Jerry Buss, Lakers' flamboyant owner, dies at 80

Jerry Buss built a glittering life at the intersection of sports and Hollywood.

After growing up in poverty in Wyoming, he earned success in academia, aerospace and real estate before discovering his favorite vocation when he bought the Los Angeles Lakers in 1979. While Buss wrote the checks and fostered partnerships with two generations of basketball greats, the Lakers won 10 NBA titles and became a glamorous worldwide brand.

With a scientist's analytical skills, a playboy's flair, a businessman's money-making savvy and a die-hard hoops fan's heart, Buss fashioned the Lakers into a remarkable sports entity. They became a nightly happening, often defined by just one word coined by Buss: Showtime.

"His impact is felt worldwide," said Kobe Bryant, who has spent nearly half his life working for Buss.

Buss, who shepherded his NBA team from the Showtime dynasty of the 1980s to the current Bryant era while becoming one of the most important and successful owners in pro sports, died Monday. He was 80.

"Think about the impact that he's had on the game and the decisions he's made, and the brand of basketball he brought here with Showtime and the impact that had on the sport as a whole," Bryant said a few days ago. "Those vibrations were felt to a kid all the way in Italy who was 6 years old, before basketball was even global."

Under Buss' leadership, the Lakers became Southern California's most beloved sports franchise and a worldwide extension of Los Angeles glamour. Buss acquired, nurtured and befriended a staggering array of talented players and basketball minds during his Hall of Fame tenure, from Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar to Bryant, Shaquille O'Neal and Dwight Howard.

Few owners in sports history can approach Buss' accomplishments with the Lakers, who made the NBA finals 16 times during his nearly 34 years in charge, winning 10 titles between 1980 and 2010. Whatever the Lakers did under Buss' watch, they did it big — with marquee players, eye-popping style and a relentless pursuit of success.

"His incredible commitment and desire to build a championship-caliber team that could sustain success over a long period of time has been unmatched," said Jerry West, Buss' longtime general manager and now a consultant with the Golden State Warriors. "With all of his achievements, Jerry was without a doubt one of the most humble men I've ever been around. His vision was second to none; he wanted an NBA franchise brand that represented the very best and went to every extreme to accomplish his goals."

Buss died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, said Bob Steiner, his assistant and longtime friend. Buss had been hospitalized for most of the past 18 months while undergoing cancer treatment, but the immediate cause of death was kidney failure, Steiner said.

"Anybody associated with the NBA since 1980 benefited greatly from Jerry Buss' impact on the game," Steiner said. "He had a different way of looking at things than I did, and people who had been raised in basketball."

With his condition worsening in recent months, several prominent former Lakers visited Buss to say goodbye. Buss' list of basketball friends is long and stellar, with Johnson citing him as a role model and nearly all former Lakers considering him a friend.

"He was a great man and an incredible friend," Johnson tweeted.

Buss always referred to the Lakers as his extended family, and his players rewarded his fanlike excitement with devotion, friendship and two hands full of championship rings. Working with front-office executives West, Bill Sharman and Mitch Kupchak, Buss spent lavishly to win his titles despite lacking a huge personal fortune, often running the NBA's highest payroll while also paying high-profile coaches Pat Riley and Phil Jackson.

With 1,786 victories, the Lakers easily are the NBA's winningest franchise since he bought the club, which is now run largely by Jim Buss and Jeanie Buss, two of his six children.

"We not only have lost our cherished father, but a beloved man of our community and a person respected by the world basketball community," the Buss family said in a statement issued by the Lakers.

"It was our father's often-stated desire and expectation that the Lakers remain in the Buss family. The Lakers have been our lives as well, and we will honor his wish and do everything in our power to continue his unparalleled legacy."

Johnson and fellow Hall of Famers Abdul-Jabbar and Worthy formed lifelong bonds with Buss during the Lakers' run to five titles in nine years in the 1980s, when the Lakers earned a reputation as basketball's most exciting team with their flamboyant Showtime repartee.

The buzz extended throughout the Forum, where Buss used the Laker Girls, a brass band and promotions to keep Lakers fans interested in all four quarters of their games. Courtside seats, priced at $15 when he bought the Lakers, became the hottest tickets in Hollywood — and they still are, with fixture Jack Nicholson and many other celebrities attending every home game.

Worthy tweeted that Buss was "not only the greatest sports owner, but a true friend & just a really cool guy. Loved him dearly."

After a rough stretch of the 1990s for the Lakers, Jackson led O'Neal and Bryant to a three-peat from 2000-02, rekindling the Lakers' mystique, before Bryant and Pau Gasol won two more titles under Jackson in 2009 and 2010. The Lakers have struggled mightily during their current season despite adding Howard and Steve Nash, and could miss the playoffs for just the third time since Buss bought the franchise.

"Today is a very sad day for all the Lakers and basketball," Gasol tweeted. "All my support and condolences to the Buss family. Rest in peace Dr. Buss."

Always an innovative businessman, Buss paid for the Lakers through both their wild success and his groundbreaking moves to raise revenue. He co-founded a basic-cable sports television network and sold the naming rights to the Forum at times when both now-standard strategies were unusual, further justifying his induction to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2010.

"The NBA has lost a visionary owner whose influence on our league is incalculable and will be felt for decades to come," NBA Commissioner David Stern said. "More importantly, we have lost a dear and valued friend."

Although Buss gained fame and another fortune with the Lakers, he also was a scholar, Renaissance man and bon vivant who epitomized California cool his entire public life.

Buss rarely appeared in public without at least one attractive, much younger woman on his arm — at USC football games, high-stakes poker tournaments, hundreds of boxing matches promoted by Buss at the Forum — and, of course, Lakers games from his private box at Staples Center, which was built under his watch. In failing health recently, Buss hadn't attended a Lakers game in the past two seasons.

After a rough-and-tumble childhood that included stints as a ditch-digger and a bellhop in the frigid Wyoming winters, Buss earned a Ph.D. in chemistry at age 24 and had careers in aerospace and real estate development before getting into sports. With money from his real-estate ventures and a good bit of creative accounting, Buss bought the then-struggling Lakers, the NHL's Los Angeles Kings and both clubs' arena — the Forum — from Jack Kent Cooke in a $67.5 million deal that was the largest sports transaction in history at the time.

Last month, Forbes estimated the Lakers were worth $1 billion, second most in the NBA.

Buss also helped change televised sports by co-founding the Prime Ticket network in 1985, receiving a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2006 for his work in television. Breaking the contemporary model of subscription services for televised sports, Buss' Prime Ticket put beloved broadcaster Chick Hearn and the Lakers' home games on basic cable.

Buss also sold the naming rights to the Forum in 1988 to Great Western Savings & Loan — another deal that was ahead of its time.

Born in Salt Lake City, Gerald Hatten Buss was raised in poverty in Wyoming before improving his life through education. He also grew to love basketball, describing himself as an "overly competitive but underly endowed player."

After graduating from the University of Wyoming, Buss attended USC for graduate school. He became a chemistry professor and worked as a chemist for the Bureau of Mines before carving out a path to wealth and sports prominence.

The former mathematician's fortune grew out of a $1,000 real-estate investment in a West Los Angeles apartment building with partner Frank Mariani, an aerospace engineer and co-worker.

Heavily leveraging his fortune and various real-estate holdings during two years of negotiations, Buss purchased Cooke's entire Los Angeles sports empire in 1979, including a 13,000-acre ranch in Kern County. Buss cited his love of basketball as the motivation for his purchase, and he immediately worked to transform the Lakers — who had won just one NBA title since moving west from Minneapolis in 1960 — into a star-powered endeavor befitting Hollywood.

"One of the first things I tried to do when I bought the team was to make it an identification for this city, like Motown in Detroit," he told the Los Angeles Times in 2008. "I try to keep that identification alive. I'm a real Angeleno. I want us to be part of the community."

Buss' plans immediately worked: Johnson, Abdul-Jabbar and coach Paul Westhead led the Lakers to the 1980 title. Johnson's ball-handling wizardry and Abdul-Jabbar's smooth inside game made for an attractive style of play, and the Lakers came to define West Coast sophistication.

Riley, the former broadcaster who fit the L.A. image perfectly with his slick-backed hair and good looks, was surprisingly promoted by Buss early in the 1981-82 season after West declined to co-coach the team. Riley became one of the best coaches in NBA history, leading the Lakers to four straight NBA finals and four titles, with Worthy, Michael Cooper, Byron Scott and A.C. Green playing major roles.

Overall, the Lakers made the finals nine times in Buss' first 12 seasons while rekindling the NBA's best rivalry with the Boston Celtics, and Buss basked in the worldwide celebrity he received from his team's achievements. His partying became Hollywood legend, with even his players struggling to keep up with Buss' lifestyle.

Johnson's HIV diagnosis and retirement in 1991 staggered Buss and the Lakers, the owner recalled in 2011. The Lakers struggled through much of the 1990s, going through seven coaches and making just one conference finals appearance in an eight-year stretch despite the 1996 arrivals of O'Neal, who signed with Los Angeles as a free agent, and Bryant, the 17-year-old high schooler acquired in a draft-week trade.

Shaq and Kobe didn't reach their potential until Buss persuaded Jackson, the Chicago Bulls' six-time NBA champion coach, to take over the Lakers in 1999. Los Angeles immediately won the next three NBA titles in brand-new Staples Center, AEG's state-of-the-art downtown arena built with the Lakers as the primary tenant.

After the Lakers traded O'Neal in 2004, they hovered in mediocrity again until acquiring Gasol in a heist of a trade with Memphis in early 2008. Los Angeles made the next three NBA finals, winning two more titles.

Through the Lakers' frequent successes and occasional struggles, Buss never stopped living his Hollywood dream. He was an avid poker player and a fixture on the Los Angeles club scene well into his 70s, when a late-night drunk-driving arrest in 2007 — with a 23-year-old woman in the passenger seat of his Mercedes-Benz — prompted him to cut down on his partying.

Buss owned the NHL's Kings from 1979-87, and the WNBA's Los Angeles Sparks won two league titles under Buss' ownership. He also owned Los Angeles franchises in World Team Tennis and the Major Indoor Soccer League.

Ownership of the Lakers is now in a trust controlled by Buss' six children, who all have worked for the Lakers organization in various capacities for several years. Jim Buss, the Lakers' executive vice president of player personnel and the second-oldest child, has taken over much of the club's primary decision-making responsibilities in the last few years, while daughter Jeanie runs the franchise's business side.

"I am blessed with a wonderful family who have helped me and guided me every step of the way," Buss said in 2010 at his Hall of Fame induction ceremony. "This support is the best anybody could ever have."

Jerry Buss still served two terms as president of the NBA's Board of Governors and was actively involved in the 2011 lockout negotiations, developing blood clots in his legs attributed to his extensive travel during that time.

Buss is survived by his six children: sons Johnny, Jim, Joey and Jesse, and daughters Jeanie Buss and Janie Drexel. He had eight grandchildren.

Arrangements are pending for a funeral and memorial service, likely at Staples Center or a nearby theatre in downtown Los Angeles.

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Associated Press writers Beth Harris and Andrew Dalton contributed to this report.

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Hip implants a bit more likely to fail in women

CHICAGO (AP) — Hip replacements are slightly more likely to fail in women than in men, according to one of the largest studies of its kind in U.S. patients. The risk of the implants failing is low, but women were 29 percent more likely than men to need a repeat surgery within the first three years.

The message for women considering hip replacement surgery remains unclear. It's not known which models of hip implants perform best in women, even though women make up the majority of the more than 400,000 Americans who have full or partial hip replacements each year to ease the pain and loss of mobility caused by arthritis or injuries.

"This is the first step in what has to be a much longer-term research strategy to figure out why women have worse experiences," said Diana Zuckerman, president of the nonprofit National Research Center for Women & Families. "Research in this area could save billions of dollars" and prevent patients from experiencing the pain and inconvenience of surgeries to fix hip implants that go wrong.

Researchers looked at more than 35,000 surgeries at 46 hospitals in the Kaiser Permanente health system. The research, published Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine, was funded by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

After an average of three years, 2.3 percent of the women and 1.9 percent of the men had undergone revision surgery to fix a problem with the original hip replacement. Problems included instability, infection, broken bones and loosening.

"There is an increased risk of failure in women compared to men," said lead author Maria Inacio, an epidemiologist at Southern California Permanente Medical Group in San Diego. "This is still a very small number of failures."

Women tend to have smaller joints and bones than men, and so they tend to need smaller artificial hips. Devices with smaller femoral heads — the ball-shaped part of the ball-and-socket joint in an artificial hip — are more likely to dislocate and require a surgical repair.

That explained some, but not all, of the difference between women and men in the study. It's not clear what else may have contributed to the gap. Co-author Dr. Monti Khatod, an orthopedic surgeon in Los Angeles, speculated that one factor may be a greater loss of bone density in women.

The failure of metal-on-metal hips was almost twice as high for women than in men. The once-popular models were promoted by manufacturers as being more durable than standard plastic or ceramic joints, but several high-profile recalls have led to a decrease in their use in recent years.

"Don't be fooled by hype about a new hip product," said Zuckerman, who wrote an accompanying commentary in the medical journal. "I would not choose the latest, greatest hip implant if I were a woman patient. ... At least if it's been for sale for a few years, there's more evidence for how well it's working."

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Online:

Journal: http://www.jamainternalmed.com

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APNewsBreak: Jenni Rivera memoir due in July

NEW YORK (AP) — Some final words from the late Mexican-American singer and TV star Jenni Rivera will be out this summer.

Atria Books announced Monday it's publishing a memoir by the multimillion-selling artist, who died in a plane crash in December at age 43. "Unbreakable," coming out simultaneously in English and Spanish, is scheduled for July and has been authorized by Rivera's family.

Rosie Rivera, the late singer's sister, said the family had decided to share Rivera's book with her fans so they could "enjoy her as we have."

"I miss my sister every moment, but on days that I want to feel her close, I open her book written in her own words, and feel her right next to me," Rosie Rivera said in a statement issued by Atria.

Atria vice president and senior editor Johanna Castillo said she had talked to Rivera about the impact she hoped her book's message would have on readers.

"This book is her legacy to all of her fans," Castillo said.

Rivera had worked on "Unbreakable" for several years and completed it before her death, Atria spokesman Paul Olsewski said. She had been in talks with Atria, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, since 2011.

According to Atria, "Unbreakable" will provide "an intimate look into the heart and soul of this self-made woman, who ascended to the top of the charts against all odds, becoming a legend in a completely male dominated music category," grupero, a type of Mexican folk music.

A candid memoir would be in character for Rivera, a mother and grandmother of two known as the Diva de la Banda, or Diva of the Band, for her frank talk about her life. At the time of her death, she had been recently divorced from her third husband, former Major League Baseball player Esteban Loaiza.

Rivera, who was born in Los Angeles, launched her career by selling cassette tapes at flea markets. She went on to sell more than 15 million copies of her 12 major-label albums.

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OfficeMax, Office Depot may merge

U.S. office supply chains Office Depot Inc. and Naperville-based OfficeMax Inc. are in advanced discussions for a merger, a person familiar with the matter said on Monday.

A deal could come as soon as this week, that person said, adding that the talks were ongoing and could still fall apart.

Currently, the deal is expected to be structured as a stock-for-stock transaction, the person said.

Neither company responded to requests seeking comment.

One of OfficeMax's top shareholders, Neuberger Berman, said it would support a merger with Office Depot depending on terms of the deal, according to a portfolio manager at the firm.

Responding to media reports, Benjamin Nahum of Neuberger Berman, told Reuters in an interview that his preference would be for OfficeMax to declare a special dividend before merging with Office Depot. "In our view this would facilitate a fair deal."

Neuberger Berman said OfficeMax shareholders should be compensated for "the balance sheet strength that we bring to this combined entity."

The news came months after the investment firm called on the third-largest U.S. office supply chain to return money to shareholders in the form of a dividend or share repurchases and raised the specter of a proxy fight next year if the retailer fails to comply.

According to Thomson Reuters' data, Neuberger Berman owns 4.76 percent of OfficeMax, making it the third-largest shareholder of the Naperville company.

OfficeMax is expected to report its quarterly earnings on Thursday.

While the pair up had been rumored for years, one analyst said Monday that he believed a deal was less likely after a report last week that Office Depot is in talks to sell its remaining 50 percent stake in its Mexican operations.

Scott Tilghman, an analyst with investment firm B. Riley & Co. said that similarities in the pair’s U.S. and Mexican operations were thought to be a cornerstone of the consideration to combine.

But even if Office Depot does sell its Mexican stake, Tilghman said a deal would still make sense as both companies struggle to gain traction against competitor Staples Inc. and sites like Amazon.com.

By combining, the pair could cut costs by shedding stores and streamlining operations without having to raise prices. Tilghman estimates the companies could get rid of 20 percent of their combined stores and still hold onto customers.

Both companies have struggled in recent years from declining revenue in their retail stores. In OfficeMax’s most recent quarter, it was able to grow net income by cutting costs despite lower revenue. Slumping retail sales were somewhat offset by OfficeMax’s U.S. contract business, where it works directly with businesses to help operate more efficiently and reduce office expenses.

If combined, OfficeMax and Office Depot, the world’s second and third largest office products companies by revenue, would still not eclipse the segment’s largest business, Staples Inc.

Office Depot, based in Boca Raton, Florida, has 1,675 stores world-wide, annual sales of about $11.5 billion and some 39,000 employees, the Journal said. OfficeMax, operates roughly 900 stores in the United States and Mexico, generates about $7 billion in annual sales and has 29,000 employees, the Journal said.

Shares of OfficeMax closed at $10.75 on Friday on the New York Stock Exchange. Shares of Office Depot closed at $4.59. Both are approaching their respective 12-month highs.

- Samantha Bomkamp and Reuters contributed to this report

OMX data by YCharts

OMX data by YCharts

OMX Revenue Quarterly data by YCharts

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Blackhawks keep rolling with 3-2 win over Kings

CAPTIONS

Blackhawks 3, Kings 2
Dave Bolland reacts after being pushed down on the ice by the Kings' Rob Scuderi during the third period. (Nuccio DiNuzzo, Chicago Tribune /February 17, 2013)

By Chris Kuc




Tribune reporter

5:03 p.m. CST, February 17, 2013

The Chicago Blackhawks keep streaking.

With their 3-2 victory over the Kings on Sunday at the United Center, the Hawks extended their points streak to start the season to 15 games.

Brent Seabrook and Jonathan Toews each had a goal and an assist and Patrick Sharp also scored for the Hawks as they improved to 12-0-3 on the season and moved to within one of the NHL record of 16 consecutive contests to start a season without a regulation loss set by the Ducks in 2006. Duncan Keith added two assists for the Hawks.

Ray Emery earned the victory in goal for the Hawks while Jonathan Quick was the loser for the Kings. Mike Richards had two power-play scores for Los Angeles.

Healthy scratches for the Hawks were Michal Rozsival and Jamal Mayers. Sitting for the Kings were Brad Richardson, Colin Fraser and Andrew Campbell.

One-timer: Quenneville said starting goalie Corey Crawford is "progressing" from his upper-body injury and is still day-to-day.

ckuc@tribune.com

Twitter @ChrisKuc

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Intel Israel more than doubles exports, mulls new investment

TEL AVIV (Reuters) - Intel's Israeli subsidiary more than doubled its exports in 2012 to $4.6 billion and is seeking to bring manufacturing of the company's next generation of chips to Israel.

Intel's exports, which rose 109 percent from $2.2 billion in 2011, were boosted by the start of production of chips using 22 nanometer technology at its Kiryat Gat plant in southern Israel, which is now operating at full capacity.

Intel, the world's No. 1 chipmaker, will build chips over the next two to three years with features measuring just 14 nm in Ireland and the United States but the company is already thinking about where it will produce 10 nm chips. The narrower the features, the more transistors can fit on a single chip, improving performance.

Intel Israel executives said they would like to see 10 nm production in Israel.

"The average life of a technology is two to six years so we need to be busy to get the next technology, 10 nanometer," Maxine Fassberg, general manager of Intel Israel, told a news conference on Sunday. "We need to get a decision far enough in advance to be able to upgrade the plant. So for 10 nanometer, decisions will need to be made this year."

Fassberg said upgrading the existing Fab 28 plant in Israel would require a lower investment than building a new plant but would still involve several billion dollars.

Intel Israel has in the past received government grants to help with the costs of its investments and Fassberg told Reuters the company was "constantly in talks with the government".

Intel has invested $10.5 billion in Israel in the past decade, including $1.1 billion in 2012, and has received $1.3 billion in government grants.

The company accounted for 20 percent of Israel's high-tech exports last year and 10 percent of its industrial exports, excluding diamonds.

"If Intel had not increased its exports, Israel's high-tech exports would have shrunk by 10 percent," Intel Israel President Mooly Eden said.

Most of Intel Israel's exports - $3.5 billion - came from its chip manufacturing activities.

Intel is Israel's largest private employer, with 8,542 workers, up 10 percent from 2011. The company has two plants - in Jerusalem and Kiryat Gat - as well as four research and development centers.

Eden said Intel was also committed to investing in start-ups, having invested in 64 Israeli companies since 1996. In July its global investment arm Intel Capital said it would expand its operations in Israel.

(Reporting by Tova Cohen; Editing by Helen Massy-Beresford)

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Danica Patrick wins pole for NASCAR's Daytona 500

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. (AP) — Danica Patrick has made history before — as a woman and a racer, in Indianapolis and Japan.

The spotlight is nothing new. But never has it been this bright before.

Patrick won the Daytona 500 pole Sunday, becoming the first woman to secure the top spot for any race in NASCAR's premier circuit. It's by far the biggest achievement of her stock-car career.

"I was brought up to be the fastest driver, not the fastest girl," she said. "That was instilled in me from very young, from the beginning. Then I feel like thriving in those moments, where the pressure's on, has also been a help for me. I also feel like I've been lucky in my career to be with good teams and have good people around me. I don't think any of it would have been possible without that.

"For those reasons, I've been lucky enough to make history, be the first woman to do many things. I really just hope that I don't stop doing that. We have a lot more history to make. We are excited to do it."

Her latest stamp in the history books came with a lap at 196.434 mph around Daytona International Speedway. Patrick went out eighth in the qualifying session, then had to wait about two hours as 37 fellow drivers tried to take her spot.

Only four-time Cup champion Jeff Gordon even came close to knocking her off. Gordon was the only other driver who topped 196 mph in qualifying. He locked up the other guaranteed spot in next week's season-opening Daytona 500.

"It's great to be a part of history with Danica being on the pole," said Gordon, who joked that at least he was the fastest guy. "I think we all know how popular she is, what this will do for our sport. Congratulations to her. Proud to be on there with her."

The rest of the field will be set in duel qualifying races Thursday.

However the lineup unfolds, all drivers will line up behind Patrick's No. 10 Chevrolet SS.

And she knows her latest achievement will mean more public relations work.

The routine is nothing new for Patrick, who was the first woman to lead laps in the Indianapolis 500. She finished third in 2009, the highest finish in that illustrious race for a woman. And she became the only woman to win an IndyCar race when she did it in Japan in 2008.

Hardly anyone witnessed that victory.

Leading the field to the green flag in NASCAR's showcase event should be must-watch television.

"That's a huge accomplishment," team owner and fellow driver Tony Stewart said. "It's not like it's been 15 or 20 years she's been trying to do this. It's her second trip to Daytona here in a Cup car. She's made history in the sport. That's stuff that we're proud of being a part of with her. It's something she should have a huge amount of pride in.

"It's never been done. There's only one person that can be the first to do anything. Doesn't matter how many do it after you do, accomplish that same goal. The first one that does always has that little bit more significance to it because you were the first."

Even before her fast lap Sunday, Patrick was the talk of Speedweeks. Not only did she open up about her budding romance with fellow Sprint Cup rookie Ricky Stenhouse Jr., but she was considered the front-runner for the pole after leading practice sessions Saturday.

And she didn't disappoint.

She kept her car at or near the bottom of the famed track and gained ground on the straightaways, showing lots of power from a Hendrick Motorsports engine.

"It's easy to come down here in your first or second year as a driver and clip the apron trying to run too tight a line or do something and scrub speed off," Stewart said. "That's something she did an awesome job. Watching her lap, she runs so smooth. ... She did her job behind the wheel, for sure."

The result surely felt good for Patrick, especially considering the former IndyCar driver has mostly struggled in three NASCAR seasons. Her best finish in 10 Cup races is 17th, and she has one top-five in 58 starts in the second-tier Nationwide Series.

She raced part-time in 2010 and 2011 while still driving a full IndyCar slate. She switched solely to stock cars last season and finished 10th in the Nationwide standings.

She made the jump to Sprint Cup this season and will battle Stenhouse for Rookie of the Year honors.

Starting out front in an unpredictable, 500-mile race doesn't guarantee any sort of result, but securing the pole will put her in the limelight for at least the rest of the week.

She also won the pole at Daytona for last year's Nationwide race.

This is considerably bigger.

The previous highest female qualifier in a Cup race was Janet Guthrie. She started ninth at Bristol and Talladega in 1977.

"It's obviously a history-making event that will last a long, long time," Guthrie said, praising Patrick's feat. "It's a different era, of course. Different times. I can't imagine what I would do with a spotter or somebody telling me how to drive. It's rather a different sport now. Back then, there was a much greater difference from the front of the field to the back."

Guthrie received a lukewarm reception from fellow drivers back then.

Patrick was much more welcomed, undoubtedly because of her background and popularity.

She's comfortable being in the spotlight, evidenced by her racing career, her television commercials and her sudden openness about her personal life.

"I think when pressure's on and when the spotlight's on, I feel like it ultimately ends up becoming some of my better moments and my better races and better results," Patrick said. "I just understand that if you put the hard work in before you go out there that you can have a little peace and a little peace of mind knowing that you've done everything you can and just let it happen."

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UN warns risk of hepatitis E in S. Sudan grows

GENEVA (AP) — The United Nations says an outbreak of hepatitis E has killed 111 refugees in camps in South Sudan since July, and has become endemic in the region.

U.N. refugee agency spokesman Adrian Edwards says the influx of people to the camps from neighboring Sudan is believed to be one of the factors in the rapid spread of the contagious, life-threatening inflammatory viral disease of the liver.

Edwards said Friday that the camps have been hit by 6,017 cases of hepatitis E, which is spread through contaminated food and water.

He says the largest number of cases and suspected cases is in the Yusuf Batil camp in Upper Nile state, which houses 37,229 refugees fleeing fighting between rebels and the Sudanese government.

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Discovery bets on 2 dope series about pot growers

NEW YORK (AP) — Cupcake makers, pawnbrokers and storage container raiders have all had their moments in reality television's spotlight. Now the time may be right for marijuana growers — and the people who chase them.

The Discovery network debuts a six-episode series, "Weed Country," at 10 p.m. Wednesday and will replace it with "Pot Cops" in April. Both examine the marijuana trade in northern California.

It fits Discovery's efforts to introduce interesting subcultures to viewers, said Nancy Daniels, the network's executive vice president for production and development on the West Coast. Discovery tried a series about a medical marijuana dispensary in Oakland two years ago, "Weed Wars," and is sticking with dope even though the show didn't do very well in the ratings.

"We still think it's an interesting world and maybe we didn't tap into the right part of it," Daniels said.

Based on its first episode, "Weed Country" is a nuanced effort at giving equal time to both sides of the issue. Producers find colorful growers who use science to make the best product possible. They don't believe what they are doing is wrong. "We're flying the flag of civil disobedience," one grower said.

The growers may be trying to dodge the law, but don't hesitate to open up different facets of their business to television cameras.

At the same time, "Weed Country" shows the challenges faced by law enforcement. It follows one group's careful training for backwoods missions to find farms guarded by growers who are armed and intent upon protecting their crops.

"It surprised me with how deep and complex it was," Daniels said.

The show does have some distracting reality TV contrivances. Before one commercial break, a grower making a late-night delivery to a customer becomes suspicious of a van that ominously pulls out behind him on a dark road. After the break, the van drives innocently by. At another point, producers lead you to believe the grower is about to be pulled over by police when, after a commercial, it becomes clear the officer is going after someone else.

The "Pot Cops" series will be told from the point of view of law enforcement, after producers reached an agreement for access to officers hunting down marijuana farms in California's Humboldt County.

Discovery had planned to air the two programs back-to-back on the same night and promote it as "Weed Wednesday" on the network. But those plans were dropped because unrelated programming expected to be available this spring had fallen through and Discovery needed "Pot Cops" to fill a hole on its schedule in April.

The change had nothing to do with feeling cold feet about a "Weed Wednesday" promotion, Daniels said.

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U. of C. Medicine's leader gears up for challenges

Nearly every morning, before 7 a.m., Dr. Kenneth Polonsky is dropped off near the Lakefront Trail on Chicago's South Side, a few steps from Lake Michigan.

He carries no briefcase, wears no suit and has no cup of coffee, the standard trappings of his executive contemporaries.

Instead — at least in the winter — he's covered in high-tech running gear, leaving only a small patch of skin around his eyes exposed to the weather. The outfit, he muses, must raise suspicions among cab drivers.

"It's 6:30 in the morning, it's dark and can be, maybe, 10 degrees outside," he says. "When I ask the driver to drop me by the side of (the road), they must think, 'What's going on with this guy? There's something funny here.'"

Twelve months a year, through heat waves, cold snaps, rain, sleet and snow, the top official at University of Chicago Medicine starts most mornings running 5 miles to work.

It's a routine that reflects lessons learned from decades of studying diabetes and treating patients with the disease and one he pairs with watching his diet "like a hawk." The daily run also is a vehicle for the cerebral 62-year-old M.D. to contemplate the challenges that lie ahead.

There are many, starting with the massive transformation of the way medical care is paid for and delivered as part of President Barack Obama's 2010 health care overhaul.

Polonsky also faces cuts to research funding that flows to the Pritzker School of Medicine through the National Institutes of Health and growing financial pressure from Illinois' Medicaid program, the federal-state health insurance program that serves a substantial percentage of the hospital's South Side patients.

All this while christening and trying to pay for a $700 million, 1.2 million-square-foot new hospital, a 10-story, boxy, modernist structure that towers above a campus better known for its ubiquitous, early-20th-century red-roofed Gothic buildings.

The hospital, dubbed the Center for Care and Discovery in the absence of a donor willing to lay down $50 million for naming rights, is scheduled to open Saturday.

With 240 private patient rooms, 28 supersize operating rooms and seven advanced imaging rooms, the hospital will specialize in neuroscience and the treatment of cancer and gastrointestinal diseases.

But even what is supposed to be a celebratory, clink-the-glasses moment for Polonsky and the university has been sullied by controversy.

An estimated 50 protesters entered the hospital on a Sunday afternoon in January, holding placards and using a megaphone to voice their displeasure that such a costly facility was not outfitted with a trauma unit.

University police with batons were videotaped shoving protesters to the ground. Four were arrested in the melee.

Polonsky said the system is re-evaluating its role in trauma care, "a legitimate question for discussion and debate and one we are looking at again in detail."

Managing this issue will be a major test of Polonsky's leadership in 2013 and will occur against the backdrop of the largest upheaval to the health care industry in a generation.

"We're in a really vulnerable situation at the moment; there's no question about it," Polonsky said of the shift under way in health care. "But that's one of the reasons I'm interested in my job. I believe I can impact a series of big issues."

Many people, he said, go through life wondering whether what they're doing is worthwhile or significant in the big picture of things.

"I'm very fortunate to never, ever have had that problem," Polonsky said.

A boy in South Africa

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