of the first pro football players to admit to steroid use.

“People always assume that it’s the athletes at the top of their sport or the top of their game that are using,” said Frank Uryasz, Drug Free Sport’s founder and president. “But I can assure you that’s not the case. There’s always that desire to be the best, to win. That permeates all level of sport — abuse where you just wouldn’t expect it.”

Over the past quarter-century, athletes like Johnson, Bonds and Alzado stirred widespread concern about doping in sports.

Professional leagues without drug-testing programs have put them in; leagues with drug-testing programs have strengthened them. Congress and medical experts have called on sports officials at all levels to treat doping like a scourge.

It was in this budding American culture of doping awareness that Uryasz found a niche business model. He has spent the past decade selling his company’s services to the country’s sports officials.

The company advises leagues and teams on what their testing protocols should look like — everything from what drugs to test for to how often athletes will be tested to what happens to the specimens after testing. It also handles the collection and testing of urine samples, often with the help of subcontractors.

Drug Free Sport provides drug-testing programs for high school, college and professional leagues.

A privately held company with fewer than 30 full-time employees, it counts among its clients Major League Baseball, the N.F.L., the N.B.A., the N.C.A.A. and about 300 individual college programs.

Many, if not all, of the players on the field Monday night for the Bowl Championship Series title game between Alabama and Notre Dame have participated in a drug-testing program engineered by Drug Free Sport.

Uryasz says his company’s programs provide substantial deterrents for athletes who might consider doping.

Critics, however, question how rigorous the company’s programs are. They say Drug Free Sport often fails to adhere to tenets of serious drug testing, like random, unannounced tests; collection of samples by trained, independent officials; and testing for a comprehensive list of recreational and performance-enhancing drugs.

The critics, pointing to a low rate of positive tests, question Drug Free Sport’s effectiveness at catching athletes who cheat. Since the company began running the N.C.A.A.’s drug-testing program in 1999, for example, the rate of positive tests has been no higher than 1 percent in any year — despite an N.C.A.A. survey of student-athletes that indicated at least 1 in 5 used marijuana, a banned substance. (The N.C.A.A. tests for marijuana at championship competitions but not in its year-round program.)

Uryasz said the rate of positive tests was not meaningful. “I don’t spend a lot of time on the percent positive as being an indicator of very much,” he said.

Independent doping experts contend that having a contract with Drug Free Sport allows sports officials to say they take testing seriously without enacting a truly stringent program.

Don Catlin, the former head of U.C.L.A.’s Olympic Analytical Lab, best known for breaking the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative doping ring, oversaw the testing of many of Drug Free Sport’s urine samples when he was at U.C.L.A. He said the work by Drug Free Sport and similar companies could be used to mislead fans.

“The problem with these schools is they all want to say they’re doing drug testing, but they’re not really doing anything I would call drug testing,” he said.

A Company’s Origins

Uryasz said he became interested in working with student-athletes while tutoring them as an undergraduate at Nebraska. After he graduated, he earned an M.B.A. from Nebraska and worked in health care administration in Omaha. He said he heard about an opening at the N.C.A.A. through a friend.

Driven in part by scandals in professional sports, the N.C.A.A. voted at its 1986 annual convention to start a drug-testing program.

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Advertising: Ad Agency Goodby, Silverstein Opens a New York Office

AN advertising agency is rewriting a lyric of “New York, New York” to proclaim, “If I can make it anywhere, I’ll make it there.”

Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, a leading agency with headquarters in San Francisco, is opening an office in New York. The office, temporarily located at 7 World Trade Center, gives Goodby, Silverstein, which was founded in 1983, a New York presence for the first time.

It is the agency’s second office outside of San Francisco, after one in Detroit that opened in 2010 as Goodby, Silverstein, which is owned by the Omnicom Group, began creating campaigns for the Chevrolet division of General Motors.

Two senior executives have relocated from San Francisco to lead the New York office, which will employ 15 to 25 people. They are Christian Haas, 39, who becomes partner and executive creative director, and Nancy Reyes, 37, who becomes associate partner and managing director.

The agency is occupying the temporary space while its permanent location, 200 Varick Street at Houston Street, is being remodeled. Plans call for an opening in April.

The office opens with work from current clients like Comcast, Elizabeth Arden, Google and YouTube. Goodby, Silverstein’s other clients include Adobe, the California Milk Processor Board, Cisco, Frito-Lay, the National Basketball Association, Nestlé and Sonic. Ms. Reyes and Mr. Haas say they are eager to look for new business in New York with the help of the agency’s co-chairmen and creative directors, Jeff Goodby and Rich Silverstein.

In the “Mad Men” era, only a handful of American ad agencies with heavyweight creative credentials were located outside New York, a city so widely regarded as the heart of advertising that the phrase “Madison Avenue” became shorthand for the industry.

That changed in the 1970s as the business began to decentralize, partly because the dire financial and quality-of-life problems in New York led many talented executives to pursue careers elsewhere. Agencies like Goodby, Silverstein became known almost as much for not being in New York — opting instead for cities like Austin, Tex.; Boston; Los Angeles; Miami; Minneapolis; Portland, Ore.; Richmond, Va.; and San Francisco — as for the ads they created.

Some of those agencies eventually added New York outposts. Some opened in New York but later retreated, and some still eschew New York. But declining to take a bite out of the Big Apple is becoming less appealing, primarily because New York has overcome the perception issues that once cost it so dearly.

“We just lose so many people to New York,” Mr. Goodby said in a phone interview last week from San Francisco. “It’s crazy not to access that.”

The executives who founded agencies outside New York did so to “kindle a ‘creative shop’ feeling,” Mr. Goodby said: a feeling they did not believe they could cultivate in a city dominated by giant, tradition-minded agencies. “I don’t think Rich and I felt we needed a New York office,” he said. “In fact, it was more unique to not have one.”

In his presentations to prospective East Coast clients, Mr. Goodby normally includes a slide that addresses why the agency has its headquarters on the West Coast. It reads: “You call it distance. We call it perspective.”

“I think I’m going to ask to have that slide retired,” he said, laughing.

Goodby, Silverstein was started as Goodby, Berlin & Silverstein by three colleagues at Hal Riney & Partners in San Francisco. The third founder, Andy Berlin, left for New York in 1992, three months after Omnicom acquired the 62.5 percent of the agency that it had not already owned, and he has spent the rest of his career there.

There was talk then that Omnicom would transform the agency into its third worldwide network, joining DDB and BBDO, in an expansion that would start with the opening of an office in New York. But a year later, Omnicom bought TBWA International, now TBWA Worldwide, and made that its third network instead.

“San Francisco is so livable, but there’s nothing like New York,” Mr. Silverstein said in an interview last week in Midtown Manhattan, at which he was joined by Mr. Haas and Ms. Reyes. “It’s a cliché, but it’s true. Go East, young man, go East.”

The executives acknowledge the risks of the move. They do not want other agencies to conclude that Goodby, Silverstein is trying to ride in like the cavalry to rescue Madison Avenue. “There’s nothing wrong with what’s going on in New York,” Mr. Silverstein said. “New York doesn’t ‘need’ another ad agency.”

Likewise, Ms. Reyes said, “there’s nothing wrong with what’s going on at Goodby, Silverstein in San Francisco.”

What became clear was that Goodby, Silverstein was losing prospective employees to New York. It was “less about them saying, ‘I’ve got to go to that agency in New York,’ than, ‘I want to be in New York,’ ” Mr. Silverstein said.

In fact, he said, a major reason he and Mr. Goodby finally decided to open an office in New York was that Ms. Reyes and Mr. Haas had confided that they wanted to move there.

Mr. Haas has worked in São Paulo, Brazil, in addition to San Francisco, but he has never worked in New York. “São Paulo is, in a weird way, kind of like New York,” he said, but “the energy, the buzz” of New York are difficult to duplicate.

Ms. Reyes worked at New York agencies like D’Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles and Ogilvy & Mather before leaving in 2003 to join Goodby, Silverstein.

In the last decade, “we lost lots of people in San Francisco to New York,” she said. “We’ll call on them.”

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Obama struggles to nominate, confirm federal judges

WASHINGTON — In September 2005, John G. Roberts Jr., a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, moved up a few blocks onto Capitol Hill to become chief justice of the United States. His seat on the appeals court has remained unfilled ever since.

The vacant seat symbolizes the problems that President Obama had in his first term in quickly nominating judges and winning even routine confirmations in the face of a determined Republican minority. He has had fewer judges confirmed than any first-term president in a quarter of a century, and he is the first chief executive unable to appoint anyone to the powerful D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, which decides challenges to federal regulations.

Firmly in Republican control thanks in part to three appointees of President George W. Bush, the D.C. Circuit recently struck down clean-air rules put forth by the Obama administration for coal-burning power plants. It also threw out a "shareholder democracy" rule that would have made it easier for investors to vote for independent directors of public corporations. Both rules were strongly opposed by business interests.

Though the Constitution says judges are to be approved on a majority vote, the Republican minority used the Senate's 60-vote filibuster rule to slow or block confirmation of Obama's nominees. They included Caitlin Halligan, a former New York state solicitor general, who was nominated in 2010 to fill Roberts' seat on the D.C. Circuit.

Republicans said they opposed Halligan because, as a state attorney, she had argued in support of New York's suit against gun manufacturers. The National Rifle Assn. urged senators to block her, and she won only 54 votes, not enough to end a filibuster.

Obama said he was "deeply disappointed" at "the Republican pattern of obstructionism." But the filibuster was not invented by the Republicans.

When George W. Bush was president, the Democrats used the filibuster to block some of his nominees. Soon after taking office, Bush chose Miguel Estrada and Roberts for the D.C. Circuit. Both were well qualified and, if confirmed, were seen as likely nominees to the Supreme Court. Estrada, a native of Honduras, could have been the first Latino justice.

Republicans took seven tries but were unable to muster the 60 votes needed to break a Democratic filibuster against Estrada for the D.C. Circuit. In 2003, he withdrew his nomination. Roberts, avoiding controversy, was confirmed. But Bush put three more judges on the D.C. Circuit. In Bush's second term, then-Sen. Barack Obama from Illinois voted against the Supreme Court nominations of Roberts and Samuel A. Alito, and he joined a brief bid in 2006 to filibuster against Alito.

When Obama became president in 2009, his former Republican colleagues in the Senate were not inclined to swiftly or easily approve his nominees to the courts. Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the GOP leader, repeatedly delayed votes on judges by invoking a different procedural rule. He refused to give unanimous consent to taking up nominations.

To compound the problem, Obama's team was slow getting started in 2009. The White House focused on winning approval for its first Supreme Court nominee, Sonia Sotomayor. But Obama made only 43 nominations to the lower courts in his first year, less than half the rate of Bush, who made 89 nominations.

The slow start combined with the GOP's go-slow approach to reduce Obama's impact.

When the 112th Congress adjourned last week, the Senate had approved 175 of Obama's judges. By comparison, Bush had 206 judges approved in his first term, and President Clinton had 204 judges confirmed during his first four years.

The number of court vacancies rose during Obama's term, from 57 to 75. During Bush's term, vacancies were reduced from 81 to 41.

Obama's team contributed to the delay by taking months to decide on nominations. But the White House says the Senate has taken far longer than normal to approve his nominees.

Under Bush and Clinton, judicial battles were mostly limited to the appellate courts. Under Obama, even district court nominees, who used to win quick approval, were held up. On average, it took 225 days for an Obama court nominee to win confirmation, up from 154 days in Bush's first term and 98 days in Clinton's.

On Thursday, the White House renominated 33 judicial candidates, including Halligan, who were left hanging when the Senate adjourned. They included nominees from Oklahoma and Maine who could not get a final vote despite strong support from their two home-state Republican senators.

Liberal advocates say the "slow walking" of Obama's nominees must change in the second term.

"We're hopeful. This level of obstruction is unacceptable and can't continue," said Marge Baker, vice president of People for the American Way.

david.savage@latimes.com

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Honduras removes its ambassador to Colombia amid party scandal

TEGUCIGALPA (Reuters) – Honduras has removed its ambassador to Colombia amid reports his personal aide was involved in a wild party held at the embassy of Honduras in Bogota which, according to media, was attended by prostitutes and where cell phones and computers were stolen.

Ambassador Carlos Rodriguez quit his post on Saturday, Honduras’ foreign ministry said in a release, after the government requested his withdrawal.

Rodriguez’s personal aide went out with friends on December 20, picking up some prostitutes in Bogota’s red district before going to the embassy, where they consumed alcohol and trashed the facilities, El Heraldo daily reported.

It was not clear if Rodriguez was present, but the ministry said an investigation was under way.

Last year, about a dozen U.S. Secret Service employees were accused of misconduct for bringing women, some of them prostitutes, back to their hotel rooms ahead of a visit to Colombia by President Barack Obama, in the biggest scandal to hit the agency.

(Reporting By Gustavo Palencia; Editing by Vicki Allen)

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Poet-performer Jayne Cortez dies in NY at age 78

NEW YORK (AP) — Jayne Cortez, a forceful poet, activist and performance artist who blended oral and written traditions into numerous books and musical recordings, has died. She was 78.

The Organization of Women Writers of Africa says Cortez died of heart failure in New York on Dec. 28. She had helped found the group and, while dividing her time between homes in New York and Senegal, was planning a symposium of women writers to be held in Ghana in May.

Cortez was a prominent figure in the black arts movement of the 1960s and ’70s that advocated art as a vehicle for political protest. She cited her experiences trying to register black voters in Mississippi in the early ’60s as a key influence.

A native of Fort Huachuca, Ariz., she was raised in the Watts section of Los Angeles. She loved jazz since childhood and would listen to her parents’ record collection. Don Cherry was among the musicians who would visit her home and her first husband was one of the world’s greatest jazz artists, Ornette Coleman.

Her books included “Scarifications” and “Mouth On Paper” and she recorded often with her band the Firespitters, chanting indictments of racism, sexism and capitalism. She performed all over the world and her work was translated into 28 languages. At the time of her death, she was living with her second husband, the sculptor Melvin Edwards.

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The New Old Age: Murray Span, 1922-2012

One consequence of our elders’ extended lifespans is that we half expect them to keep chugging along forever. My father, a busy yoga practitioner and blackjack player, celebrated his 90th birthday in September in reasonably good health.

So when I had the sad task of letting people know that Murray Span died on Dec. 8, after just a few days’ illness, the primary response was disbelief. “No! I just talked to him Tuesday! He was fine!”

And he was. We’d gone out for lunch on Saturday, our usual routine, and he demolished a whole stack of blueberry pancakes.

But on Wednesday, he called to say he had bad abdominal pain and had hardly slept. The nurses at his facility were on the case; his geriatrician prescribed a clear liquid diet.

Like many in his generation, my dad tended towards stoicism. When he said, the following morning, “the pain is terrible,” that meant agony. I drove over.

His doctor shared our preference for conservative treatment. For patients at advanced ages, hospitals and emergency rooms can become perilous places. My dad had come through a July heart attack in good shape, but he had also signed a do-not-resuscitate order. He saw evidence all around him that eventually the body fails and life can become a torturous series of health crises and hospitalizations from which one never truly rebounds.

So over the next two days we tried to relieve his pain at home. He had abdominal x-rays that showed some kind of obstruction. He tried laxatives and enemas and Tylenol, to no effect. He couldn’t sleep.

On Friday, we agreed to go to the emergency room for a CT scan. Maybe, I thought, there’s a simple fix, even for a 90-year-old with diabetes and heart disease. But I carried his advance directives in my bag, because you never know.

When it is someone else’s narrative, it’s easier to see where things go off the rails, where a loving family authorizes procedures whose risks outweigh their benefits.

But when it’s your father groaning on the gurney, the conveyor belt of contemporary medicine can sweep you along, one incremental decision at a time.

All I wanted was for him to stop hurting, so it seemed reasonable to permit an IV for hydration and pain relief and a thin oxygen tube tucked beneath his nose.

Then, after Dad drank the first of two big containers of contrast liquid needed for his scan, his breathing grew phlegmy and labored. His geriatrician arrived and urged the insertion of a nasogastric tube to suck out all the liquid Dad had just downed.

His blood oxygen levels dropped, so there were soon two doctors and two nurses suctioning his throat until he gagged and fastening an oxygen mask over his nose and mouth.

At one point, I looked at my poor father, still in pain despite all the apparatus, and thought, “This is what suffering looks like.” I despaired, convinced I had failed in my most basic responsibility.

“I’m just so tired,” Dad told me, more than once. “There are too many things going wrong.”

Let me abridge this long story. The scan showed evidence of a perforation of some sort, among other abnormalities. A chest X-ray indicated pneumonia in both lungs. I spoke with Dad’s doctor, with the E.R. doc, with a friend who is a prominent geriatrician.

These are always profound decisions, and I’m sure that, given the number of unknowns, other people might have made other choices. Fortunately, I didn’t have to decide; I could ask my still-lucid father.

I leaned close to his good ear, the one with the hearing aid, and told him about the pneumonia, about the second CT scan the radiologist wanted, about antibiotics. “Or, we can stop all this and go home and call hospice,” I said.

He had seen my daughter earlier that day (and asked her about the hockey strike), and my sister and her son were en route. The important hands had been clasped, or soon would be.

He knew what hospice meant; its nurses and aides helped us care for my mother as she died. “Call hospice,” he said. We tiffed a bit about whether to have hospice care in his apartment or mine. I told his doctors we wanted comfort care only.

As in a film run backwards, the tubes came out, the oxygen mask came off. Then we settled in for a night in a hospital room while I called hospices — and a handyman to move the furniture out of my dining room, so I could install his hospital bed there.

In between, I assured my father that I was there, that we were taking care of him, that he didn’t have to worry. For the first few hours after the morphine began, finally seeming to ease his pain, he could respond, “OK.” Then, he couldn’t.

The next morning, as I awaited the hospital case manager to arrange the hospice transfer, my father stopped breathing.

We held his funeral at the South Jersey synagogue where he’d had his belated bar mitzvah at age 88, and buried him next to my mother in a small Jewish cemetery in the countryside. I’d written a fair amount about him here, so I thought readers might want to know.

We weren’t ready, if anyone ever really is, but in our sorrow, my sister and I recite this mantra: 90 good years, four bad days. That’s a ratio any of us might choose.

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Paula Span is the author of “When the Time Comes: Families With Aging Parents Share Their Struggles and Solutions.”

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Plane Carrying Vittorio Missoni Lost Near Venezuela

A small plane carrying four Italian tourists, including the head of the Missoni fashion business, disappeared off the coast of Venezuela on Friday morning, prompting a sea and air search that continued Saturday.

Vittorio Missoni, 58, an owner of the family-run label famed for its zigzag knitwear, and his wife, Maurizia Castiglioni, were aboard the plane, which was missing after takeoff from the island resort of Los Roques, the company confirmed Saturday. The plane was bound for the international airport near the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, normally a half-hour trip.

Venezuelan officials said that four passengers and two crew members were aboard.

The interior minister, Néstor Reverol, said Friday night on Venezuelan television that the plane, a BN2 Islander, took off from Los Roques at 11:29 a.m. and that its last known position was 10 nautical miles south of Los Roques, an archipelago that is a popular destination among wealthy Europeans, particularly Italians.

The Missoni family is widely revered in the Italian fashion industry for its kaleidoscopic patterns applied over the years to sweaters, home furnishings, beach towels and even water bottles. A wildly popular collaboration with Target in 2011, which revitalized international interest in the label, included a Missoni-print bicycle.

The company was founded in the 1950s by Ottavio and Rosita Missoni, who by the 1970s were among the most prominent designers in Italian fashion. Their three children — Vittorio, Angela and Luca — took over the company in the 1990s, when the family business had lost some of its appeal, and they are credited with turning it around.

Missoni’s sales have been reported as modest, around $100 million annually, but the label has the prominence of a far bigger business as a result of the family’s dashing personalities. Mr. Missoni spearheaded the brand’s global expansion, first as general director of marketing and then as the company’s top executive in Italy and the United States.

A spokeswoman for Missoni said that the family had been informed by the Venezuelan Consulate that the plane had disappeared, but that they had not given up hope as the search continued. Italian news media staked out the company headquarters in Sumirago, Italy, in the foothills of the Alps, where the management met on Saturday. The news agency Ansa reported that family members were congregating in their nearby villa, while Luca Missoni had flown to Venezuela.

The company’s offices in Milan were closed on Saturday, but an employee, who declined to give her name, was answering the phones “because a lot of employees are calling to get information,” she said. “But we have very little news to tell them.”

Several Italian news broadcasts led with the disappearance of Mr. Missoni, noting that small planes have repeatedly taken Italian tourists to their deaths off Los Roques. One plane, carrying 14 people, 8 of them Italian, disappeared five years ago, on Jan. 4, 2008.

Mr. Missoni, an avid sport fisherman, and his wife were on vacation with friends, according to the company. The other passengers have been identified in Italian news reports as Elda Scalvenzi and Guido Foresti.

The Missoni siblings jointly own the company. Vittorio has managed the company’s commercial and manufacturing operations; Angela is the designer; and Luca the creative director.

Part of Mr. Missoni’s strategy has been to focus on the Missoni lifestyle, opening about 40 stores around the world and creating advertising campaigns featuring many of the family’s glamorous members. In one image, Margherita Missoni, a daughter of Angela, appears with Ottavio and Vittorio, who are relaxing on a zigzag weave couch. The family’s compound in Sardinia has been featured in countless articles.

In 2005, the company created a successful fragrance business with Estée Lauder and, under Mr. Missoni’s direction, expanded into the hotel business with the Rezidor Hotel Group. The first Hotel Missoni opened in Edinburgh in 2009.

William Neuman contributed reporting from Caracas, Venezuela, and Elisabetta Povoledo from Rome.

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Congress approves storm relief for Sandy victims

WASHINGTON — Responding to the political furor over delays in disaster aid to the Northeast, Congress on Friday approved a $9.7-billion flood insurance measure, the first installment of potentially $60 billion in Superstorm Sandy relief.

The action comes after New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Rep. Peter T. King of New York, among others, blasted House Speaker John A. Boehner, a fellow Republican, for putting off a vote on a relief measure in the closing hours of the 112th Congress.

The House approved the bill, 354 to 67, with all the no votes coming from Republicans. It then passed the Senate on a voice vote. President Obama is expected to sign the measure.

Christie and New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo called the action a "necessary and critical first step" but "just a down payment" on aid for their states.

"It is now time to go even further and pass the final and more complete, clean disaster aid bill," they said in a joint statement.

Some $51 billion in additional aid is due to come before the House on Jan. 15. The funding is expected to go for such things as repairing the transportation system and other infrastructure and shoring up defenses against future storms. It also would pay for repairs to the docks and walkway at Liberty Island, where the Statue of Liberty remains closed. But the larger bill could run into resistance from conservative lawmakers.

Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) was among those who voted Friday against increasing the borrowing authority for the national flood insurance program, saying, "Yet again, it raised borrowing limits for a program that is currently insolvent without making cuts elsewhere so our grandchildren won't have to pay the bill."

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), also a no vote, called it "irresponsible to raise an insolvent program's debt ceiling without making the necessary reforms."

But Rep. Frank A. LoBiondo (R-N.J.) welcomed the vote and warned that "any additional delays in providing federal aid will be met with fierce resistance" from Christie and his state's congressional delegation.

Democrats were still fuming because it took 68 days after the storm made landfall for the House to act, and because a broader relief bill still must be approved.

"Talk about fiddling while New York City burns," said Rep. Nydia M. Velazquez (D-N.Y.).

"How dare you come to this floor and make people think everything is OK?" added Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr. (D-N.J.), addressing Republicans.

Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.), a freshman who was sworn into office Thursday, told colleagues, "I don't know all the rules of Washington, but it sure seems like the rule here is to put off until tomorrow what should be done today."

The conservative Club for Growth urged a no vote on the flood insurance measure, saying, "Congress should not allow the federal government to be involved in the flood insurance industry in the first place, let alone expand the national flood insurance program's authority."

The Federal Emergency Management Agency warned that without congressional action, funds available to pay claims would be exhausted next week.

In New Jersey alone, Sandy damaged or destroyed 346,000 housing units; of that, 72,397 were covered by the national flood insurance program, according to Rep. Christopher H. Smith (R-N.J.).

Sandy, a hurricane before the center of the storm made landfall Oct. 29 in New Jersey, caused more than 125 deaths in the United States.

richard.simon@latimes.com

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