Reward offered in death of 22-year-old South L.A. church musician

It was dawn when word spread throughout the neighborhood. People stepped outside to absorb the news and then lingered in disbelief.

Kendrick Blackmon — a 22-year-old church musician they all watched grow up — had been shot to death driving home in South Los Angeles.

Months have passed since that April morning and there is still no answer as to why an affable young man who steered clear of trouble was gunned down. Authorities say they have exhausted every lead.

Now, Kendrick's family and friends are hoping that a $50,000 reward offered by the city of Los Angeles will turn the tide by encouraging witnesses to come forward.

"Before I leave this Earth I hope I find out who did this," Kendrick's grandmother, Alberta Blackmon, said Thursday, wiping tears from her cheeks.

Standing inside the 77th Street Community Police Station, the 68-year-old woman who raised Kendrick called the shooters "cowards" and pleaded for the public's help.

"If anyone out there knows anything, please let the police know," she urged.

Detectives say Kendrick's clean past has made it difficult to determine a motive. He was not affiliated with any gangs and appeared to be well liked in the community. Yet the senseless nature of the act smacks of being the work of a gang, said Det. Mel Hernandez.

On April 21 about 1:30 a.m., Kendrick was driving his white Chevrolet Monaco south on San Pedro Street. He and two friends were on their way home from a party. As they neared Century Boulevard, a black sport utility vehicle, carrying what appeared to be five men in their 20s, pulled up next to them and opened fire, Hernandez said.

Kendrick, the only person hit, was taken to Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead. He sustained a gunshot wound to the upper right cheek, according to coroner's records.

He was just six blocks from the home he shared with his grandmother.

Now, Alberta Blackmon said, the house is eerily quiet. It was Kendrick who filled the rooms with jokes, brought over friends, stocked food in the refrigerator and made her feel safe at night.

He had been dubbed "Lil' Bit" because he weighed only 3 pounds at birth, smaller than his twin brother, Kenneth. But Kendrick had a big personality and was known for his charm and knack for soliciting smiles. He couldn't walk down the block without greeting somebody.

Like his father, Kendrick showed a talent for the drums, joining the band at Locke High School. Neighbors could often hear the rapid staccato as he practiced. He was active in a church youth group as well as multiple church bands. He doted on his six brothers and sisters and his girlfriend, Daeshunae.

Kendrick became an armed security guard at a Ladera Heights bank and aspired to become a Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy.

"He just had this ethic and tenacity," said Jocelyn Stewart, a family friend and former Times reporter whom Kendrick referred to as an aunt. "He was always trying to better himself. He didn't just fall into this life; he made a conscious decision to avoid crime. He worked hard to not have it be a part of his existence.

"It feels so unjust that he would have his life ended this way," she added. "It is beyond unsettling."

Kendrick's death has left an emptiness in the neighborhood. People stop by to check up on Alberta Blackmon, who now lives alone.

Alberta said she was harder on Kendrick than her other grandchildren because she saw his potential. She nagged him, dished out tough love, constantly said she expected more.

"Don't you love me?" he asked time and again.

Alberta said she always gave the same reply: "I want you to be able to take care of yourself when I'm gone."

She never imagined it would be the other way around.

corina.knoll@latimes.com

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Four State Department Officials Are Out After Benghazi Report

WASHINGTON — Four State Department officials were removed from their posts on Wednesday after an independent panel criticized the “grossly inadequate” security at a diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, that was attacked on Sept. 11, leading to the deaths of Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.

Eric J. Boswell, the assistant secretary of state for diplomatic security, resigned. Charlene R. Lamb, the deputy assistant secretary responsible for embassy security, and another official in the diplomatic security office whom officials would not identify were relieved of their duties. So was Raymond Maxwell, a deputy assistant secretary who had responsibility for North Africa. The four officials, a State Department spokeswoman said, “have been placed on administrative leave pending further action.” 

The report criticized officials in the State Department’s Bureau for Diplomatic Security as having displayed a “lack of proactive leadership.” It also said that some officials in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs “showed a lack of ownership of Benghazi’s security issues.” 

The report did not criticize more senior officials, including Patrick F. Kennedy, the under secretary for management, who has vigorously defended the State Department’s decision-making on Benghazi to Congress.

At a news conference at the State Department on Wednesday, Thomas R. Pickering, a former ambassador who led the independent review, said that most of the blame should fall on officials in the two bureaus.

“We fixed it at the assistant secretary level, which is, in our view, the appropriate place to look, where the decision-making in fact takes place, where, if you like, the rubber hits the road,” said Mr. Pickering, who did not identify the officials.

At the same time, the report that Mr. Pickering oversaw suggested that there was a culture of “husbanding resources” at senior levels of the State Department that contributed to the security deficiencies in Benghazi. Without identifying Mr. Kennedy or other senior officials, the report said that attitude “had the effect of conditioning a few State Department managers to favor restricting the use of resources as a general orientation.”

Two deputy secretaries of state, William J. Burns and Thomas R. Nides, are scheduled to testify to Congressional committees on Thursday. The question of whether senior officials at the State Department should be held accountable is likely to be raised by lawmakers at the hearing.

“The board severely critiques a handful of individuals, and they have been held accountable,” said Representative Ed Royce, Republican of California, who is the incoming chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. “The degree that others bear responsibility warrants Congressional review, given the report’s rather sweeping indictment. And the Foreign Affairs Committee must hear from Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton concerning her role, which this report didn’t address.”

Mrs. Clinton, in a letter to Congress, outlined a number of steps the department is taking to improve security, including hiring hundreds of additional Marine guards for high-risk embassies and consulates around the world.

In an apparent gesture of support for the American diplomatic corps, President Obama — speaking at a diplomatic reception at the State Department on Wednesday night — praised the department’s personnel, who he said often worked “at great risk.”

Another issue that might be raised and that was largely skirted by the panel, concerns what role the American military should play in protecting diplomats abroad.

The Pentagon had no forces that could be readily sent to Benghazi when the crisis unfolded. The closest AC-130 gunship was in Afghanistan. There are no armed drones thought to be within range of Libya. There was no Marine expeditionary unit — a large seaborne force with its own helicopters — in the Mediterranean Sea. The Africa Command, whose area of operation includes North Africa, also did not have on hand its own force able to respond rapidly to emergencies — a Commanders’ In-Extremis Force, or C.I.F. Every other regional command had one at the time.

The Defense Department has repeatedly declined to say whether the Africa Command requested that any of these forces be on hand during the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Nor has it said whether Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta or Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, gave any thought to moving forces in the region as a precaution.

The unclassified version of the Benghazi report concluded that “there simply was not enough time given the speed of the attacks for armed U.S. military assets to have made a difference.” But the report did not address whether it would have been prudent to station quick-reaction forces in the region or whether the United States would have been in a position to quickly respond militarily had Ambassador Stevens been kidnapped and the crisis had dragged on, as was initially feared.

The United States military’s best-trained team to extract diplomats under fire — Delta Force commandos — was half a world away, in Fort Bragg, N.C. “What this report shows is that we need a fundamental rethink of the problem,” said one senior Pentagon official who has spent considerable time examining the issue of protecting American diplomats since the attack in September. “It’s not the military’s job to protect diplomats; it’s the host government’s. But in the absence of a real government, we never asked the question, ‘So how do we do this?’ ”

But as the military budget declines, some ranking officers are wary about taking on new commitments, even ones that involve protecting Americans.

“It is not reasonable nor feasible to tether U.S. forces at the ready to respond to protect every high-risk post in the world,” Mike Mullen, the retired admiral and former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who served as vice chairman of the independent review, said Wednesday.

David E. Sanger contributed reporting.

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Kodak in $525 million patent deal, eyes bankruptcy end

(Reuters) – Eastman Kodak Co agreed to sell its digital imaging patents for about $ 525 million, a key step to bringing the photography pioneer out of bankruptcy in the first half of 2013.

The deal for the 1,100 patents allows Kodak to fulfill a condition for securing $ 830 million in financing.

The patent deal was reached with a consortium led by Intellectual Ventures and RPX Corp, and which includes some of the world’s biggest technology companies, which will license or acquire the patents.

Those companies are Adobe Systems Inc, Amazon.com Inc, Apple Inc, Facebook Inc, Fujifilm, Google Inc, Huawei Technologies Co Ltd, HTC Corp, Microsoft Corp, Research In Motion Ltd, Samsung Electronics Co Ltd and Shutterfly Inc, according to court documents.

Kodak still must sell its personalized and document-imaging businesses as part of the financing package, and also has to resolve its UK pension obligation.

Kodak said the patent deal puts it on a path to emerge from Chapter 11 in the first half of 2013.

“Our progress has accelerated over the past several weeks as we prepare to emerge as a strong, sustainable company,” said Antonio Perez, chairman and chief executive of the Rochester, New York-based company.

The patent portfolio was expected to be a major asset for Kodak when it filed for bankruptcy in January. An outside firm had estimated the patents could be worth as much as $ 2.6 billion.

Kodak’s patents hit the market as intellectual property values have soared and technology companies have plowed money into patent-related litigation.

For example, last year Nortel Networks sold 6,000 wireless patents in a bankruptcy auction for $ 4.5 billion and earlier this year Google spent $ 12.5 billion for patent-rich Motorola Mobility.

But Kodak’s patent auction dragged on beyond the initial expectation that it would be wrapped up in August. One patent specialist blamed those early, overly optimistic valuations, which he said encouraged Kodak’s team to set their sights too high.

“Unfortunately (Kodak management) was misled into thinking it was worth billions of dollars and it wasn’t,” said Alex Poltorak, chairman of General Patent Corp, a patent licensing firm. “I think they sold them at a very good price.”

He said after Google acquired Motorola, the search engine company no longer needed patents at any price, deflating the intellectual property market.

Kodak traces its roots to the 19th century and invented the handheld camera. But it has been unable to successfully shift to digital imaging.

It will likely be a different company when it exits bankruptcy, out of the consumer business and focused instead on providing products and services to the commercial imaging market.

The patent sale is subject to approval by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan.

The Kodak bankruptcy case is in Re: Eastman Kodak Co. et al, U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Southern District of New York, No. 12-10202.

(Reporting by Tom Hals in Wilmington, Delaware and Sruthi Ramakrishnan in Bangalore; Editing by Nick Zieminski,; John Wallace and Peter Galloway)

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The X Factor: Finalists Sing for Votes One Last Time

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The X Factor

By Aaron Parsley

12/19/2012 at 10:40 PM EST

from left: Fifth Harmony, Tate Stevens and Carly Rose Sonenclar

Ray Mickshaw/FOX

Who's going to get a $5 million recording contract?

The X Factor's season 2 finale got underway Wednesday night with the finalists performing three songs each – including a duet with a music superstar.

Britney Spears's contestant, Carly Rose Sonenclar, has been a favorite, trading the No. 1 spot with her fellow finalist, L.A. Reid's country singer Tate Stevens, through out the competition.

Carly first reprised "Feeling Good," and sang it better than the first time she performed it during her audition, according to judge Simon Cowell. "It's shocking how bright your star is," Spears said. She performed her duet with Leann Rimes, singing the country star's hit, "How Do I Live." Her final performance – of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" – had the judges gushing. "You looked like an angel," Demi Lovato said. "You sang like a ridiculously talented angel."

Tate, the competition's only country singer, first performed "Anything Goes" by Randy Houser. "I'm still obsessed with you," Demi said. Added Simon, "You are made in America. You are authentic." For his duet, he sang Little Big Town's cheeky party anthem, "Pontoon." And for his final performance in the competition, Tate sang Chris Young's "Tomorrow." "In a year's time," Simon said, "We're going to be hearing about your record sales."

"I'm almost crying because I realize it's the last time I'm going to see you perform on that stage," Demi said.

Simon's remaining act, girl group Fifth Harmony, may have had their best night yet in the competition, beginning with "Anything Can Happen." L.A. called it "magical," adding that they're "the one to beat." Britney said the colorful performance was "spectacular, girly and fun." Their duet, with The X Factor's own Demi Lovato, of "Give Your Heart a Break" was a highlight of the night.

"These girls are so easy to work with," the judge said. "They're so down to earth, so sweet and I love you guys. This was so much fun."

Their last song, "Let It Be" by the Beatles, proved how much the five members have "blossomed as a group," Britney said. Admitting his bias, their mentor Simon said, based on their performances on Wednesday, the girls of Fifth Harmony "deserve to win the competition."

Do you agree? Or is Tate or Carly your choice for the big prize? Tell us in the comments below.

The winner will be revealed Thursday in a two-hour show that will include a performance by One Direction.

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Experts: Kids are resilient in coping with trauma

WASHINGTON (AP) — They might not want to talk about the gunshots or the screams. But their toys might start getting into imaginary shootouts.

Last week's school shooting in Connecticut raises the question: What will be the psychological fallout for the children who survived?

For people of any age, regaining a sense of security after surviving violence can take a long time. They're at risk for lingering anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder.

But after the grief and fear fades, psychiatrists say most of Newtown's young survivors probably will cope without long-term emotional problems.

"Kids do tend to be highly resilient," said Dr. Matthew Biel, chief of child and adolescent psychiatry at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital.

And one way that younger children try to make sense of trauma is through play. Youngsters may pull out action figures or stuffed animals and re-enact what they witnessed, perhaps multiple times.

"That's the way they gain mastery over a situation that's overwhelming," Biel explained, saying it becomes a concern only if the child is clearly distressed while playing.

Nor is it unusual for children to chase each other playing cops-and-robbers, but now parents might see some also pretending they're dead, added Dr. Melissa Brymer of the UCLA-Duke National Center for Child Traumatic Stress.

Among the challenges will be spotting which children are struggling enough that they may need professional help.

Newtown's tragedy is particularly heart-wrenching because of what such young children grappled with — like the six first-graders who apparently had to run past their teacher's body to escape to safety.

There's little scientific research specifically on PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder, in children exposed to a burst of violence, and even less to tell if a younger child will have a harder time healing than an older one.

Overall, scientists say studies of natural disasters and wars suggest most children eventually recover from traumatic experiences while a smaller proportion develop long-term disorders such as PTSD. Brymer says in her studies of school shootings, that fraction can range from 10 percent to a quarter of survivors, depending on what they actually experienced. A broader 2007 study found 13 percent of U.S. children exposed to different types of trauma reported some symptoms of PTSD, although less than 1 percent had enough for an official diagnosis.

Violence isn't all that rare in childhood. In many parts of the world — and in inner-city neighborhoods in the U.S., too — children witness it repeatedly. They don't become inured to it, Biel said, and more exposure means a greater chance of lasting psychological harm.

In Newtown, most at risk for longer-term problems are those who saw someone killed, said Dr. Carol North of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, who has researched survivors of mass shootings.

Friday's shootings were mostly in two classrooms of Sandy Hook Elementary School, which has about 450 students through fourth-grade.

But those who weren't as close to the danger may be at extra risk, too, if this wasn't their first trauma or they already had problems such as anxiety disorders that increase their vulnerability, she said.

Right after a traumatic event, it's normal to have nightmares or trouble sleeping, to stick close to loved ones, and to be nervous or moody, Biel said.

To help, parents will have to follow their child's lead. Grilling a child about a traumatic experience isn't good, he stressed. Some children will ask a lot of questions, seeking reassurance, he said. Others will be quiet, thinking about the experience and maybe drawing or writing about it, or acting it out at playtime. Younger children may regress, becoming clingy or having tantrums.

Before second grade, their brains also are at a developmental stage some refer to as magical thinking, when it's difficult to distinguish reality and fantasy. Parents may have to help them understand that a friend who died isn't in pain or lonely but also isn't coming back, Brymer said.

When problem behaviors or signs of distress continue for several weeks, Brymer says it's time for an evaluation by a counselor or pediatrician.

Besides a supportive family, what helps? North advises getting children back into routines, together with their friends, and easing them back into a school setting. Studies of survivors of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks found "the power of the support of the people who went through it with you is huge," she said.

Children as young as first-graders can benefit from cognitive-behavioral therapy, Georgetown's Biel said. They can calm themselves with breathing techniques. They also can learn to identify and label their feelings — anger, frustration, worry — and how to balance, say, a worried thought with a brave one.

Finally, avoid watching TV coverage of the shooting, as children may think it's happening all over again, Biel added. He found that children who watched the 9/11 clips of planes hitting the World Trade Center thought they were seeing dozens of separate attacks.

___

EDITOR'S NOTE — Lauran Neergaard covers health and medical issues for The Associated Press in Washington.

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Fearful 'end of world' calls, emails flood NASA as Dec. 21 nears

If there's one government agency really looking forward to Dec. 22, it's NASA.

The space agency said it has been flooded with calls and emails from people asking about the purported end of the world — which, as the doomsday myth goes, is apparently set to take place Friday, Dec. 21.

The myth might have originated with the Maya calendar, but in the age of the Internet and social media, it proliferated online, raising questions and concerns among hundreds of people around the world who have turned to NASA for answers.

Dwayne Brown, an agency spokesman, said NASA typically receives about 90 calls or emails per week containing questions from people. In recent weeks, he said, that number has skyrocketed — from 200 to 300 people are contacting NASA per day to ask about the end of the world.

"Who's the first agency you would call?" he said. "You're going to call NASA."

The questions range from myth (Will a rogue planet crash into Earth? Is the sun going to explode? Will there be three days of darkness?) to the macabre (Brown said some people have "embraced it so much" they want to hurt themselves). So, he said, NASA decided to do "everything in our power" to set the facts straight.

That effort included interviews with scientists posted online and a Web page that Brown said has drawn more than 4.6 million views.

It also involved a video titled "Why the World Didn't End Yesterday." Though the title of the video implies a Dec. 22 release date, Brown said NASA posted the four-minute clip last week to help spread its message.

The website addresses several scenarios — the possibility of planetary alignments, total blackouts, polar shifts and "a planet or brown dwarf called Nibiru or Planet X or Eris that is approaching the Earth and threatening our planet with widespread destruction" — but comes to the same conclusion.

In short, NASA says, "the world will not end in 2012."

"Our planet has been getting along just fine for more than 4 billion years, and credible scientists worldwide know of no threat associated with 2012," the website says.

The Griffith Observatory will also be trying to debunk doomsday predictions. It announced plans to stay open late Friday evening — until one minute past midnight — to "demonstrate that claims regarding the Maya calendar, planetary alignments, rogue planets, galactic beams, and other related phenomena have no basis in fact."

A few years ago, NASA suspected that it might have to create such a campaign when the idea of the world ending began "festering," Brown said. The apocalyptic action movie "2012," released in 2009, didn't help, he said.

"We kind of look ahead — we're a look-ahead agency — and we said, 'You know what? People are going to probably want to come to us' " for answers, Brown explained. "We're doing all that we can do to let the world know that as far as NASA and science goes, Dec. 21 will be another day."

As for Saturday, when the questions — not the world — end: "I wish it was tomorrow."

kate.mather@latimes.com

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Thai Buddhist Monks Struggle to Stay Relevant

Giulio Di Sturco for the International Herald Tribune

Young monks rehearsed an evening candlelight ceremony at Wat Chedi Luang in Chiang Mai, Thailand. More Photos »

BAAN PA CHI, Thailand — The monks of this northern Thai village no longer perform one of the defining rituals of Buddhism, the early-morning walk through the community to collect food. Instead, the temple’s abbot dials a local restaurant and has takeout delivered.

“Most of the time, I stay inside,” said the abbot, Phra Nipan Marawichayo, who is one of only two monks living in what was once a thriving temple. “Values have changed with time.”

The gilded roofs of Buddhist temples are as much a part of Thailand’s landscape as rice paddies and palm trees. The temples were once the heart of village life, serving as meeting places, guesthouses and community centers. But many have become little more than ornaments of the past, marginalized by a shortage of monks and an increasingly secular society.

“Consumerism is now the Thai religion,” said Phra Paisan Visalo, one of the country’s most respected monks. “In the past, people went to temple on every holy day. Now, they go to shopping malls.”

The meditative lifestyle of the monkhood offers little allure to the iPhone generation. The number of monks and novices relative to the population has fallen by more than half over the last three decades. There are five monks and novices for every 1,000 people today, compared with 11 in 1980, when governments began keeping nationwide records.

Although it is still relatively rare for temples to close, many districts are so short on monks that abbots here in northern Thailand recruit across the border from impoverished Myanmar, where monasteries are overflowing with novices.

Many societies have witnessed a gradual shift from the sacred toward the profane as they have modernized. What is striking in Thailand is the compressed time frame, a vertiginous pace of change brought on by the country’s rapid economic rise. In a relatively short time, the local Buddhist monk has gone from being a moral authority, teacher and community leader fulfilling important spiritual and secular roles to someone whose job is often limited to presiding over periodic ceremonies.

Phra Anil Sakya, the assistant secretary to the Supreme Patriarch of Thailand, the country’s governing body of Buddhism, said that Thai Buddhism needed “new packaging” to match the country’s fast-paced lifestyle. (Phra is the honorific title for monks in Thailand.)

“People today love high-speed things,” he said in an interview. “We didn’t have instant noodles in the past, but now people love them. For the sake of presentation, we have to change the way we teach Buddhism and make it easy and digestible like instant noodles.”

He says Buddhist leaders should make Buddhism more relevant by emphasizing the importance of meditation as a salve for stressful urban lifestyles. The teaching of Buddhism, or dharma, does not need to be tethered to the temple, he said.

“You can get dharma in department stores, or even over the Internet,” he said.

But Phra Paisan is markedly more pessimistic about what is sometimes called “fast-food Buddhism.” He is encouraged by the embrace of meditation among many affluent Thais and the healthy sales of Buddhist books, but he sees basic incompatibilities between modern life and Buddhism.

His life is a portrait of traditional Buddhist asceticism. He lives in a remote part of central Thailand in a stilt house on a lake, connected to the shore by a rickety wooden bridge. He has no furniture, sleeps on the floor and is surrounded by books. He requested that a reporter meet him for an interview at 6 a.m., before he led his fellow monks in prayer, when mist on the lake was still evaporating.

Monks are suffering a decline in “quantity and quality,” he said, partly because young people are drawn to the riches and fast-paced life of the cities. The monastic education of young boys, once widespread in rural areas, has been almost entirely replaced by the secular education provided by the state.

Poypiti Amatatham contributed reporting from Bangkok.

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Nielsen to buy Arbitron for about $1.26B

NEW YORK (AP) — Nielsen, the dominant source of TV ratings, on Tuesday said it had agreed to buy Arbitron for about $ 1.26 billion to expand into radio measurement.

Arbitron pays 70,000 people to carry around gadgets that register what stations they’re listening to. Since Nielsen also collects cash register data, CEO David Calhoun said buying Arbitron will let Nielsen be a one-stop shop for advertisers who want to know how the radio advertising they buy affects product sales.

The acquisition will let Nielsen expand the amount of media consumption it tracks by about 2 hours per person per day to 7 hours, Calhoun said in an interview.

“You don’t find many mediums that allow for that kind of increase,” Calhoun said.

Arbitron’s operations are mainly in the U.S., while Nielsen operates globally. Calhoun said another major driver for the deal is that Nielsen wants to spread Arbitron’s tracking technology to other countries.

Evercore Partners analyst Douglas Arthur said Nielsen doesn’t need traditional radio measurement to grow, but Arbitron seemed like a willing seller, and it will be a “nice complementary but not ‘must have’ platform.”

Nielsen Holdings N.V. said it will pay $ 48 per share, which is a 26 percent premium to Arbitron’s Monday closing price of $ 38.04. Shares of Arbitron, which is based in Columbia, Md., jumped $ 8.99, or 23.6 percent, to close at $ 47.03.

Nielsen, which went public in January 2011, has headquarters in the Netherlands and New York. Its stock added $ 1.30, or 4.4 percent, to close at $ 30.92.

Nielsen said it expects the deal to add about 13 cents per share to its adjusted earnings a year after closing and about 19 cents per share to adjusted earnings two years after closing.

Abitron’s chief operating officer, Sean Creamer, is set to take over as CEO from William Kerr on Jan. 1. Calhoun said he hoped Creamer would remain with Nielsen after the deal closes.

Nielsen said it has a financing commitment for the transaction.

Nielsen was the prime source of audience ratings in the early days of radio, thanks to a device similar to Arbitron’s People Meter. The Audimeter was attached to the radio set. The company’s focus shifted to TV measurement in the 1950s.

On Monday, Nielsen announced a deal with Twitter to measure how much U.S. TV watchers tweet about the shows they’re watching. The “Nielsen Twitter TV Rating” will debut in the fall.

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The Voice Crowns a Winner!

TV Watch

By Julia Haskins

12/18/2012 at 11:20 PM EST

From left: Terry McDermott, Cassadee Pope, Nicholas David and host Carson Daly

Tyler Golden/NBC

The Voice has a new winner!

After several powerful performances the night before, the top three singers – Nicholas David (of Team Cee Lo) and Terry McDermott and Cassadee Pope (of Blake Shelton's team) – faced the music on Tuesday during the final results show of season 3.

Which one was the winner? Keep reading to find out ...

Cassadee Pope was named the winner of The Voice!

Pope thanked her fans who supported her throughout the competition. She was joined onstage by McDermott, who was the runner-up, and David, who came in third place.

It was a night of music as Rihanna, newly engaged Kelly Clarkson, Bruno Mars and the Killers celebrated with the finalists by displaying their talents.

Season 4 of The Voice premieres March 25, 2013, with Shakira and Usher stepping in to take over for Christina Aguilera and Cee Lo Green.

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Experts: Kids are resilient in coping with trauma

WASHINGTON (AP) — They might not want to talk about the gunshots or the screams. But their toys might start getting into imaginary shootouts.

Last week's school shooting in Connecticut raises the question: What will be the psychological fallout for the children who survived?

For people of any age, regaining a sense of security after surviving violence can take a long time. They're at risk for lingering anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder.

But after the grief and fear fades, psychiatrists say most of Newtown's young survivors probably will cope without long-term emotional problems.

"Kids do tend to be highly resilient," said Dr. Matthew Biel, chief of child and adolescent psychiatry at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital.

And one way that younger children try to make sense of trauma is through play. Youngsters may pull out action figures or stuffed animals and re-enact what they witnessed, perhaps multiple times.

"That's the way they gain mastery over a situation that's overwhelming," Biel explained, saying it becomes a concern only if the child is clearly distressed while playing.

Nor is it unusual for children to chase each other playing cops-and-robbers, but now parents might see some also pretending they're dead, added Dr. Melissa Brymer of the UCLA-Duke National Center for Child Traumatic Stress.

Among the challenges will be spotting which children are struggling enough that they may need professional help.

Newtown's tragedy is particularly heart-wrenching because of what such young children grappled with — like the six first-graders who apparently had to run past their teacher's body to escape to safety.

There's little scientific research specifically on PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder, in children exposed to a burst of violence, and even less to tell if a younger child will have a harder time healing than an older one.

Overall, scientists say studies of natural disasters and wars suggest most children eventually recover from traumatic experiences while a smaller proportion develop long-term disorders such as PTSD. Brymer says in her studies of school shootings, that fraction can range from 10 percent to a quarter of survivors, depending on what they actually experienced. A broader 2007 study found 13 percent of U.S. children exposed to different types of trauma reported some symptoms of PTSD, although less than 1 percent had enough for an official diagnosis.

Violence isn't all that rare in childhood. In many parts of the world — and in inner-city neighborhoods in the U.S., too — children witness it repeatedly. They don't become inured to it, Biel said, and more exposure means a greater chance of lasting psychological harm.

In Newtown, most at risk for longer-term problems are those who saw someone killed, said Dr. Carol North of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, who has researched survivors of mass shootings.

Friday's shootings were mostly in two classrooms of Sandy Hook Elementary School, which has about 450 students through fourth-grade.

But those who weren't as close to the danger may be at extra risk, too, if this wasn't their first trauma or they already had problems such as anxiety disorders that increase their vulnerability, she said.

Right after a traumatic event, it's normal to have nightmares or trouble sleeping, to stick close to loved ones, and to be nervous or moody, Biel said.

To help, parents will have to follow their child's lead. Grilling a child about a traumatic experience isn't good, he stressed. Some children will ask a lot of questions, seeking reassurance, he said. Others will be quiet, thinking about the experience and maybe drawing or writing about it, or acting it out at playtime. Younger children may regress, becoming clingy or having tantrums.

Before second grade, their brains also are at a developmental stage some refer to as magical thinking, when it's difficult to distinguish reality and fantasy. Parents may have to help them understand that a friend who died isn't in pain or lonely but also isn't coming back, Brymer said.

When problem behaviors or signs of distress continue for several weeks, Brymer says it's time for an evaluation by a counselor or pediatrician.

Besides a supportive family, what helps? North advises getting children back into routines, together with their friends, and easing them back into a school setting. Studies of survivors of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks found "the power of the support of the people who went through it with you is huge," she said.

Children as young as first-graders can benefit from cognitive-behavioral therapy, Georgetown's Biel said. They can calm themselves with breathing techniques. They also can learn to identify and label their feelings — anger, frustration, worry — and how to balance, say, a worried thought with a brave one.

Finally, avoid watching TV coverage of the shooting, as children may think it's happening all over again, Biel added. He found that children who watched the 9/11 clips of planes hitting the World Trade Center thought they were seeing dozens of separate attacks.

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EDITOR'S NOTE — Lauran Neergaard covers health and medical issues for The Associated Press in Washington.

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