Fire kills more than 200 in Brazil nightclub

PORTO ALEGRE, Brazil—

At least 200 people were killed in a nightclub fire in southern Brazil on Sunday after a band's pyrotechnics show set the building ablaze, and fleeing patrons were unable to find the emergency exits, local officials said.

Bodies were still being removed from the Kiss nightclub in the southern city of Santa Maria, Major Gerson da Rosa Ferreira, who was leading rescue efforts at the scene for the military police, told Reuters.

Local officials said 180 people were confirmed dead, and Ferreira said the death toll would rise above 200. He said the victims died of asphyxiation or from being trampled, and that there were possibly as many as 500 people inside the club when the fire broke out at about 2:30 a.m.

Television footage showed people sobbing outside the club, while shirtless firefighters used sledge hammers and axes to knock down an exterior wall to open up an exit.

"It was really fast. There was a lot of smoke, really dark smoke," survivor Aline Santos Silva, 29, told Globonews TV. "We were only able to get out quickly because we were in a VIP area close to the door."

President Dilma Rousseff cut short a visit to Chile and was returning to Brazil following the blaze, her spokesperson said.

Luiza Sousa, a civil police official in Santa Maria, told Reuters the blaze started when a member of the band or its production team ignited a flare, which then set fire to the ceiling. The fire spread "in seconds," Sousa said.

The disaster recalls other incidents including a 2003 fire at a nightclub in West Warwick, Rhode Island, that killed 100, and a Buenos Aires nightclub blaze in 2004 that killed nearly 200. In both incidents, a band or members of the audience ignited fires that set the establishment ablaze.

Brazil's safety standards and emergency response capabilities are under particular scrutiny as the country prepares to host the 2014 World Cup soccer tournament and the 2016 Summer Olympics.

Rio Grande do Sul state Health Secretary Ciro Simoni said emergency medical supplies from all over the state were being sent to the scene.

Santa Maria is some 186 miles west of the state capital of Porto Alegre. "A sad Sunday!" tweeted Rio Grande do Sul Governor Tarso Genro. He said "all possible measures" were being taken in response and that he was on his way to the scene.

(Additional reporting by Guillermo Parra-Bernal, Todd Benson and Brian Winter; Editing by Eric Beech)

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“Fruitvale,” “Blood Brothers” win top awards at Sundance

PARK CITY, Utah (Reuters) – Drama film “Fruitvale” and documentary “Blood Brothers” won the top awards at the Sundance Film Festival on Saturday, giving them a big boost to reach independent movie audiences this year.

“Fruitvale,” starring Octavia Spencer and Michael B. Jordan and directed by 26-year-old, first-time filmmaker Ryan Coogler,” picked up the U.S. drama jury and audience awards for its “moral and social urgency.”

The film is based on the true story of 22-year-old Oscar Grant, who was killed by police in Oakland, California, on New Year’s Eve in 2008 and whose death sparked riots against police brutality. Movie studio The Weinstein Company purchased distribution rights for the film.

“This film had a profound impact on the audience that saw it … this award goes out to my home in the Bay Area where Oscar Grant breathed, slept, loved, had fun and survived for 22 years,” Coogler said in his acceptance speech.

Oscar-winning documentarian Davis Guggenheim awarded the U.S. documentary jury prize to “Blood Brothers,” saying it shook the voting panel to their core.

The documentary follows an American man who moves to Africa and works with children suffering from HIV at an orphanage, and through his work, the children gain a voice.

“It is so encouraging for the kids … their lives are so encouraging, and they die and no one remembers their name … To take their story so that everyone sees it, it’s so awesome,” director Steve Hoover said.”

Young actress Shailene Woodley, praised for her performance in “The Descendants” last year, and her co-star Miles Teller won the Special Jury acting prize in “The Spectacular Now.”

Actress Lake Bell, who made her directorial debut in the U.S. drama category with quirky comedy “In A World,” picked up the drama screenwriting award.

Hosted by actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who premiered his raunchy directorial debut “Don Jon’s Addiction” this year, the Sundance Film Festival Awards pick winners at the top gathering for independent movies made outside of Hollywood’s major studios.

“Sundance is a community of people of filmmakers and film lovers who all believe together that there’s more to movies than glitz and glamour and money and the box office. In Hollywood, you can feel like a freak if you talk about movies as art, and here, you don’t have that,” Gordon-Levitt said.

WORLD CINEMA WINNERS

The Sundance Film Festival, now in its 35th year, is backed by Robert Redford’s Sundance Institute. The 10-day gathering of the independent film industry is held in snowy Park City, Utah.

In previous years, films that win the top prizes at the Sundance Film Festival often go on to achieve Hollywood awards success as well.

Last year, mythological drama “Beasts of the Southern Wild” won the top prize at Sundance and is now nominated for four Oscars in major categories.

The award winners are voted for by special juries of industry professionals and by the audience for the audience favorite awards.

In the world cinema categories, South Korean drama “Jiseul” picked up the grand jury drama prize. The film, directed by Muel O, follows the residents of a small town who were forced to hide in a cave for 60 days after the military attacked their village.

Cambodian documentary “A River Changes Course,” about three young Cambodians struggling with adversity in a country ravaged by war and debt, picked up the world cinema grand jury award.

“Events like these really bring our communities together to share in the beauty of the world and the beauty of our future,” director Kalyanee Mam said.

“Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer,” which follows the story of three members of a Russian feminist punk band jailed for performing a “punk prayer” in a Russian Orthodox church, picked up special jury prize in the world documentary category.

Co-director Mike Lerner said the three members of the band had “started a feminist revolution that we hope will continue around the world.”

(Editing by Philip Barbara)

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Well: Ask Well: Squats for Aging Knees

You are already doing many things right, in terms of taking care of your aging knees. In particular, it sounds as if you are keeping your weight under control. Carrying extra pounds undoubtedly strains knees and contributes to pain and eventually arthritis.

You mention weight training, too, which is also valuable. Sturdy leg muscles, particularly those at the front and back of the thighs, stabilize the knee, says Joseph Hart, an assistant professor of kinesiology and certified athletic trainer at the University of Virginia, who often works with patients with knee pain.

An easy exercise to target those muscles is the squat. Although many of us have heard that squats harm knees, the exercise is actually “quite good for the knees, if you do the squats correctly,” Dr. Hart says. Simply stand with your legs shoulder-width apart and bend your legs until your thighs are almost, but not completely, parallel to the ground. Keep your upper body straight. Don’t bend forward, he says, since that movement can strain the knees. Try to complete 20 squats, using no weight at first. When that becomes easy, Dr. Hart suggests, hold a barbell with weights attached. Or simply clutch a full milk carton, which is my cheapskate’s squats routine.

Straight leg lifts are also useful for knee health. Sit on the floor with your back straight and one leg extended and the other bent toward your chest. In this position, lift the straight leg slightly off the ground and hold for 10 seconds. Repeat 10 to 20 times and then switch legs.

You can also find other exercises that target the knees in this video, “Increasing Knee Stability.”

Of course, before starting any exercise program, consult a physician, especially, Dr. Hart says, if your knees often ache, feel stiff or emit a strange, clicking noise, which could be symptoms of arthritis.

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Pitching Chicago to China

World Business Chicago Vice Chairman Michael Sacks and former Commerce Secretary William Daley leave Sunday on a six-day business mission to China, Sacks' first official foreign trip as a top adviser to Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

Sacks said that he and Daley will pay their own way to China while World Business Chicago, a nonprofit that acts as the city's economic development agency, will cover the travel costs for two staff members, including one from the mayor's office.

Sacks and Daley will visit Hong Kong and Beijing before joining up with Choose Chicago CEO Don Welsh and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in Shanghai.

There, they'll take in a CSO concert and co-host a reception for about 75 people, including tour operators, and China-based alumni of Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management and the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business.

Sacks said he asked for Daley's help in selling Chicago to foreign officials, specifically the Chinese, after the former chief of staff to President Barack Obama returned home from Washington last year. Sacks said that was months before Daley said he was considering a run for governor in 2014.

"His gravitas, his stature as former commerce secretary and former chief of staff have made the quality of this trip better than anything I could have done myself," Sacks said. "I would not have been able to secure these meetings without him."

Daley and Sacks are expected to meet with 30-plus corporate executives, including the CEO of Hong Kong-based airline Cathay Pacific and billionaire Chinese entrepreneur Lu Guanqiu, whose son-in-law, Pin Ni, runs Elgin-based auto parts maker Wanxiang America Corp.; six Chinese officials, including the acting mayor of Beijing and China's commerce minister, Chen Deming; and U.S. Ambassador to China Gary Locke.

Sacks' role with World Business Chicago is a volunteer position. His day job is CEO of Grosvenor Capital Management. The investment firm is known as a hedge fund of funds because its primary business is to invest in multiple hedge funds on behalf of large investors, such as pension funds, corporations and sovereign wealth funds.

Sacks frequently travels abroad for his work, often adding city-related sales pitches to his itineraries. This, however, is his first foreign trip focused on his work at World Business Chicago.

Spertus changes name

The Spertus Institute this week will tweak its name — and with it, its identity — as part of an ongoing effort to recover from an unfortunately timed decision to open a new building on the eve of the financial crisis.

The institute, which has been a pillar of Jewish culture in Chicago since 1924, will now be called the Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership. The institute also announced that its programming for children and families will be cut for the foreseeable future in favor of new academic offerings for people working at nonprofits.

"During the past 31/2 years, we eliminated a $3.8 million operating deficit, largely by dramatically reducing our programmatic footprint," said Hal Lewis, the institute's president, who took over in July 2009. "So I didn't have the money to go and get branding assistance. But I was convinced we had a branding challenge — because when I first became president I spent a good solid four months on a listening tour, in which people told me, 'Oh, yeah, I know something about Spertus,' but there was uncertainty about the work we did."

A grant from the Harvey L. Miller Foundation paid for most of the rebranding effort, which an outside consulting firm led.

"I should say I'm generally skeptical of consultants," Lewis said. "But they taught me something elegantly simple: Spend more time talking about the why and less time on the how. We know the enormous array of programs we offer ... but we never said why that's important. ... (The answer is) we believe that a learning Jewish community is a vibrant Jewish community. It is the historic experience of the Jewish people that learning doesn't stop at adolescence."

The institute has about 400 students in degree and certificate programs, from a one-day certificate in grant writing to a doctorate in Jewish studies, which can take up to 10 years to complete. The institute also offers public lectures on politics, arts and culture as well as museum-style exhibits.

Spertus plans to offer new leadership concentrations within its master's degree programs aimed at youth workers, camp counselors and early childhood teachers. It also plans to create programs in social entrepreneurship and lay-leader training. Lewis said also he may eliminate one of Spertus' existing education degrees, but these changes are not final and will not be announced until the spring.

"We were never best at early childhood education," Lewis said. "The synagogues are far better at that ... So this is not a retreat from one of our historic strong suits."

The seeds of the long-running overhaul of Spertus can be traced to the November 2007 opening of its building, an iconic glass sculpture at 610 S. Michigan Ave.

Lewis said so many assumptions about the building failed to materialize, such as revenue from room rentals. Nonprofits also heavily cut professional development funds during the recession, which, in turn, lowered enrollment because students were no longer able to get help paying for their master's degrees.

However, rentals and other economic indicators are beginning to reverse. The falling stock market hurt Spertus' program endowment, slicing it to about $6 million, and its building endowment to about $12 million. Those funds are now at about $7 million and about $17 million, respectively, Lewis said.

Steven Nasatir, president of the Jewish United Fund/Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago, said his organization is assisting Spertus with fundraising. He said without the branding and other program changes Lewis is making, Spertus would be "treading water."

"The name change is a manifestation of resetting goals and is a positive thing," he said. "People have to better understand what you're attempting to do."

Melissa Harris can be reached at mmharris@tribune.com or 312-222-4582.

Twitter @chiconfidential

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3 dead, 2 wounded in pair of early morning shootings

After a few quiet nights, gun violence returned to Chicago's cold streets early Saturday morning with three people killed by gunshots and one person left with tears, blood-stained clothing and a friend's body.

Laverne Smith stood crying at one end of a vacant lot in the Lawndale neighborhood on the West Side early this morning while her friend, close like a brother, lay covered by a white sheet behind a maroon van at the other end.

Ronnie Chambers, 33, no address available, had been in the driver's seat of the van, which had just arrived in the 1100 block of South Mozart Street when one person, probably two, opened fire, police said. Chambers, identified by family members at the scene and later by police, died at the scene, in Smith's arms.

Smith wore a pink blood-stained shirt under a pink jacket, white pants dotted with drops of blood, and pink sandals. She paced the crime scene, at the north end of Mozart Drive where it ends at Fillmore Street, letting out occasional screams and leaning on her friend for support.

"I held him, they had to pry me from him," she said, crying. "He was breathing, gasping."

At least one other man, 21, was inside the van when the shooting started, police said. He had jumped from the front passenger seat to the back, quick thinking that police said probably saved his life. He was wounded in the thigh and taken to Mount Sinai Hospital. Police did not say how many people were inside the van. They also did not say exactly how many shooters there were, but did say seven shots were fired.

The shooting happened across the street from Safer Foundation North Lawndale, an Illinois Department of Corrections transitional facility for adults with criminal records, and half a block west of a fire station.

Family and friends, none of whom wanted to give their names, circled the north end of the scene, marked by yellow tape hung around trees, light poles and cop cars.

A young man at the scene who refused to give his name but said he saw the shooting called the gun used a "big boy."

"Look at that (bullet) hole," the young man said, motioning to the passenger side door on the van. "That's a full nickel."

An east-facing car sat abandoned in the T intersection formed by Mozart and Fillmore. Police weren't sure whether the people who abandoned the car were involved in the shooting or freaked out and fled the scene. Police found casings from two weapons – one a rifle – whose bullets had entered the van from both sides.

"He was gangsta with his (expletive)," the man said of the individual or individuals who did the shooting. "He knew what he was doing."

Despite his apparent proximity to the attack, he explained to a detective that he could not help police do their jobs. He later complained to a supervisor about their response time – he said 27 minutes but police said 3. Police said that they received one 911 call about shots being fired in the area.

A 16-year-old boy who said he was with the victims when the shooting happened wandered around the lot, looking toward the ground most of the time. He looked emotionally spent after being held by police for a short time at the scene.

"I just want to go home," he said, though he had no ride home. "It just happened so fast. I'm tired of explaining myself."

In the other fatal overnight shooting, three men were shot about 4 a.m. outside of a diner at the corner of Wallace Street and Pershing Road in the Bridgeport neighborhood on the South Side, police said. Two men died at the scene. 

More details to come.

pnickeas@tribune.com

Twitter: @PeterNickeas

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Facebook Profile May Expose Mental Illness

A person’s Facebook profile may reveal signs of mental illness that might not necessarily emerge in a session with a psychiatrist, a new study suggests.

“The beauty of social media activity as a tool in psychological diagnosis is that it removes some of the problems associated with patients’ self-reporting,” said study researcher Elizabeth Martin, a psychology doctoral student at the University of Missouri. “For example, questionnaires often depend on a person’s memory, which may or may not be accurate.”

Martin’s team recruited more than 200 college students and had them fill out questionnaires to evaluate their levels of extroversion, paranoia, enjoyment of social interactions, and endorsement of strange beliefs. (For example, they were asked whether they agreed with the statement, “Some people can make me aware of them just by thinking about me.”)

The students also were asked to log onto Facebook. They were told they would have the option to black-out parts of their profile before some of it was printed out for the researchers to examine.

“By asking patients to share their Facebook activity, we were able to see how they expressed themselves naturally,” Martin explained in a statement. “Even the parts of their Facebook activities that they chose to conceal exposed information about their psychological state.”

Participants who showed higher levels of social anhedonia — a condition characterized by lack of pleasure from social interactions — typically had fewer Facebook friends, shared fewer photos, and communicated less frequently on the site, the researchers found.

Meanwhile, those who hid more of their Facebook activity before presenting their profiles to researchers were more likely to hold odd beliefs and show signs of perceptual aberrations, which are irregular experiences of one’s senses. They also exhibited higher levels of paranoia.

“However, it should be noted that participants higher on paranoia did not differ from participants lower in paranoia in terms of the amount of personal information shared,” the researchers wrote in their study detailed Dec. 30, 2012, in the journal Psychiatry Research. That finding suggests this group might be more comfortable sharing information in an online setting than in the face-to-face interactions with the experimenter.

The researchers said information culled from social networking sites potentially could be used to inform diagnostic materials or intervention strategies for people with mental health issues.

Follow LiveScience on Twitter @livescience. We’re also on Facebook & Google+.

Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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Fox News, Palin cutting ties

NEW YORK (AP) — Fox News Channel is parting ways with former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, ending her three-year tenure as a contributor on the network.

While Palin’s time at Fox was occasionally rocky, the network’s news executive, Bill Shine, said Friday that “we have thoroughly enjoyed our association” with her.

“We wish her the best in her future endeavors,” said Shine, Fox’s executive vice president for programming.

A person familiar with discussions between Fox and Palin described the parting as amicable, saying that Fox and Palin had discussed renewing her contract but she decided to do other things. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the record.

Palin’s lawyer in Alaska, John Tiemessen, had no immediate comment on her exit. Palin’s last appearance on Fox News was Dec. 19 on Greta Van Susteren‘s show.

Palin signed to deliver commentary on Fox in January 2010, reportedly for $ 1 million a year. It was a coup for both sides at the time; the former Alaska governor was a little more than a year removed from her attention-getting run for the vice presidency and was considered one of the leading contenders for the 2012 presidential nomination. At Fox, she had a platform on the most popular network for conservative viewers. Fox installed equipment in Palin’s Wasilla, Alaska, home to make her regular appearances easier.

But there were some indications of tension between her and Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes, who was quoted in a 2011 story by The Associated Press saying, “I hired Sarah Palin because she was hot and got ratings.”

When Palin announced she would not be a candidate in 2012, she said it on a conservative radio show, which didn’t sit well with the company paying her to be a contributor. Palin took to her Facebook page late last summer to complain that Fox had cancelled her appearances one night at the GOP national convention; Fox said it was simply because the GOP had to condense its speaker schedule due to a hurricane.

Four years removed from her vice presidential candidacy, Palin’s influence had waned and she was somewhat overshadowed as a contributor at Fox by Karl Rove, former President George W. Bush‘s top political aide. Rove recently renewed his contract at Fox through the 2016 election.

With four more years of a Barack Obama administration in power, Fox recently hired former Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich as a contributor.

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40 Years After Roe v. Wade, Thousands March to Oppose Abortion

Drew Angerer/The New York Times

Pro-life activists made their way down Constitution Avenue toward the Supreme Court during the March for Life in Washington on Friday.

WASHINGTON — Three days after the 40th anniversary of the decision in Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court case that legalized abortion, tens of thousands of abortion opponents from around the country came to the National Mall on Friday for the annual March for Life rally, which culminated in a demonstration in front of the Supreme Court building.

On a gray morning when the temperature was well below freezing, the crowd pressed in close against the stage to hear more than a dozen speakers, who included Tony Perkins, the president of the Family Research Council; Representative Diane Black, Republican of Tennessee, who recently introduced legislation to withhold financing from Planned Parenthood, and Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky; Cardinal Seán Patrick O’Malley of Boston; and Rick Santorum, the former senator from Pennsylvania and Republican presidential candidate.

Mr. Santorum spoke of his wife’s decision not to have an abortion after they learned that their child — their daughter Bella, now 4 — had a rare genetic disorder called Trisomy 18.

“We all know that death is never better, never better,” Mr. Santorum said. “Bella is better for us, and we are better because of Bella.”

Jeanne Monahan, the president of the March for Life Education and Defense Fund, said that the march was both somber and hopeful.

“We’ve lost 55 million Americans to abortion,” she said. “At the same time, I think we’re starting to win. We’re winning in the court of public opinion, we’re winning in the states with legislation.”

Though the main event officially started at noon, the day began much earlier for the participants, with groups in matching scarves engaged in excited chatter on the subway and gaggles of schoolchildren wearing name tags around their necks. Arriving on the Mall, attendees were greeted with free signs (“Defund Planned Parenthood” and “Personhood for Everyone”) and a man barking into a megaphone, “Ireland is on the brink of legalizing abortion, which is not good.”

The march came two months after the 2012 campaign season, in which social issues like abortion largely took a back seat to the focus on the economy. But the issue did come up in Congressional races in which Republican candidates made controversial statements about rape or abortion. In Indiana, Richard E. Mourdock, a Republican candidate for the Senate, said in a debate that he believed that pregnancies resulting from rape were something that “God intended,” and in Illinois, Representative Joe Walsh said in a debate that abortion was never necessary to save the life of the mother because of “advances in science and technology.” Both men lost, hurt by a backlash from female voters.

Recent polls show that while a majority of Americans do not want Roe v. Wade to be overturned entirely, many favor some restrictions. In a Gallup poll released this week, 52 percent of those surveyed said that abortions should be legal only under certain circumstances, while 28 percent said they should be legal under all circumstances, and 18 percent said they should be illegal under all circumstances. In a Pew poll this month, 63 percent of respondents said they did not want Roe v. Wade to be overturned completely, and 29 percent said they did — views largely consistent with surveys taken over the past two decades.

“Most Americans want some restrictions on abortion,” Ms. Monahan said. “We see abortion as the human rights abuse of today.”

Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio, who spoke via a recorded video, called on the protest group, particularly the young people, to make abortion “a relic of the past.”

“Human life is not an economic or political commodity, and no government on earth has the right to treat it that way,” he said.

The crowd was dotted with large banners, many bearing the names of the attendees’ home states and churches and colleges. Gary Storey, 36, stood holding a handmade sign that read “I was adopted. Thanks Mom for my life.” Next to him stood his adoptive mother, Ellen Storey, 66, who held her own handmade sign with a picture of her six children and the words “To the mothers of our four adopted children, ‘Thank You’ for their lives.”

Mr. Storey said he was grateful for the decision by his biological mother to carry through with her pregnancy. “Beats the alternative,” he joked.

Last week, the Planned Parenthood Federation of America started a new Web site, and on Tuesday, its president, Cecile Richards, released a statement supporting abortion rights.

“Planned Parenthood understands that abortion is a deeply personal and often complex decision for a woman to consider, if and when she needs it,” she said. “A woman should have accurate information about all of her options around her pregnancy. To protect her health and the health of her family, a woman must have access to safe, legal abortion without interference from politicians, as protected by the Supreme Court for the last 40 years.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 25, 2013

A summary that appeared on the home page of NYTimes.com with an earlier version of this article misstated the day of the march. It took place on Friday, not Thursday.

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2012 stock report: Pains and gains

If you invested heavily in Illinois companies that provide consulting services, you had little reason to celebrate in 2012.

While the Standard & Poor's 500 index ended the year up 13 percent, most large businesses in the region that counsel other companies on how to improve their operations saw their stock prices drop.

Business support services was one of the few sectors getting clobbered in a 2012 Tribune ranking of Illinois and northwest Indiana stocks' performance.

Stock prices gained at about 70 percent of the 127 companies on the list, and about half outperformed the S&P 500. Bank owners such as Taylor Capital Group emerged from their 2011 doldrums, and Ulta Salon Cosmetics & Fragrance Inc. and Discover Financial Services marked their second consecutive year of soaring stock prices.

The year's biggest decliner, down 76 percent, was Groupon, as once-torrid revenue growth at the daily deals offerer started slowing.

Career Education was the second-worst performer; its stock fell 56 percent. The highly scrutinized for-profit school chain said it would close campuses and cut jobs amid sinking revenue and financial losses.

Sectors boosted by broad gains in 2012 included electrical parts and equipment, industrial machinery, and specialty chemicals.

Of seven Illinois banks on the list, all but one outperformed the S&P 500, with price appreciation of those six ranging from 16 to 86 percent.

In contrast, stocks of four of five professional services firms — Navigant Consulting, Huron Consulting Group, Heidrick & Struggles International and R.R. Donnelley & Sons — closed down 2 to 38 percent.

Each had its own set of issues.

Navigant's services, for example, include advising companies that face disputes, litigation and investigations, including government probes, as well as businesses that need help valuing potential mergers and acquisitions.

"You see fewer government investigations during an election year, as regulators are leaving their jobs, and they don't want to start new ones," said Tobey Sommer, a SunTrust Robinson Humphrey analyst. "Also, worries about the 'fiscal cliff' slowed M&A because CEOs didn't want to look foolish acquiring a company in September ahead of the fiscal cliff when they might have been able to buy it for 20 percent less in January had we gone off."

Meanwhile, Heidrick's troubles included a slowing market for executive searches. In early 2012, analysts expected Heidrick's annual earnings to be in the range of about $1.30 per share. It appears that it will earn closer to 57 cents a share.

Huron's earnings estimates during 2012 were also trimmed, to about $2.10 from about $2.40 a share as the timing of fee payments to its health care consulting business proved volatile.

"Its underlying demand is strong," but an increasing number of clients had signed contracts where a larger portion of revenue was contingent on the outcome of Huron's consulting work, said Randle Reece, analyst with Avondale Partners LLC. That made it harder for the company and the analysts who cover it to predict the timing of revenues, since they are deferred.

For investors interested in "Dumpster diving," Morningstar Inc. considers Exelon, WMS Industries and Caterpillar to be high quality yet undervalued this year, said Heather Brilliant, chief equities strategist.

Navigant is among the region's beaten-down stocks liked by stock research firm EVA Dimensions LLC. "Its fundamentals are improving, and it's really cheap," said EVA analyst Andrew Zamfotis.

Best of the best

Here are the top three stock gainers of 2012:

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Video sparks protest of Ultimate Fighting event

Women's advocacy groups in Chicago are urging the Ultimate Fighting Championship organization to prevent a fighter who appeared in a video that made light of rape from fighting Saturday at an event in the United Center.

Sharmili Majmudar, executive director of Rape Victim Advocates in Chicago, said she and other activists came out with a letter of opposition Thursday because Quinton "Rampage" Jackson, the man in the video, is about to fight on Chicago turf.

"It's kind of despicable that anyone would take so lightly the issue of sexual violence," Majmudar said. "This isn't Chicago. This is not something that's consistent with Chicago (values)."

Although UFC officials say they find the video tasteless, they suggest another motivation behind the letter and the news release that accompanied it, said Lawrence Epstein, UFC's chief operating officer.

The letter to the UFC, its sponsors and the Fox television network included an email address for Jen Suh, a research analyst for the Culinary Workers Union in Las Vegas. Its parent union is the national UNITE HERE organization.

Lorenzo Fertitta and Frank Fertitta III are the majority owners of Station Casinos LLC in Las Vegas, and the company has long been at odds with the Culinary Workers Union over the unionization of casino workers. The Fertittas also are the majority owners of the UFC.

"They think if you harass an employer enough, they'll say 'take my workers,'" Epstein said. Suh, when asked for comment, said the union's website contains a list of grievances against the company.

In October, the National Labor Relations Board held that Station Casinos violated federal labor law in 82 cases in its response to union-organizing efforts. But the union and the Fertittas are still a long way from settling their dispute.

The most recent news release on the Culinary Worker Union's website announces that the U.S. Marine Corps did not renew its sponsorship of UFC.

Jackson will "absolutely" fight Saturday, Epstein said. Although the UFC did not punish Jackson for the video, Epstein said its officials made it clear to Jackson and his manager that his behavior was inappropriate.

Also on Thursday, the UFC released a statement about its new code of conduct, which will include punishments such as fines and community service for fighters who violate the code. Matt Hughes, a former UFC fighter who made the organization's Hall of Fame, joined UFC as vice president of athlete development and government relations to help enforce the policy.

Epstein said Jackson's video was tasteless.

The video, with nearly 1,200 views on YouTube as of Thursday evening, shows Jackson instructing viewers on how to "pick up a gurl." Jackson suggests comfortable shoes, chloroform and zip ties. In the video, he stalks a woman in a parking garage and tries to grab her from behind. Before he has the chance, she elbows him in the gut and pulls a gun.

Jackson has said in other interviews that the video was an attempt at humor. He told Ariel Helwani of MMA Fighting in October that he was trying to emulate comedian Dave Chapelle and that he put out the video to get kicked off the UFC roster.

The UFC and Jackson's relationship has been rocky for months. Jackson hasn't fought since February, in Japan, before the video appeared, a UFC spokesperson confirmed. The fight Saturday at the United Center is the last one of his current contract.

ehirst@tribune.com

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