Chicago sees surge in foreclosure auctions

More than 35,000 homes and small multifamily buildings in the Chicago area completed the foreclosure process last year, the highest number since the housing crisis began, and the vast majority of them became bank-owned.

An increase in foreclosure auctions was expected since lenders shelved many foreclosure cases while state and federal authorities investigated allegations of faulty foreclosure processes. Still, the heightened level of auctions — 35,244 in 2012, compared with 20,281 in 2011 — along with an increase in initial foreclosure filings, shows the local housing market has a long road to recovery, according to the Woodstock Institute.

"There's going to be pain in the housing market in the short term," said Katie Buitrago, senior policy and communications associate at Woodstock. "There's still high levels of filings. Five years into it, there is still work to be done to help people save their homes."

The Chicago-based public policy and research group is expected to release its report on 2012 foreclosure activity Wednesday.

The year-end numbers show that, with few exceptions, all Chicago neighborhoods and suburban communities saw high double-digit percentage gains in auctions last year. Across the six-county area, 91.3 percent of the foreclosed properties were repossessed by lenders. At the same time, notices of initial default sent to homeowners, the first step in the foreclosure process, increased by 2.9 percent last year, to 66,783.

Real estate agents have worried for more than two years about a glut of foreclosed properties — a shadow inventory — that banks would list for sale en masse and cause home values to plunge. That largely has not happened, but the vast number of distressed properties in the market has kept a lid on local home values.

On Tuesday, for instance, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's websites listed 2,415 Cook County homes for sale that the two agencies had repossessed.

Chicago-area home prices, including distressed sales, fell 2.3 percent in December from a year ago, housing analytics firm CoreLogic said Tuesday. Illinois was one of only four states to see home-price depreciation.

The increase in auctions "is a mixed blessing," Buitrago said. "We've been having a lot of trouble in the region with vacant properties that have been languishing for years. The longer they're vacant, the more likely they are to be a destabilizing force in their communities."

Woodstock found that within the city of Chicago, there were 20 communities where more than 1 in 10 owner-occupied one- to four-unit residential buildings and condos went through foreclosure from 2008 to 2012. Five of those neighborhoods are included in the city's 18-month-old Micro-Market Recovery Program, a coordinated effort to stabilize neighborhoods and property values hit hard by foreclosures and vacant buildings.

Also designed to benefit hard-hit areas are the recent establishment of a Cook County Land Bank and legislation waiting for Gov. Pat Quinn's signature that will fast-track the foreclosure process for vacant, abandoned homes while providing financial resources to foreclosure prevention efforts.

mepodmolik@tribune.com

Twitter @mepodmolik

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Chicago, your commute will likely take far longer than you think

You can predict with a high degree of confidence that the time it takes to drive from Point A to B on any given day is unpredictable.

And it's not just snowy or rainy days. It can be any day.

If there is a bright side, it's that Chicago was not the worst.

Residents of the Chicago area are accommodating that increasing uncertainty by setting aside more time each day — just in case — for the commute, new research shows.

For the most important trips, such as going to work, medical appointments, the airport or making a 5:30 p.m. pickup at the child care center to avoid late fees, drivers in northeastern Illinois and northwest Indiana should count on allotting four times as much time as it would take to travel in free-flowing traffic, according to the "Urban Mobility Report" to be released Tuesday by the Texas A&M Transportation Institute. The analysis is based on 2011 data, which are the most recent available.

It is the first time that travel reliability was measured in the 30-year history of the annual report. The researchers created a Planning Time Index geared toward helping commuters reach their destinations on time in more than 95 percent of the trips. A second index, requiring less padding of travel time, would get an employee to work on time four out of five days a week.

"If you plan only for average traffic conditions on your trip in the Chicago area, you are going to be late at least half the time," said Bill Eisele, a senior research engineer at the Transportation Institute who co-authored the study.

The constant unreliability that hovers over commuting is stealing precious time from other activities, crimping lifestyles, causing mounting frustration for drivers and slapping extra costs on businesses that rely on just-in-time shipments to manage inventory efficiently, researchers found.

The Chicago region ranked No. 7 among very large urban areas and 13th among 498 U.S. cities on a scale of the most unreliable highway travel times. The Washington area was the worst. A driver using the freeway system in the nation's capital and surrounding suburbs should budget almost three hours to complete a high-priority trip that would take only 30 minutes in light traffic, the study said.

The Washington area was followed on the list by the metropolitan areas of Los Angeles, New York-Newark, Boston, Dallas-Fort Worth, and Seattle.

Rounding out the top 10, the Chicago metro area was trailed by San Francisco-Oakland, Atlanta, and Houston.

Truck driver Frank Denk said he usually adds an hour or two to his trip through the Chicago area. Sometimes, it's not enough, other times traffic isn't a problem, he said. The one constant, Denk said Monday afternoon while taking a break at the O'Hare Oasis on the Tri-State Tollway, is that it is almost impossible to anticipate correctly.

"Job-wise, it can be very detrimental to truckers," said Denk, who is based in Green Bay, Wis. "All of a sudden, you're not able to make your delivery."

But quadrupling the time to travel back and forth each day? That's excessive, said Mike Hennigan, a 64-year-old accountant who regularly commutes from his Evanston home to his office near the junction of the Kennedy and Edens expressways. He recommends doubling the anticipated travel time.

"I can predict when it's going to be bad," Hennigan said, although he is less optimistic about his travel times when he heads toward downtown.

"Coming into the Loop can be deadly, especially later in the week," Hennigan said.

Overall, traffic congestion in the Chicago region is getting worse as the economy improves, although it's not as severe as the grip that gridlock has taken recently on some other very large metropolitan areas in the U.S., according to the report. The Washington area again topped the list, followed by Los Angeles, San Francisco-Oakland, New York-Newark, Boston, Houston, Atlanta, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Seattle.

No longer being ranked at the very top of the congestion heap provides little consolation for Chicago-area drivers.

What should be a 20-minute jaunt across town in Chicago or the suburbs if highway capacity were sufficient to permit vehicles to travel the speed limit now becomes about an 80-minute ordeal, according to the Texas A&M study. Scheduling 80 minutes for the trip would ensure an on-time arrival 19 out of 20 times, the study concluded.

But that would be similar to treating every day of the year as if it were like Monday, when a moderate snowfall blanketing the Chicago region smacked traffic into slow motion during the morning rush.

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The New Old Age Blog: In Blended Families, Responsibility Blurs

Every year, Fran McDowell waited for the summer week when she would sing in a choral festival in the North Carolina mountains, then spend a few days in a lakeside cabin with close women friends.

That getaway grew more complicated to arrange — but perhaps more necessary — after her husband, Herb Beadle, was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. They had a “gloriously happy” marriage — her first, his second — for 11 years, and she was more than willing to care for him in sickness as in health. But he could no longer manage alone in their Atlanta home.

For a few years, other family members pitched in to allow Ms. McDowell her cherished vacation. Eventually, though, she had to ask her husband’s daughter, a medical professional in another state, to take him into her home for a week.

She said no, then yes. Then, the day before Ms. McDowell was to drive him there, her stepdaughter again refused, leaving no time for alternate arrangements. If this had been her biological child, “I would have said, ‘Come on, don’t do this to me,’” Ms. McDowell said. Instead, reluctant to make waves, she canceled her trip.

“I think confrontation is riskier for stepparents,” she told me. “I was the compliant one who would bite my tongue rather than say what I thought.”

Ms. McDowell never told her stepdaughter, or anyone in the family, how angry and disappointed she was, or how difficult it was becoming to care for their father, who died three years ago at 86. She told the members of her dementia caregivers support group instead.

It was that group’s leader, Moira Keller, who e-mailed me to suggest this topic. A clinical social worker with the Sixty Plus program at Piedmont Atlanta Hospital, she wrote that “one of the biggest challenges I have is blended families in later life.”

Though I’ve written about the way the 1970s’ spike in divorces could complicate caregiving for adult children — more households to sustain, more siblings to either help or hinder — I hadn’t considered the impact on the older people themselves.

But Ms. Keller seems to be onto something. “The generation most likely to have stepchildren” — the boomers — “don’t need much care yet,” said Merril Silverstein, a Syracuse University sociologist co-editing a coming issue of the Journal of Marriage and the Family on stepfamilies in later life. “The crunch will come in 10 or 20 years.”

Initially, many adult children whose divorced or widowed parents remarry seem delighted, Ms. Keller said when we spoke. “They’re thrilled that Mom or Dad isn’t alone,” she said. “It’s a wonderful thing — until somebody gets sick.”

Then, she has found, “it gets really blurry. Who’s going to do what?” Grown children don’t have much history with these new spouses; they often feel less responsibility to intervene or help out, and stepparents may be unwilling to ask. Perhaps it’s unclear whether children or new spouses have decision-making authority.

“Older couples in this situation fall through the cracks,” Ms. Keller said.

Research shows that the ties which lead adult children to become caregivers — depending on how much contact they have with parents, how nearby they live, how obligated they feel — are weaker in stepchildren, Dr. Silverstein said. Money sometimes enters the equation too, Ms. Keller added, if biological children resent a parent’s spending their presumed inheritance on care for an ailing stepparent.

Adela Betsill, another of Ms. Keller’s support group members, married her longtime partner five years ago — her second marriage, his third. She has since given up her interior design business to care for Robert who, at 72, has also developed Alzheimer’s disease. His two children have had little involvement — perhaps because she’s just 49 and presumed able to handle everything.

Thus, though Robert’s son works from an office in their home, if Ms. Betsill needed to go out and asked him to remind his father to eat lunch, “he might, or he might not,” she said. “I don’t think he realizes it’s a burden.” So she has not asked.

Would it be different if she were his biological mother and he saw her wearing out under the strain? She thinks so, but it’s hard to know. After all, biological families also experience plenty of conflict and avoidance as elders age.

Still, that sense of reciprocity we often hear from caregivers — she took care of me when I was young, so I need to help out now that she’s old — doesn’t apply in late-life stepfamilies. Ms. Betsill didn’t raise this man, or his half sister.

Older couples who marry or remarry often discuss their finances, Ms. Keller has found. (An elder attorney, Craig Reaves, discussed the legal consequences here.) But illness and dependence may prove even more difficult subjects to broach.

“If I could yell one thing from a mountaintop,” Ms. Keller said, “it’s to talk about this stuff, too. Who’s going to take care of you if you become sick? Talk about that while you’re still healthy.”

---

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

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Boeing asks FAA to allow Dreamliner test flights

Aerospace giant Boeing Co. has asked the Federal Aviation Administration to let it begin test flights on its grounded 787 Dreamliner passenger jet.

The new plane has been grounded since Jan. 16 by the FAA because of numerous incidents and high-profile fires involving the onboard lithium-ion batteries. Investigators around the world are looking into the matter.

The company disclosed its request for in-flight testing Monday in an email.

“Boeing has submitted an application to conduct test flights, and it is currently under evaluation by the FAA,” said Marc Birtel, a company spokesman, who would not comment further.

The FAA is reportedly looking into Boeing request, but would not comment.

The 787's battery systems were called into question Jan. 7 when a smoldering fire was discovered on the underbelly of a Dreamliner in Boston operated by Japan Airlines after the 183 passengers and 11 crew members had deplaned at the gate.

The National Transportation Safety Board is examining what went wrong. On Friday, the NTSB released its seventh update on the investigation into the lithium-ion battery systems. It said it has begun CT scanning the battery cells to examine their internal condition.

In addition, the NTSB disclosed that a battery expert from the Department of Energy joined the investigative team to lend additional expertise to ongoing testing.

In a separate incident Jan. 16 involving a 787 operated by All Nippon Airways in southwestern Japan, smoke was seen swirling from the right side of the cockpit after an emergency landing related to the plane's electrical systems. All 137 passengers and crew members were evacuated from the aircraft and slid down the 787's emergency slides.

The Japan Transport Safety Board, the country's version of the NTSB, is heading the investigation into All Nippon's emergency landing and reported fire.

No passengers or crew members were reported injured in the incidents. But the recent events have become a public relations nightmare for Boeing, which has long heralded the Dreamliner as a forerunner of 21st century air travel.

The 787, a twin-aisle aircraft that can seat 210 to 290 passengers, is the first large commercial jet with more than half its structure made of composite materials rather than aluminum sheets. It's also the first large commercial aircraft that extensively uses electrically powered systems involving lithium-ion batteries.

Boeing's lithium-ion batteries are made in Japan by Kyoto-based GS Yuasa Corp.

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Overnight snow expected to snarl morning commute

Margaret Even of Rogers Park walks with her dog, Tilly, at Montrose Harbor on a chilly and sunny Sunday. Up to a half a foot of snow is expected to fall overnight, likely affecting Monday morning commuters. (Jose M. Osorio/Chicago Tribune / February 3, 2013)

Staff report

4:21 a.m. CST, February 4, 2013

The winter's heaviest snowfall to date has arrived, and commuters face a slow and slippery trip to work this morning.

Snow accumulation in most parts of Chicago will range between two and four inches and taper off by 10 a.m., according to David Beachler, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Romeoville.

That's more than enough to create significant driving hazards, and it prompted the city to deploy its full fleet of 284 snowplows overnight.

Snow plows are focusing first on clearing main streets and Lake Shore Drive, according to the city's Department of Streets and Sanitation. After clearing those roads, plow drivers will shift their focus to side streets.

By 4:15 a.m., the Illinois State Police had already responded to about 15 overnight crashes, an increase due to hazardous weather conditions, Master Sgt. Jason LoCoco said.

Many of the crashes occurred on the Dan Ryan and Kennedy expressways, LoCoco said.

Officials are urging drivers to allow extra commuting time, drive slowly and leave plenty of room when passing plows and emergency vehicles.

Check back for more information.

chicagobreaking@tribune.com

Twitter: @ChicagoBreaking

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Estonian pleads guilty in U.S. court to Internet advertising scam

NEW YORK (Reuters) – An Estonian man pleaded guilty on Friday in U.S. federal court for his role in a massive Internet scam that targeted well-known websites such as iTunes, Netflix and The Wall Street Journal.

The scheme infected at least four million computers in more than 100 countries, including 500,000 in the United States, with malicious software, or malware, according to the indictment. It included a large number of computers at data centers located in New York, federal prosecutors said.

Valeri Aleksejev, 32, was the first of six Estonians and one Russian indicted in 2011 to enter a plea. They were indicted on five charges each of wire and computer intrusion. One of the defendants, Vladimir Tsastsin, was also charged with 22 counts of money laundering.

In U.S. District Court in Manhattan on Friday, Aleksejev pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to commit computer intrusion. He faces up to 25 years in prison, deportation and the forfeiture of $ 7 million.

The scam had several components, including a “click-hijacking fraud” in which the malware re-routed searches by users on infected computers to sites designated by the defendants, prosecutors said in the indictment. Users of infected computers trying to access Apple Inc’s iTunes website or Netflix Inc‘s movie website, for example, instead ended up at websites of unaffiliated businesses, according to the indictment.

Another component of the scam replaced legitimate advertisements on websites operated by News Corp’s The Wall Street Journal, Amazon.com Inc and others with advertisements that triggered payments for the defendants, prosecutors said.

The defendants reaped at least $ 14 million from the fraud, prosecutors said. However, Aleksejev’s lawyer, William Stampur, said in court on Friday that Aleksejev has no assets.

Estonian police arrested Aleksejev and the other Estonians in November 2011. One other Estonian, Anton Ivanov, has been extradited, and the extradition of the other four is pending, according to the U.S. Attorney’s office in Manhattan. The Russian, Andrey Taame, remains at large, according to the U.S. Attorney’s office.

Aleksejev told Magistrate Judge James Francis he assisted in blocking anti-virus software updates on infected computers. Francis asked Aleksejev if he knew what he was doing was illegal.

“I thought it was wrong,” Aleksejev said in broken English after a long pause. “But of course I didn’t know all the laws in the U.S.”

Francis set a tentative sentencing date of May 31 for Aleksejev.

The case is USA v. Tsastsin et al, U.S. District Court in Manhattan, No. 11-00878.

(Reporting by Bernard Vaughan; Editing by Dan Grebler)

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Ex-Israeli security chiefs speak out in Oscar documentary nominee

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The Oscar-nominated documentary “The Gatekeepers” focuses on Israel, but its director says that all countries can gain insight about the risks that arise if secretive security agencies operate without adequate restraints.

In “The Gatekeepers,” six former heads of Israeli internal security and intelligence agency Shin Bet reflect on their failures and successes in gathering information on state enemies, orchestrating secret operations and tracking militants. They also offer some unexpected perspectives on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“I found myself more attracted to those who doubt, those who ask themselves questions,” director Dror Moreh told Reuters. “I am always afraid of people who don’t have questions, who don’t doubt.”

The English- and Hebrew-language film opened in New York and Los Angeles on Friday, and premieres in the UK in April, following a brief run at the end of 2012 that qualified it for its Oscar nomination for best documentary feature.

The film will compete at the February 24 Oscar ceremony with “5 Broken Cameras,” a view of the Middle East conflict seen through Palestinian eyes, AIDS documentary “How to Survive a Plague,” military rape film “The Invisible War,” and “Searching for Sugar Man” about a U.S. folk singer who becomes a South African pop icon.

Beginning with Avraham Shalom, who oversaw the Shin Bet from 1980 to 1986, “The Gatekeepers” covers the period through Yuval Diskin, whose tenure ended in 2011.

The former security chiefs discuss events such as the agency-ordered killing of two Palestinian bus hijackers, a plot by Jewish extremists to blow up the Dome of the Rock shrine in Jerusalem, the 1995 assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, and the role the agency plays in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

DEFINING TORTURE

Always present is a struggle to balance security with ethics and politics, and several of the men discuss the scandals the agency faced over the use of what Shin Bet terms “exceptional practices” in interrogations.

Moreh draws parallels between Israel’s debates about ethical security practices and the United States’ struggle to define torture and regulate its own practices in its war on terrorism.

“I think at the end of the day any organization that has so much power like those clandestine organizations – Shin Bet, CIA, FBI, Mossad – has to have the law above it giving guidelines,” he said.

“When there was no oversight of the judicial system on those organizations, they acted as if there was no law, in terms of interrogating people, torturing, killing.”

He blames what he calls murky or non-existent regulations for practices that have sparked public anger worldwide, from the use of waterboarding to the abuse of prisoners by American soldiers at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison.

“They were stupid Americans who the system gave absolute power over other human beings,” Moreh said. “They weren’t trained to deal with that, they weren’t trained in interrogating, and this is what led to what happened in Abu Ghraib.”

The former security chiefs’ reflections are a mixture of affirmation and regret, but all six agree that the only way for their country to achieve peace is to work with Palestinians instead of against them.

They criticize Israeli politicians for turning a blind eye to settlements in occupied Palestinian territory, and for sometimes dealing lightly with Jewish extremists.

Ami Ayalon, who headed Shin Bet from 1996 to 2000, summed up their collective thoughts, saying, “We win every battle, but lose the war.”

Moreh believes that solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the most important issue facing Israel and hopes U.S. President Barack Obama will take a more active role in diplomatic efforts in his second term.

“I think this is like two kindergarten children – the Palestinians and the Israelis – who need the kindergarten caretaker to help them,” he said. “They need a grown-up to tell them, ‘Enough! Israel, Palestine, this is what you need to do, do it.’”

(Editing by Jill Serjeant and Peter Cooney)

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Medicines Co. Licenses Rights to Cholesterol Drug

The drug, known as ALN-PCS, inhibits a protein in the body known as PCSK9. Such drugs might one day be used to treat millions of people who do not achieve sufficient cholesterol-lowering from commonly used statins, such as Lipitor.

The Medicines Company will pay $25 million initially and as much as $180 million later if certain development and sales goals are met, under the deal expected to be formally announced Monday. It will also pay Alnylam, which is based in Cambridge, Mass., double-digit royalties on global sales.

That is small payment for a drug with presumably a huge potential market, probably reflecting that Alnylam is still in the first of three phases of clinical trials, well behind some far bigger competitors.

The team of Sanofi and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals is already entering the third and final stage of trials with their PCSK9 inhibitor, as is Amgen. Pfizer and Roche are in midstage trials.

ALN-PCS is different from the other drugs. It uses a gene-silencing mechanism called RNA interference, aimed at shutting off production of the PCSK9 protein. The other drugs are proteins called monoclonal antibodies that inhibit the action of PCSK9 after it has been formed.

Alnylam and the Medicines Company hope that turning off the faucet, as it were, will be more efficient than mopping the floor, allowing their drug to be given less frequently and in smaller amounts.

But that has yet to be proved. No drug using RNA interference has reached the market.

The Medicines Company, based in Parsippany, N.J., generates almost all of its revenue from one product — Angiomax, an anticlotting drug used when patients receive stents to open clogged arteries.

Dr. Clive A. Meanwell, chief executive of the company, said that PCSK9 inhibitors are likely to be used at first mainly by patients with severe lipid problems under the care of interventional cardiologists, the same doctors who use Angiomax. “It really is quite adjacent to what we do,” he said.

The Medicines Company licensed Angiomax from Biogen Idec, where the drug was invented and initially developed under a team led by Dr. John M. Maraganore, who is now the chief executive of Alnylam.

“It’s a bit like getting the band back together,” Dr. Maraganore said.

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Battle between Cubs, rooftop owners is best viewed from sidelines

From the Super Bowl to the sandlot, just as surely as players give 110 percent, the math of sports is always suspect.

Sports isn't like other businesses. What other investment becomes more attractive because of its unpredictability? Revenue can always be accounted for, but what of ego, pride, loyalty, stubbornness or even the microns that separate a catch from a muff?

In no other industry does a perennial also-ran continue to see its value increase.

That's why it's a mistake to get too wrapped up in the dispute between the wealthy Ricketts family that owns the Chicago Cubs and the owners of buildings adjacent to Wrigley Field who have turned their rooftops into garish, outsize extensions of the bleachers?

If it's just money, there's a price — and if there's a price, there's a solution to be worked out. If it's a game, the drama is best enjoyed with healthy detachment because logic may or may not dictate the outcome.

Like a hockey fight, one or both combatants will eventually run out of gas, then will be penalized with the loss of time and opportunity.

"What we are trying to do is resolve this right now," Jim Lourgos, one of the rooftop club owners, said recently during a visit to Tribune Tower. "If you're in court on something like this, my feeling has always been that by the time you're in court, you've already lost."

Unless, say, you're trying to run out the clock. But enough with the sports metaphors.

At the center of this dispute, for those late arrivals to this fight, is a nearly 99-year-old ballpark long overdue for a rehab. Wrigley must be brought into the 21st century, in the interest of the team but also all those who benefit from its standing as a tourist magnet, including those peddling rooftop seats.

The Ricketts family is said to finally have abandoned its quest for taxpayer help in funding the project.

It is true other sports franchises in town have received taxpayer help to build facilities that enrich their owners, but every bad idea has to end somewhere. This would at last be consistent with the philosophy of patriarch Joe Ricketts, who has said he considers it "a crime for our elected officials to borrow money today to spend money today and push the repayment of that loan out into the future on people who aren't even born yet."

Rather than hitting up the cash-strapped city and state, the Ricketts clan instead wants help in the form of concessions such as a relaxation of landmark restrictions and city ordinances that limit such matters as the number of night games and ads in the ballpark. They also want to turn one of the streets into a pedestrian mall.

The rooftop interests, which kick 17 percent of their revenue back to the Cubs as part of a nine-year-old settlement with the team, are terrified the loosened restrictions will result in their views of the ballpark being blocked by advertising signs.

Never mind that Wrigley Field itself has many seats with obstructed views, thanks to support posts.

The rooftoppers have offered to put advertising on their building facades with the money going to the team and city. And they think they have leverage via the 2004 contract they signed with then-Cubs owner Tribune Co. (Yes, that's the same Tribune Co. that owns the Chicago Tribune and still has a small piece of the ballclub.) They think they can parlay this into an extension of their current agreement with the team to 2023.

But the contract allows that "any expansion of Wrigley Field approved by governmental authorities shall not be a violation" of the deal, which means if Mayor Rahm Emanuel gets behind the Ricketts, look out.

Rooftop owners talk about the taxes they pay, the people they employ, the money they've invested to make their businesses safe and viable, the character they add to the neighborhood.

The basic argument, however, still seems a little like when your neighbor with the big-screen TV decides to start watching with the drapes closed on what's become movie night at your house. It's bad form to complain that they not only shouldn't shut the drapes but should open the window and turn up the volume so you and the people in your living room you've charged $1 a head can make out the dialogue better.

At the same time it's hard to sympathize with the Ricketts family, which invested $850 million to acquire the team and ballpark, effectively creating a family trust that's a tax-efficient structure for protecting and eventually distributing wealth across generations. It's not as though these people didn't know Wrigley Field was in need of work or the deals in place with the rooftop clubs. They ought to be able to come up with the cash to make this happen, with or without advertising.

That deal is really something, though. For example, the contract calls for the Cubs to help hype them in a variety of ways, advancing the argument that the rooftop clubs are part of the appeal of Wrigley.

There's a requirement that "WGN-TV will show and comment upon the Rooftops' facilities during the broadcasts of Cubs games and the Cubs will request other Cubs television broadcasting partners to do the same." There's also a mandate for the team to "include a discussion about the Rooftops on their tour of Wrigley Field" and to include stories positive about the Rooftops in The Vine Line," the team's publication.

What you won't read in The Vine Line is that this fight, like the ballpark itself, is a fight over something that may increasingly be quaint in the coming decades. The Los Angeles Dodgers last week announced a $7 billion, 25-year deal for their own cable channel, following the example of the New York Yankees, which already have their own.

With that kind of money coming in via television, the pressure to make money from ticket sales may be relieved somewhat, turning the stadiums into glorified studios. But that may be too logical for sports. For one thing, it assumes that player salaries won't escalate in response as owners ditch their budgets in order to get an edge that may or may not materialize.

That's the thing about sports. You never know how the numbers will add up.

philrosenthal@tribune.com

Twitter @phil_rosenthal

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China May (or May Not) Be Behind the Twitter Hack

You may not have heard, but roughly 250,000 Twitter accounts may have been compromised by hackers. There’s a theory that — if you read between the lines — Twitter is implying the Chinese are to blame for compromising their security. 

RELATED: The Chinese Want to Know Why Their News Is on Twitter and They Aren’t

Twitter revealed that roughly a quarter million accounts may have been compromised by hackers in a blog post Friday evening. (A classic Friday evening news dump if there ever was one; they got a $ 10 billion valuation the same day.) 

RELATED: A Punk Prince, Women in the Military, a New Tennis Controversy

Bandits might have made away with “usernames, email addresses, session tokens and encrypted/salted versions of passwords – for approximately 250,000 users.” They think. A Twitter representative stressed to the Verge that they’re still investigating; there’s a chance we’re all safe. 

RELATED: World Languages Mapped by Twitter

But was China behind it all?! That’s an emerging theory. We don’t know who was behind it. Twitter doesn’t say directly. None of the usual suspects have claimed ownership of the attack. (Yet.)

RELATED: The Good, the Bad, and the Fuzzy of Twitter’s New Censorship Rules

But Twitter mentions the New York Times and Wall Street Journal hacks in their opening paragraph, apropos of nothing, really. It could mean the company was just trying to show they’re not alone in being targeted — look at these bullies picking on these other kids, too. Or it could mean they’re subtly implying China is behind it all. 

RELATED: Did the Berlin Wall’s Fall Save China?

The last paragraph in Twitter’s statement is where the theory really gets its legs. Emphasis ours: 

This attack was not the work of amateurs, and we do not believe it was an isolated incident. The attackers were extremely sophisticated, and we believe other companies and organizations have also been recently similarly attacked. For that reason we felt that it was important to publicize this attack while we still gather information, and we are helping government and federal law enforcement in their effort to find and prosecute these attackers to make the Internet safer for all users. 

So, did they do it? These sophisticated hackers who targeted other companies and organizations sure sounds like they’re implying it was China.

Was it China in the basement with the Cheetos and Red Bull and impressive coding skill? We don’t know for sure, but we’re definitely looking for any and every clue we can find. 

Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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