Adkins explains Confederate flag earpiece

NEW YORK (AP) — Trace Adkins wore an earpiece decorated like the Confederate flag when he performed for the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree Lighting but says he meant no offense by it.

Adkins appeared with the earpiece on a nationally televised special for the lighting on Wednesday. Some regard the flag as a racist symbol and criticized Adkins in Twitter postings.

But in a statement released Thursday, the Louisiana native called himself a proud American who objects to any oppression and says the flag represents his Southern heritage.

He noted he's a descendant of Confederate soldiers and says he did not intend offense by wearing it.

Adkins — on a USO tour in Japan — also called for the preservation of America's battlefields and an "honest conversation about the country's history."

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Online:

http://www.traceadkins.com

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Recipes for Health: Asian Chopped Salad With Seasoned Tofu ‘Fingers’ — Recipes for Health

Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times

I like to serve the baked seasoned tofu “fingers” warm on top of the salad. They are delicious cold, too; it is worth making up a separate batch for the refrigerator. If you have an assortment of vegetables leftover from Thanksgiving dinner, throw them in!

For the Tofu:

1/4 cup soy sauce

2 tablespoons mirin (sweet Japanese rice wine)

1 tablespoon rice vinegar

1 tablespoon minced or grated fresh ginger

1/2 teaspoon sugar

1 tablespoon Asian sesame oil

1 pound firm tofu

For the salad:

1 romaine heart, chopped

5 cups mixed chopped or diced vegetables such as:

Green or red cabbage

Celery (from the inner heart)

Red pepper

Radishes, sliced or chopped

1/4 cup dry roasted peanuts, coarsely chopped

1/4 cup chopped cilantro (more to taste)

1 serrano pepper, seeded and minced (optional)

For the dressing:

2 tablespoons fresh lime juice

1/4 cup tofu marinade, above

2 tablespoons canola or peanut oil

1/3 cup low-fat buttermilk or plain nonfat yogurt

1. Marinate the tofu: combine the soy sauce, mirin, rice vinegar, ginger and sugar in a 2-quart bowl. Whisk in the sesame oil and combine well. Drain the tofu and pat dry with paper towels. Slice into 1/3-inch thick slabs and cut the slabs in half lengthwise to get “fingers” approximately 1/3 inch thick by 3/4 inch wide. Blot each finger with paper towels. Add to the bowl with the marinade and gently toss to coat. Cover and refrigerate for 15 minutes to an hour, or for up to a day.

2. Meanwhile, heat the oven to 375 degrees and line a baking sheet with parchment. Lift the tofu out of the marinade and arrange the pieces on the parchment-covered baking sheet. Bake for 7 to 10 minutes, until the edges are just beginning to color and the marinade sets on the surface of the tofu. Remove from the heat.

3. In a large bowl, combine all of the salad ingredients. Whisk together the dressing ingredients and toss with the salad. If desired, transfer to a platter. Garnish with the tofu strips and serve.

Yield: Serves 4

Advance preparation: The chopped vegetables can be prepared up to a day ahead and refrigerated in a well covered container. The tofu marinade will keep for two days in the refrigerator. The baked seasoned tofu will keep for several days in the refrigerator.

Nutritional information per serving: 317 calories; 20 grams fat; 2 grams saturated fat; 8 grams polyunsaturated fat; 9 grams monounsaturated fat; 1 milligram cholesterol; 19 grams carbohydrates; 5 grams dietary fiber; 470 milligrams sodium (does not include salt to taste); 16 grams protein

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

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Windows 8 hasn't lifted U.S. tablet or PC sales, NPD says

Microsoft Corp.'s new Windows 8 has not given a boost to U.S. sales of PCs and tablet computers, according to the NPD Group.

Since the highly anticipated operating system was launched Oct. 26, Windows device sales have fallen 21% compared with the same period last year, the market research firm said.

Notebook sales, which have been weak throughout most of 2012, were down 24%, and desktop sales dropped 9%.

Through Nov. 17, Windows 8 had captured just 58% of Windows computing-device unit sales. That compared with 83% for Windows 7 in the four weeks after that operating system's debut, NPD said.

Windows 8 tablet sales have "been almost nonexistent," with unit sales representing less than 1% of all Windows 8 device sales to date, NPD said Thursday.

"After just four weeks on the market, it's still [too] early to place blame on Windows 8 for the ongoing weakness in the PC market," said Stephen Baker, vice president of industry analysis at NPD. "We still have the whole holiday selling season ahead of us, but clearly Windows 8 did not prove to be the impetus for a sales turnaround some had hoped for."

Baker went on to say that a sluggish back-to-school shopping season left a lot of inventory unsold, which hurt initial sales for Windows 8 devices.

Average selling prices of Windows computing devices have jumped significantly compared with last year, NPD said. Last year, overall prices were $433; this year's average selling price during the last four weeks was $477.

"The strong performance of Windows 8 notebooks with touch screens, where Windows 8 truly shines, offers some reason for optimism," Baker said. "These products accounted for 6% of Windows 8 notebook sales at an average price of $867, helping to reestablish a premium segment to the Windows consumer notebook market."

NPD said its research excluded sales of the Surface with Windows RT tablet, which also launched Oct. 26. Microsoft has not specified how many it has sold.

On Thursday, Microsoft announced the pricing for a premium version of that tablet.

Surface with Windows 8 Pro, which will be available in January, will cost $899 for a 64GB version and $999 for a 128GB version, the Redmond, Wash., company said.

The premium tablet looks much like the Surface with Windows RT model currently on the market. Both include dark titanium VaporMG casings, dual 2x2 MIMO antennas and kickstands.

But the Surface Pro has Intel Corp.'s next-generation Core i5 processor, which should give the tablet a graphics boost for its 10.6-inch display that runs at a full-HD resolution. The Surface Pro also includes a full-size USB 3.0 port and a Surface pen with Palm Block technology. It will run current Windows 7 desktop applications.

"It's a full PC AND a tablet," Panos Panay, general manager of Microsoft Surface, said in a blog post.

The device weighs less than 2 pounds and is less than 14 millimeters thick.

andrea.chang@latimes.com

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Powerball's $580-million jackpot inspires wishes, dreamers

Don't bother telling Wednesday night's Powerball winners  that a lottery is just a tax on those who flunked math. With a winning ticket in hand, or even just the dream of one, who cares if the odds against them exceeded 175 million to 1? 

Last-minute ticket-buying pushed the jackpot to nearly $580 million, which is how much a single winner would get if he or she took the money in annual payments over 30 years.  

The winning numbers: 5-16-22-23-29, and the Powerball:  06. 

Hours after the 8 p.m. drawing, officials said winning tickets had been sold in Arizona and Missouri.

No one had won since Oct. 6, causing the jackpot to roll over 16 times. It  grows at least $10 million every time no one wins, lottery officials said. 

To play Powerball, one must pick five unique numbers from 1 through 59, and a Powerball number from 1 through 35. The odds of winning are 1 in 175,223,510. 

Powerball tickets aren't sold in California, but some feverish residents reportedly drove or flew to one of 42 participating states  to buy a chance at a fortune. The District of Columbia and the U.S. Virgin Islands also participate. 

Maybe the next time the jackpot soars, out-of-state travel won't be necessary. On Thursday, the California State Lottery Commission is expected to adopt regulations to join the Powerball lottery. If so, California retailers could start selling the $2 tickets in April.

[Updated, 10:45 p.m., Nov. 28: An earlier version of this post said the jackpot would exceed $550 million.  Late Wednesday, the Associated Press reported, Powerball officials said it would be nearly $580 million. And early Thursday EST, lottery officials said winning tickets had been sold in Arizona and Missouri.]

 ALSO:

Zig Ziglar dies at 86; motivational speaker inspired millions

Nanny, in hospital, pleads not guilty to murder of 2 children

Texas moves to seize polygamist Warren Jeffs' ranch compound 

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'That 70s Show' star arrested in North Carolina

STATESVILLE, N.C. (AP) — "That '70s Show" star Lisa Robin Kelly is free on bond after being arrested for assault.

Police in the Charlotte, N.C., suburb of Mooresville arrested the 42-year-old Kelly and 61-year-old husband Robert Joseph Gilliam after responding to a disturbance at their home Monday. Both are free on bond.

Gilliam is charged with misdemeanor assault on a female. Kelly is charged with misdemeanor assault. They were taken to the Iredell County Detention Center and released on $500 bond apiece. They have a court date of Jan. 25. It's not known if either has an attorney.

Kelly portrayed Laurie Forman, sister of Topher Grace's lead character Eric, on the FOX series, which ended in 2006. She also appeared on the TV shows "Murphy Brown" and "Married . . . With Children."

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Recipes for Health: Roasted Sweet Potato and Crispy Kale Salad — Recipes for Health

Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times

This is a great salad to make with leftover roasted sweet potatoes but you can also roast them just to make the salad. The trick to succeeding with crispy kale is to make sure it is completely dry before you put it in the oven. If you are using bunched kale I recommend that you stem and wash it, spin it twice in a salad spinner, then set the leaves in single layers on a few layers of paper towels and roll them up. You can then refrigerate for up to a day or two. Once the salad is assembled, the portion of kale that you toss with the sweet potatoes will soften, and the kale that surrounds the sweet potatoes will remain crispy.

2 large or 3 medium sweet potatoes

1 generous bunch curly kale (about 1 pound), stemmed, leaves washed and dried thoroughly (see above)

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

Salt to taste

1/4 cup broken pecans, lightly toasted

For the dressing:

1 small garlic clove, pureed

2 ounces Roquefort or blue cheese, crumbled

1 teaspoon chopped fresh thyme leaves

1/2 cup buttermilk

1 tablespoon sherry vinegar

Freshly ground pepper

1. To roast the sweet potatoes, heat the oven to 425 degrees. Rinse the sweet potatoes and pierce in several places with the tip of a paring knife. Line a sheet pan with foil and place the sweet potatoes on the foil. Bake 40 to minutes to an hour, depending on the size of the sweet potatoes. They are done when they are soft and beginning to ooze. Remove from heat and allow to cool.

2. Meanwhile make the dressing (or you can make it a day ahead). In a mini-processor or in a mortar and pestle blend together the garlic, cheese, thyme, buttermilk, and vinegar. Season to taste with salt and pepper. For best results, leave it to sit for at least an hour.

3. To make the crispy kale, heat the oven to 300 degrees. Line two baking sheets with parchment. Make sure that your kale leaves are dry and tear them into medium-size pieces and toss with the olive oil. Gently knead the leaves between your thumbs and fingers to make sure they are coated with oil. Place in an even layer on the baking sheets. Do this in batches if necessary. Place in the oven and roast for 16 to 22 minutes, until the leaves are crisp but not browned. If some of the leaves crisp before others, remove them to a bowl or sheet pan and return the remaining kale to the oven. Watch closely as once the kale browns it will taste bitter. Season to taste with kosher salt or fine sea salt. Allow to cool.

4. Peel the sweet potatoes, quarter lengthwise and slice. Place in a salad bowl and add the pecans and half the crispy kale.

5. Line the edge of a platter with the remaining crispy kale. Toss the sweet potato mixture with the dressing, place in the middle of the platter and serve at once.

Yield: Serves 4 as a main dish

Advance preparation: The crispy kale will remain crisp for a day at room temperature. Sweet potatoes can be baked and refrigerated for up to four days. The salad should be served right away once assembled.

Nutritional information per serving: 378 calories; 17 grams fat; 4 grams saturated fat; 3 grams polyunsaturated fat; 9 grams monounsaturated fat; 14 milligrams cholesterol; 49 grams carbohydrates; 8 grams dietary fiber; 431 milligrams sodium (does not include salt to taste); 11 grams protein

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

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Starbucks' $7-a-cup coffee: Can you tell the difference?

Some coffee aficionados have a difficult decision to make: Spend $7 on a full lunch or on a single cup of Starbucks coffee?

The brew in question: the Seattle giant's new Costa Rica Finca Palmilera, its most expensive offering ever and also one of its rarest. The coffee is part of the company's Reserve line and costs $7 for a grande — a 16-ounce cup.

An 8-ounce package of beans costs $40.

The uber-premium beans and brew are available only in 46 Starbucks stores in Portland and Seattle, a licensed store in Idaho and Starbucks' Roy Street Coffee & Tea offshoot in Washington.

With a limited quantity of beans available, the company said it will not expand the offering beyond the Pacific Northwest to its more than 11,000 Starbucks stores nationwide.

Online, Starbucks already has sold out of a similar premium offering — the Costa Rica Tarrazu Geisha, listed on the website as having "rose petal aromas with ripe banana and subtle red current notes and silky mouth feel." The 450 half-pound bags of beans available were snapped up within 24 hours after being offered Nov. 8.

Both kinds of beans are known as Geisha heirloom varietals, which were first discovered in Ethiopia before making their way to Central America in the 1950s.

Starbucks justifies the high price by explaining that Geisha plants don't produce many cherries, making the beans extremely rare and also full of concentrated flavor. This is the company's first go-round with Geisha beans.

Starbucks is working through 3,800 pounds of Finca Palmilera beans, which feature notes of white peach and pineapple, company spokeswoman Alisa Martinez said.

"It leaves a tingly, kind of light feeling," she said. "It's a very exquisite coffee."

But try telling that to the consumers pranked this week by comedian Jimmy Kimmel, who set up a fake taste test in Hollywood asking people to distinguish between standard coffee and what was supposedly the Finca Palmilera brew. Turns out, both cups contained the same basic Joe.

"I feel like this is a test to find out just how stupid we are," Kimmel said on his show. "Although, while it's ridiculous to spend $7 on a cup of coffee, it's actually not that much more ridiculous to spend $4 on a cup of coffee."

tiffany.hsu@latimes.com

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Regents OK raise for new UC Berkeley chief

Despite strong opposition from Gov. Jerry Brown, the UC Board of Regents on Tuesday gave the incoming chancellor of UC Berkeley a $50,000 — or 11.4% — pay raise over the current campus head. The extra money will come from private donations, not state funds, the regents said.

Nicholas B. Dirks will be paid $486,000, which officials said is $14,000 less than his current salary as a high-ranking administrator at Columbia University.

Brown, who is a regent, described Dirks as an excellent choice but said he would not vote for the salary given the austerities that the state and the 10-campus UC system still face. The university must look for more efficient ways to teach and operate and "the leaders have to demonstrate that they are also sacrificing," Brown said.

The $50,000 increase, even though it won't come from public coffers, "does not fit within the spirit of servant leadership that I think will be required over the next few years," the governor said.

Brown also cited voters' recent approval of his Proposition 30 tax increase, which spared UC from deep budget cuts. During the campaign for the measure, the governor said, he promised voters that he would "use their funds judiciously and with prudence."

Brown, who rarely attended regents meetings before the election, has since become a dramatic presence and voice against UC status quo. Since last summer, he has criticized raises for Cal State executives and suggested that all public colleges promote less expensive insiders instead of shopping for high-priced "hired guns" from across the country.

Besides noting that Dirks will take a pay cut from being Columbia's executive vice president and dean of its arts and sciences faculty, UC leaders said his UC Berkeley salary will be much lower than that of leaders at many other prestigious public and private universities.

"I try to get the very best person I can in this job to navigate the university through some very complicated times," UC system President Mark G. Yudof said.

Yudof said he and Brown do not see "exactly eye to eye" on Dirks' pay, but Yudof said he and the governor agree on nearly all other issues, including efforts to keep tuition from rising.

The regents first debated the issue privately Tuesday in a telephone conference call linking those in Oakland, Sacramento and Los Angeles. After the call went public, three regents voted against the pay increase — Brown, Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom and Charlene Zettel — and 11 others voted for it. All 14 voted to appoint Dirks.

State Sen. Leland Yee (D-San Francisco), a frequent UC critic, issued a statement suggesting that Dirks follow the example of Timothy P. White, who recently asked for a 10% pay cut from the salary paid his Cal State predecessor. Yee said he would reintroduce legislation to limit executive pay raises in public higher education.

When he starts at the 36,000-student UC Berkeley on June 1, Dirks will receive free campus housing, along with $121,700 in relocation fees paid out in installments over four years and other benefits.

An anthropologist and historian who is an expert on India and its British colonial era, he will succeed Robert J. Birgeneau, who has been Berkeley chancellor for eight years. Dirks' wife, Columbia history professor Janaki Bakhle, is expected to receive a faculty job at UC Berkeley, but officials said her hiring and any possible salary must be reviewed by faculty panels.

After his confirmation, Dirks, who is the son of a former UC Santa Cruz administrator, said he was grateful to lead "one of the greatest universities in the world" and said he would work to boost student financial aid and encourage interdisciplinary research and studies.

He thanked Brown and California voters for passing Proposition 30, which raises the state sales tax a quarter-cent over four years and the income tax on high earners over seven years. Dirks, 61, promised that he would carefully "steward the tax dollars that are being paid by the citizens of this great state."

The regents unanimously approved an annual $245,600 salary and housing for Jane Close Conoley, who will become acting chancellor at UC Riverside next month until a permanent one is hired. That salary is below the $325,000 pay of the current Riverside campus chief, White, who is leaving to become chancellor of the Cal State system. Conoley is now dean of UC Santa Barbara's Gervitz Graduate School of Education.

larry.gordon@latimes.com

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Nintendo: more than 400,000 Wii Us sold in US

NEW YORK (AP) — Nintendo says it has sold more than 400,000 of its new video game console, the Wii U, in its first week on sale in the U.S.

The Wii U launched on Nov. 18 in the U.S. at a starting price of $ 300. Nintendo says the sales figure, based on internal estimates, is through Nov. 24.

Six years ago, Nintendo Co. sold 475,000 of the original Wii in that console’s first seven days in stores. The original Wii remains available, and Nintendo says it sold more than 300,000 of them last week, along with roughly 250,000 handheld Nintendo 3DS units and about 275,000 of the Nintendo DS.

Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter estimates that Nintendo will ship 1 million to 1.5 million Wii Us in the U.S. through the end of January.

Gaming News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Leads, director of Motown musical visit Hitsville

DETROIT (AP) — The stars of the upcoming Broadway musical about Motown Records have read pretty much every book about and listened to every song from that golden era of American music.

The research only took them so far, so they decided to come and see Hitsville, U.S.A., for themselves.

Brandon Victor Dixon, who portrays the label's founder, Berry Gordy, and Valisia LeKae, who plays its signature songstress, Diana Ross, visited the Motown Museum on Tuesday, taking a lengthy tour of the two-level home that produced the soundtrack of a generation.

"I'm trying not to get emotional," LeKae said as she methodically inspected the hundreds of mementos — posters, gold records, clothing and more — on display at the Motown Museum.

LeKae, a Broadway veteran who has appeared in "The Book of Mormon" and "Ragtime" among others, worried about losing her composure when it came time to visit Studio A, the famed space in which Gordy and his army of artists, writers, producers and engineers signed, sealed and delivered hit after hit throughout the 1960s.

And she succeeded, descending a small flight of stairs into the square, smallish room and calmly checking out the famed studio affectionately called the "Snake Pit." LeKae marveled at an oversized black-and-white snapshot on the wall of Ross singing with a smiling Gordy looking on.

It wasn't until later, while visiting the home's upstairs, that LeKae's emotions kicked in.

Standing underneath the "echo chamber," a hole cut in the upper level's ceiling designed to create unique sounds for the recording process, LeKae belted out the first few lines of the Supremes' "Where Did Our Love Go."

"Baby, baby / Baby, don't leave me," she wailed, before the tears began to well up and she had to stop singing.

"This is, like, amazing," she said.

LeKae and Dixon, who earned a Tony nomination for his work in "The Color Purple" and bears more than a passing resemblance to a Motown-era Gordy, will be front and center when the show debuts this spring.

"Motown: The Musical" begins its run of preview performances March 11 ahead of the official opening on April 14 at New York's Lunt-Fontanne Theatre.

That gives Dixon, LeKae, Gordy (who's producing and writing the book) and director Charles Randolph-Wright four months to bring the show to the stage.

To that end, Randolph-Wright also was at Hitsville on Tuesday, seeing prospective actors during a callback session in Studio A. He's still looking for understudies and others to play smaller parts.

It wasn't Randolph-Wright's first visit to Motown's birthplace as it was for his two leads, but for the 56-year-old who proclaims that "Motown's in my DNA," it was no less special.

"What a joy to be a part of (the Motown) movement and what a responsibility to try and place that in the world," Randolph-Wright said, sitting on a piano bench in Studio A. "So, I've been very careful about trying to do that the right way."

And he has, working for the past three years on "Motown: The Musical," holding a nationwide casting call and working with Gordy and the other producers to identify which of the overwhelming number of songs from the Motown catalog to include on stage.

"The show is 15 hours," Randolph-Wright joked.

The first version had 100 songs in it, he said, and "I wanted every song."

While he said the show's decision-makers are still deliberating about which songs make the final cut, one thing is certain about the musical selections: A few numbers in the show will be Gordy originals, written specifically for it.

"It's so interesting to see him go back to being a songwriter after all these years," said Randolph-Wright, who described one Gordy-penned song as having "all the textures of what Motown is and was, but it's new."

As for the man playing the man, Dixon spent his Tuesday walking through the halls of the Motown Museum, taking in every word tour guide Eric Harp and the other docents offered and, as he put it, "soaking it all in."

At one point, he kneeled down and softly touched the cushion of a red-orange couch upstairs on which Marvin Gaye would take the occasional slumber.

Dixon burst out laughing, then leaped up and continued the tour.

Asked what was so funny, he quickly responded: "Because Marvin Gaye slept on this couch!"

All three of the Hitsville visitors spoke of their great respect and admiration for Gordy and the history of Motown and how important they felt it was to do it justice on stage.

"There's an energy here that is palpable still," Randolph-Wright said. "And it remains in this space. I think more than anything, the second I walked in here, it told me that I have to be honest" in telling the Motown story.

The first time he visited the museum, Randolph-Wright remembered walking into the gift shop, where he "bought everything," including a Temptations T-shirt that read: "Live It Again."

"I love that, because that's what we're doing," he said.

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Online:

http://www.motownthemusical.com

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