Armstrong facing Wednesday deadline with USADA

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Lance Armstrong is facing a Wednesday deadline to decide whether he will meet with U.S. Anti-Doping Agency officials and talk with them under oath about what he knows about performance-enhancing drug use in cycling.

The agency has said Armstrong's cooperation in its cleanup effort is the only path open to Armstrong if his lifetime ban from sports is to be reduced.

Armstrong has given mixed signals about whether he plans to talk with USADA officials. Armstrong attorney Tim Herman previously suggested Armstrong would not meet with USADA before the agency's original Feb. 6 deadline. The two sides then agreed to give Armstrong another two weeks to work out an interview with investigators.

Armstrong previously denied using performance-enhancing drugs, but in January admitted doping to win seven Tour de France titles.

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Ask an Expert: Questions About Hearing Loss? A Help Desk

This week’s Ask the Expert features Neil J. DiSarno, who will answer questions about hearing loss. Dr. DiSarno is the chief staff officer for audiology at the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. From 1998 to 2012 he was chairman of the department of communication sciences and disorders at Missouri State University. Following are the types of questions that Dr. DiSarno is prepared to answer.

Neil J. DiSarno of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association.

¶My wife has told me she believes I’m not hearing as well as I used to. What sort of specialist should I see and what can I expect?

¶I’ve been told that I should consider using hearing aids. If I decide to, how much better am I likely to hear?

¶I’ve noticed that my 2-year-old granddaughter’s speech is not developing properly. Neither her mother or the pediatrician seem to be concerned, but I suspect there is a problem. What do you suggest?

¶I use hearing aids, but still have great difficulty hearing conversation in restaurants and in large group settings. Is this common and is there something more that I can do to improve my ability to function in those settings?

Please leave your questions in the comments section. Answers will be posted on Wednesday, Feb. 27. (Unfortunately, not all questions may be answered.)

Booming: Living Through the Middle Ages offers news and commentary about baby boomers, anchored by Michael Winerip. You can connect with Michael Winerip on Facebook here. You can follow Booming via RSS here or visit nytimes.com/booming and reach us by e-mail at booming@nytimes.com.

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DealBook: Office Depot and OfficeMax Announce Plans to Merge, After Erroneous Release

10:21 a.m. | Updated

Office Depot and OfficeMax announced plans to merge on Wednesday, just hours after an erroneous news release about the deal surfaced briefly.

Under the terms of the deal, Office Depot said it would issue 2.69 new shares of common stock for each share of OfficeMax. At that level, the transaction would value OfficeMax at $13.50, or roughly $1.19 billion, a premium of more than 25 percent to the company’s closing price last week.

The deal has been anticipated, as the companies face an increasingly difficult competitive environment. Both companies, which are burdened with big real estate footprints, have struggled against lower-priced rivals like Amazon.com and Costco. By uniting, the two companies should be able to reduce costs and better negotiate prices.

“In the past decade, with the growth of the Internet, our industry has changed dramatically,” Neil R. Austrian, chairman and chief executive of Office Depot, said in a statement. “Combining our two companies will enhance our ability to serve customers around the world, offer new opportunities for our employees, make us a more attractive partner to our vendors and increase stockholder value.”

While the deal has been years in the making, it was initially announced prematurely. A news release announcing the merger of the companies was posted on Office Depot’s Web site early on Wednesday morning, but it quickly disappeared.

Several news organizations reported the terms disclosed in the errant news release for Office Depot’s earnings. The details were buried on page four of the release, under the header “Other Matters.”

As the details filtered through the market, shares of the companies jumped. In premarket trading, Office Depot’s stock rose more than 7 percent, while OfficeMax shares were up more than 8 percent.

The episode is reminiscent of other times that companies’ earnings releases were published prematurely. Last fall, Google’s third-quarter earnings were published three hours early, which the technology giant blamed on a mistake by R.R. Donnelley & Sons, the company’s printer.

Representatives for Office Depot and OfficeMax were not immediately available for comment on the erroneous release.

Strategically, the deal makes sense, as the companies face a changing competitive environment.

Combined, the companies reported about $4.4 billion in revenue for their third quarter of 2012; in comparison, Staples disclosed $6.4 billion in revenue for the same period.

Office Depot has also been under pressure from an activist hedge fund, Starboard Value, which sent a letter to the retailer’s board last fall. In it, Starboard called for more cost cuts and a greater focus on higher-margin businesses like copy and print services. With a 14.8 percent stake, Starboard is the company’s biggest investor.

In announcing the deal, the two companies emphasized their new financial heft.

With the merger, the retailers expect to generate $400 million to $600 million in annual cost savings. The combined entity would also have $1 billion in cash, providing additional firepower to invest in the business.

“We are excited to bring together two companies intent on accelerating innovation for our customers and better differentiating us for success in a dynamic and highly competitive global industry,” Ravi K. Saligram, chief executive of OfficeMax, said in a statement. “We are confident that there will be exciting new opportunities for employees as part of a truly global business.”

Each company will have an equal number of directors on the board of the combined retailer. Before the deal closes, OfficeMax will pay a special dividend of $1.50 a share to its shareholders.

OfficeMax was advised by JPMorgan Chase and the law firms Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom and Dechert. Office Depot was counseled by Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, while its board was advised by the Peter J. Solomon Company, Morgan Stanley and Kirkland & Ellis. Perella Weinberg Partners provided financial advice to the board’s transaction committee.

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For His Second Act, Japanese Premier Plays It Safe, With Early Results

Toru Hanai/Reuters

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, whose policies have sent the Tokyo stock market up, will visit Washington this week.

TOKYO — Since taking office less than two months ago, Japan’s outspokenly hawkish new prime minister, Shinzo Abe, has been in what some political analysts are calling “safe driving mode.” He has carefully avoided saying or doing anything to provoke other Asian nations, while focusing instead on wooing voters with steps to revive the moribund domestic economy.

So far, his approach seems to be working. His plans for public-works projects, stimulus measures called “Abenomics,” have sent the Tokyo stock market surging along with Mr. Abe’s own approval rating, which is now at 71 percent, according to the latest poll by Yomiuri Shimbun. On Friday, he will seek to build on his strong start when he meets President Obama at a Washington summit meeting aimed at improving relations with the United States, which regards Japan as its most important ally in Asia.

Mr. Abe, 58, has said he wants to be what Japan has not seen in almost a decade: a steady-handed leader who lasts long enough in office to actually get things done. Analysts say his success hinges on whether he can lead his Liberal Democratic Party to victory in upper house elections in July, and end the split Parliament that undermined many of his predecessors.

What is less clear is what he will do if he wins that election. One trait that makes Mr. Abe a bit of an enigma, some analysts say, is that he seems to have two sides: the realist and the right-wing ideologue. In analysts’ view, if he does jettison some of his current caution, for instance by trying to revise Japan’s antiwar Constitution to allow a full-fledged military instead of its current Self-Defense Force, he risks provoking a standoff with China over disputed islands, and possibly isolating Japan in a region still sensitive to its early-20th-century militarism.

“In his first six weeks, he has done everything he can to show he is a moderate,” said Andrew L. Oros, director of international studies at Washington College in Chestertown, Md. “But after July, he might feel he has a freer rein to do things that he thinks are justified.”

Part of the problem, Mr. Oros and others say, is that Mr. Abe faces conflicting political pressures. His base in the governing party’s most conservative wing expects bold steps to end what it sees as Japan’s overly prolonged displays of contrition for World War II. But he must also convince the broader public that he is a coolheaded, competent steward of a declining nation that also depends on China for its economic future.

There is also the ghost of his past failure. The last time he was prime minister, six years ago, he stepped down amid criticism that he had been “clueless” for having pursued a nationalistic agenda of revising the Constitution and history textbooks, and for not doing more to reduce unemployment and spur the economy.

This time, Mr. Abe is acting with the determined carefulness of a man given a second chance. He has focused on extricating Japan from its recession with steps that have quickly buoyed the country’s economy, the world’s third-largest. Since being named prime minister after his party’s election victory in December, Mr. Abe has promised $215 billion in public works spending to create jobs and promote growth.

He has also publicly pressured the central bank, the Bank of Japan, to move more aggressively to end years of corrosive price declines known as deflation — threatening, for example, to amend the law on the bank’s independence if it does not reach its target of 2 percent inflation. The bank’s governor, Masaaki Shirakawa, announced this month that he would step aside to allow Mr. Abe to appoint a new chief who will work more closely with the government by pumping more money into the economy to prompt banks to lend more and companies to spend more.

“Mr. Abe has clearly learned the lessons of his past failure,” said Norihiko Narita, a political scientist at Surugadai University, near Tokyo. “And the biggest lesson is that voters care more about the economy.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 19, 2013

An earlier version of this article referred incorrectly to a request for a meeting in January that the Obama administration declined. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was proposing traveling to the United States; the Japanese did not ask President Obama to visit.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 19, 2013

An earlier version of this article misspelled part of the name of the Japanese newspaper whose latest poll gave Mr. Abe an approval rating of 71 percent. It is Yomiuri Shimbun, not Shimbum.

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Pistorius says no intentions to kill girlfriend

PRETORIA, South Africa (AP) — Oscar Pistorius told a packed courtroom Tuesday that he shot his girlfriend to death by mistake, thinking she was a robber. The prosecutor called it premeditated murder.

The double amputee said in an affidavit read by his lawyer at his bail hearing that he felt vulnerable because he did not have on his prosthetic legs when he pumped bullets into the locked bathroom door. Then, Pistorius said in the sworn statement, he realized that model Reeva Steenkamp was not in his bed.

"It filled me with horror and fear," he said.

He put on his prosthetic legs, tried to kick down the door, then bashed it in with a cricket bat to find Steenkamp, 29, shot inside. He said he ran downstairs with her, but "She died in my arms."

Prosecutor Gerrie Nel on Tuesday charged the 26-year-old athlete and Olympian with premeditated murder, alleging he took the time to put on his legs and walk some seven meters (yards) from the bed to the bathroom door before opening fire. A conviction of premeditated murder carries a mandatory sentence of life in jail.

The Valentine's Day shooting death has shocked South Africans and many around the world who idolized Pistorius for overcoming adversity to become a sports champion, competing in the London Olympics last year in track besides being a Paralympian. Steenkamp was a model and law graduate who made her debut on a South African reality TV program that was broadcast on Saturday, two days after her death.

The magistrate ruled that Pistorius faces the harshest bail requirements available in South African law.

Nel told the court that Pistorius fired into the door of a small bathroom where Steenkamp was cowering after a shouting match. He fired four times and three bullets hit Steenkamp, the prosecutor said.

"She couldn't go anywhere. You can run nowhere," prosecutor Nel argued. "It must have been horrific."

Pistorius sobbed softly as his lawyer, Barry Roux, insisted the shooting was an accident and that there was no evidence to substantiate a murder charge.

"Was it to kill her, or was it to get her out?" he asked about the broken-down door. "We submit it is not even murder. There is no concession this is a murder."

He said the state had provided no evidence that the couple quarreled nor offered a motive.

Nel rebutted: "The motive is 'I want to kill.'"

There were affadavits from friends of Pistorius and Steenkamp read out by defense lawyer Roux in the bail hearing.

The statements described a charming, happy couple. The night before the killing, they said, Pistorius and Steenkamp had canceled separate plans to spend the night before Valentine's Day together at his home.

As details emerged at the dramatic court hearing in the capital, Steenkamp's body was being cremated Tuesday at a memorial service in the south-coast port city of Port Elizabeth. The family said members had arrived from around the world. Six pallbearers carried her coffin, draped with a white cloth and covered in white flowers, into the church for the private service.

June Steenkamp, the mother, said the family wants answers.

"Why? Why my little girl? Why did this happen? Why did he do this?" she said in an interview published Monday in The Times newspaper.

Outside the court, several dozen singing women protested against domestic violence and waved placards urging Pistorius be refused bail. "Pistorius must rot in jail," one placard said.

South Africa has some of the world's worst rates of violence against females and the highest rate in the world of women killed by an intimate partner, according to a study by the Medical Research Council. Another council study estimates a child or woman is raped every four minutes. While homicide rates have dropped, the number of women killed by current or former partners has increased, said the council's Professor Rachel Jewkes. At least three women are killed by a partner every day in the country of 50 million, she said.

Steenkamp campaigned actively against domestic violence and had tweeted on Twitter that she planned to join a "Black Friday" protest by wearing black in honor of a 17-year-old girl who was gang-raped and mutilated two weeks ago.

What "she stood for, and the abuse against women, unfortunately it's gone right around and I think the Lord knows that statement is more powerful now," her uncle and the family spokesman Mike Steenkamp said after her memorial.

He said the family had planned a big get-together at Christmas but that had not been possible. "But we are here today as a family and the only one who's missing is Reeva," he said, breaking down and weeping.

Pistorius was born without fibula bones and had them amputated when he was 11 months.

The man known as the Blade Runner because of his running prostheses has lost several valuable sponsorships estimated to be worth more than $1 million a year.

On Tuesday, the athlete was ousted from a pro-gay campaign being launched in Cape Town, organizers said. In a video axed from the campaign, Pistorius says "You don't have to worry. You don't have to change. Take a deep breath and remember, 'It will get better.'"

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Associated Press writer Michelle Faul contributed from Johannesburg and AP photographer Schalk van Zuydam from Port Elizabeth.

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Well: Susan Love's Illness Gives New Focus to Her Cause

During a talk last spring in San Francisco, Dr. Susan Love, the well-known breast cancer book author and patient advocate, chided the research establishment for ignoring the needs of people with cancer. “The only difference between a researcher and a patient is a diagnosis,” she told the crowd. “We’re all patients.”

It was an eerily prescient lecture. Less than two months later, Dr. Love was given a diagnosis of acute myelogenous leukemia. She had no obvious symptoms and learned of her disease only after a checkup and routine blood work.

“Little did I know I was talking about myself,” she said in an interview. “It was really out of the blue. I was feeling fine. I ran five miles the day before.”

Dr. Love, a surgeon, is best known as the author of the top-selling “Dr. Susan Love’s Breast Book” (Da Capo Press, 2010) now in its fifth edition. She is also president of the Dr. Susan Love Research Foundation, which focuses on breast cancer prevention and research into eradicating the disease. But after decades of tireless advocacy on behalf of women with breast cancer, Dr. Love found herself in an unfamiliar role with an unfamiliar disease.

“There is a sense of shock when it happens to you,” she said. “In some ways I would have been less shocked if I got breast cancer because it’s so common, but getting leukemia was a world I didn’t know. Even when you’re a physician, when you get shocking news like this you sort of forget everything you know and are scared the same as everybody else.”

Because Dr. Love’s disease was caught early, she had a little time to seek second opinions and choose her medical team. She chose City of Hope in Duarte, Calif., because of its extensive experience in bone marrow transplants. At 65, Dr. Love was startled to learn she was considered among the “elderly” patients for this type of leukemia.

She was admitted to the hospital and underwent chemotherapy. Because her blood counts did not rebound after the treatment, her stay lasted a grueling seven weeks.

She went home for just two weeks, and then returned to the hospital for a bone-marrow transplant, with marrow donated by her younger sister, Elizabeth Love De Garcia, 53, who lives in Mexico City.

Although the transplant itself was uneventful, the next four weeks were an ordeal. Dr. Love developed pain and neuropathy from the chemotherapy drugs. Dr. Love’s wife, Dr. Helen Cooksey; daughter, Katie Love-Cooksey, 24; and siblings offered round-the-clock support. Ms. Love-Cooksey slept in the hospital every night. “I wasn’t very articulate during that time, but I always had my family there,” Dr. Love said. “They were great advocates for me.”

The transplant “is quite an amazing thing,” Dr. Love said. Her blood type changed from O positive to B positive, the same type as her sister. She also has inherited her sister’s immune system, and a lifelong allergy to nickel has disappeared. “I can wear cheap jewelry now,” she said. She returned to work last month.

Dr. Love has been told her disease is in remission, though her immune system remains compromised and she is more susceptible to infection. So she avoids crowds, air travel and other potential sources of cold and flu viruses.

While Dr. Love has always been a strong advocate for women undergoing cancer treatment, she says her disease and treatment has strengthened her understanding of what women with breast cancer and other types of cancer go through during treatments.

“There are little things like having numb toes or having less stamina to building muscles back up after a month of bed rest,” she said. “There is significant collateral damage from the treatment that is underestimated by the medical profession. There’s a sense of ‘You’re lucky to be alive, so why are you complaining?’ ”

Dr. Love says her experience has emboldened her in her quest to focus on the causes of disease rather than new drugs to treat it.

“I think I’m more impatient now and in more of a hurry,” she said. “I’ve been reminded that you don’t know how long you have. There are women being diagnosed every day. We don’t have the luxury to sit around and come up with a new marketing scheme. We have to get rid of this disease, and there is no reason we can’t do it.”

People who remain skeptical about the ability to eradicate breast cancer should look to the history of cervical cancer, she said. Decades ago, a woman with an abnormal Pap smear would be advised to undergo hysterectomy. Now a vaccine exists that can protect women from the infection that causes most cervical cancers.

“We need to focus more on the cause of breast cancer,” she said. “I’m still very impressed with the fact that cancer of the cervix went from being a disease that robbed women of their fertility, if not their lives, to having a vaccine to prevent it.”

Dr. Love, who wrote a book called “Live a Little!,” said illness has also made her grateful that she didn’t put off her “bucket list” and that she has traveled the world and focused on work she finds challenging and satisfying.

“It just reminds you that none of us are going to get out of here alive, and we don’t know how much time we have,” she said. “I say this to my daughter, whether it’s changing the world or having a good time, that we should do what we want to do. I drink the expensive wine now.”

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Homebuilder Confidence Dips

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Confidence among U.S. homebuilders slipped this month from the 6½ year high it reached in January, with many builders reporting less traffic by prospective customers before the critical spring home-buying season.

The National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo builder sentiment index released Tuesday dipped to 46 from 47 in January. It was the first monthly decline in the index since April.

Readings below 50 suggest negative sentiment about the housing market. The last time the index was at 50 or higher was in April 2006, when it was 51. It began trending higher in October 2011, when it was 17.

The latest index, based on responses from 402 builders, comes as the U.S. housing market is strengthening after stagnating for roughly five years after the housing boom collapsed.

Steady job gains and near-record-low mortgage rates have encouraged more people to buy homes. Prices have been rising. In part, that's because the supply of previously occupied homes for sale has thinned to the lowest level in more than a decade. And the pace of foreclosures, while still rising in some states, has slowed sharply on a national basis.

The trends have led homebuilders to increase construction. Last year, builders broke ground on the most new homes in four years.

All told, sales of new homes jumped nearly 20 percent last year to 367,000, the most since 2009. Still, many economists don't foresee a full housing recovery before 2015 at the earliest.

"The index remains near its highest level since May of 2006, and we expect homebuilding to continue on a modest rising trajectory this year," said David Crowe, the NAHB's chief economist.

Even so, builders remain concerned about the sturdiness of the U.S. economy and unemployment, which ticked up to 7.9 percent last month from 7.8 percent in December.

Many builders are facing higher costs for building materials and having trouble obtaining financing for construction. Some also are facing a shortage of workers in markets where residential construction has picked up sharply, such as Texas and Arizona.

An index that measures current sales conditions fell one point to 51. And a gauge of traffic by prospective buyers declined four points to 32 from 36 in January.

But builders' outlook for sales in the next six months improved one point to 50.

Though new homes represent only a fraction of the housing market, they have an outsize impact on the economy. Each home built creates an average of three jobs for a year and generates about $90,000 in tax revenue, according to NAHB statistics.

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Anti-Apartheid Leader Forms New Party in South Africa

JOHANNESBURG — Mamphela Ramphele, a respected veteran of the struggle against apartheid, announced on Monday that she had formed a new political party to compete against the governing African National Congress, calling on South Africans to “join me on a journey to build the country of our dreams.”

The party is called Agang, a Sotho word meaning “build,” said Dr. Ramphele, 65, a medical doctor who became an anti-apartheid activist and a leader of the Black Consciousness movement. In recent years, Dr. Ramphele has focused on social activism and business, serving until last week as the chairwoman of Gold Fields, a major mining firm.

The new party is the latest in a string of challengers to the dominance of the A.N.C., which has handily won every national election since apartheid ended in 1994 but has come under increasing scrutiny over charges of corruption and poor governance. In addition, inequality has grown in South Africa since the end of apartheid despite the party’s pledge to bring “A Better Life for All.” The country’s education system is in shambles.

Dr. Ramphele argued forcefully to an audience at the old Women’s Jail in Johannesburg that the government had failed to deliver, and vowed to tackle corruption head on.

“The country of our dreams has unfortunately faded,” she said in a speech. “The dream has faded for the many living in poverty and destitution in our increasingly unequal society. And perhaps worst of all, my generation has to confess to the young people of our country: we have failed you. We have failed to build for you an education and training system to prepare you for life in the 21st century.”

It is a refrain that echoes the criticisms of other opposition parties, including the Democratic Alliance, the main opposition, which was reported to have courted Dr. Ramphele, seeking to put a prominent and well-respected black leader atop what is still perceived as a largely white party despite its gains in urban black townships.

In an interview, Dr. Ramphele said she opted to start her own movement because South Africa needs a fresh start.

“The country needs a new beginning,” she said, dressed in a embroidered traditional outfit from her home state, Limpopo. “It is not going to happen with the current players.”

Dr. Ramphele has been a fixture in South African public life for decades. She had a close relationship with the Black Consciousness activist Steve Biko, who died in police custody in 1977, having two children with him. She was banished for seven years to the village of Lenyenye in a bleak northern corner of the country by the apartheid regime for her political activism. Undeterred, she started a small clinic that treated thousands of rural residents. She also earned degrees in anthropology and business.

When apartheid ended she was named Vice Chancellor of the University of Cape Town, the first black person to hold that post. She later became a managing director of the World Bank, and in recent years has been sought after as a corporate board member.

While her career has given her sterling international credentials, it remains to be seen whether she can muster a mass following in a country where populist appeal has proved essential to political success. Asked about the size of her team, she responded that “we are an energetic team of five.” Hobnobbing with corporate titans and global leaders has left Dr. Ramphele open to charges of elitism, some say.

Bantu Holomisa, leader of the United Democratic Movement, which he started after leaving the A.N.C. in 1997, said in a statement that he welcomed Dr. Ramphele to politics and signaled a willingness to join forces.

“We look forward to working with Dr. Ramphele in our efforts to build a strong political alternative for the people of South Africa,” he said.

But efforts to blunt A.N.C. dominance have struggled in the past. The Congress of the People, a breakaway party started in 2008 by supporters of former president Thabo Mbeki and other disgruntled A.N.C. members, has seen its power wane.

The A.N.C. has been rocked by scandal and tragedy over the past year. President Jacob Zuma has faced repeated investigations over $27 million in government money spent on security upgrades to his private residence in his home village of Nkandla. The police killing of 33 striking workers at a platinum mine in August 2012 caused many to question the A.N.C.’s commitment to helping the poor. The crisis led credit agencies to slash the country’s debt rating, which has hurt already slowing economic growth.

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West beats East 143-138 in NBA All-Star Game

HOUSTON (AP) — The NBA's career scoring leader in the All-Star game, Kobe Bryant has never been just about offense.

"I'm known for my defense," Bryant said. "I can defend. I'm pretty smart with my defense."

Pretty good, too. Ask LeBron James.

Bryant blocked James' jumper, turning it into a dunk by Kevin Durant that helped the Western Conference put away the East 143-138 on Sunday.

Bryant may not leap like Blake Griffin, but he can still get up when he needs to, especially when the defenseless part of the All-Star game is over and it's time to stop somebody — even the league's best player.

On Michael Jordan's 50th birthday, the players most often compared to him turned the final minutes into a 1-on-1 duel, and it went to Bryant — the guy Jordan said he'd pick between the two based on his five championship rings. That's one less than MJ and four more than King James.

"It was a great block," Durant said. "I haven't really seen any MVP get a jumper blocked like that. It was a really great play."

Chris Paul had 20 points, 15 assists and won MVP honors, and Durant scored 30 points. Griffin finished with 19, joining his Clippers teammate, Paul, in creating Lob City deep in the heart of Texas.

"You just want to play fast. I like to throw the lob. I like to see guys hit 3s," Paul said. "When we're out on the court with all that firepower, why wouldn't you want to make passes? You've got KD filling one of the lanes, you've got Blake, Kobe on the wing. There's nothing like it."

Bryant added a second late block of James, the MVP of the 2006 game here after leading a big East comeback. This time, he scored 19 points but shot only 7 of 18 after making 60 percent of his shots in six straight games before the break.

Carmelo Anthony led the East with 26 points and 12 rebounds.

"I think we played really good defense at the end of the game as a team," Durant said. "Kobe was really going with the ball. It's tough to stop LeBron, but he did his best. He was able to block a few of his shots. But CP did a really good job of keeping us in the game."

The first dunk of the game came 16 seconds in, Paul throwing a pass to Griffin as part of the West's 7-0 start. The West led after each of the first three quarters, though was never ahead by more than eight points through three periods.

They finally pushed it into double figures early in the fourth fueled by former Oklahoma City teammates Russell Westbrook and James Harden, but couldn't put it away until a late run behind the guys from the city of Los Angeles — who along with Lakers center Dwight Howard gave Los Angeles all but one of the West's starting spots.

Paul hit two 3-pointers, Bryant made a layup, and his block of James led to Durant's dunk that made it 136-126. Griffin had one last forceful dunk to help close it out, throwing a pass to himself off the backboard and climbing high in his neon green sneakers to slam it home and make it 142-134.

Harden had 15 points in his home arena, where the sights of the game were on the floor and the sounds were at the rim — which shook repeatedly after thunderous dunks for most of the game before, as usual, players tried to make some stops down the stretch.

Players' sneakers were a variety of pastels and fluorescent colors that looked like they came right from Easter Sunday church, many clashing so badly with their multi-colored socks that they may as well have been created by spilling out random paint buckets.

James and Dwyane Wade wore purple, and Griffin's neon look was also sported by the usually not-so-loud Tim Duncan and Brook Lopez.

But the NBA's high-flyers sure could leap in them.

Durant slammed one down so hard at one point that he stumbled backward after landing, appearing woozy. He came in as the career leader in points per game with 28.3 and may have won a second straight MVP award if not for Paul's big finish.

But the Kobe-LeBron matchup down the stretch showed that even in an All-Star game, when it's time to determine a winner, the 34-year-old Bryant is all business.

"It was all in good spirit, man. It was just two guys that love to compete, love to go at it. So I had a lot of fun," said James, who at 28 has plenty of time to catch up to Jordan and Bryant in when it comes to NBA championships.

Bryant finished with only nine points, but had eight assists. Griffin shot 9 of 11 from the field and didn't miss until trying to violently throw one down from a few feet away from the basket.

Indiana's Paul George scored 17 and Kyrie Irving had 15 for the East.

Not everybody had it so easy. Chris Bosh shot two airballs in the first quarter and was booed, tossed up another in the second, and had Tony Parker dribble the ball through his legs on defense. He was even pulled down the stretch by his own coach, Erik Spoelstra, right after Bryant blew right by him for a layup.

Bosh finished 3 of 9. Wade had 21 points on 10-of-13 shooting, the best performance of the three Heat players in the starting lineup. He and James helped the East pull out a two-point win in the 2006 game here, but the West didn't play Bryant-level defense back then.

"Second time in Houston, it was great," Wade said. "We didn't get the win, but we are all winners, because all 24 of us are All-Stars. So it was great."

There were plenty of laughs, players performing comedic skits and poking fun at each other on the Toyota Center's massive overhead scoreboard. Even the celebrities that surrounded the court — Westbrook almost crashed into Beyonce and Jay-Z while trying for a first-half steal — seemed entertained.

Two of Houston's biggest basketball stars, Hakeem Olajuwon and Yao Ming, who was honored after the first quarter, and Olympic gold medalists Usain Bolt and Gabby Douglas were among the athletes who weren't in the game.

Players wore warmup jackets with patches commemorating their individual and team career accolades during a lengthy pregame that included a performance by Ne-Yo. They actually warmed up twice, needing to get loose again after watching and being introduced during the elaborate show.

The game capped a weekend of change in Texas, where David Stern presided over his final All-Star game as commissioner and players' association executive director Billy Hunter was voted out of office — a result he seems likely to contest.

Boston's Kevin Garnett said before coming to Houston he thought his 15th All-Star selection would be his last, and turned it over to the young guys early. He played only 6 minutes of the first half before calling it a night.

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Follow Brian Mahoney on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/Briancmahoney

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Well: Certain Television Fare Can Help Ease Aggression in Young Children, Study Finds

Experts have long known that children imitate many of the deeds — good and bad — that they see on television. But it has rarely been shown that changing a young child’s viewing habits at home can lead to improved behavior.

In a study published Monday in the journal Pediatrics, researchers reported the results of a program designed to limit the exposure of preschool children to violence-laden videos and television shows and increase their time with educational programming that encourages empathy. They found that the experiment reduced the children’s aggression toward others, compared with a group of children who were allowed to watch whatever they wanted.

“Here we have an experiment that proposes a potential solution,” said Dr. Thomas N. Robinson, a professor of pediatrics at Stanford, who was not involved in the study. “Giving this intervention — exposing kids to less adult television, less aggression on television and more prosocial television — will have an effect on behavior.”

While the research showed “a small to moderate effect” on the preschoolers’ behavior, he added, the broader public health impact could be “very meaningful.”

The new study was a randomized trial, rare in research on the effects of media on children. The researchers, at Seattle Children’s Research Institute and the University of Washington, divided 565 parents of children ages 3 to 5 into two groups. Both were told to track their children’s media consumption in a diary that the researchers assessed for violent, didactic and prosocial content, which they defined as showing empathy, helping others and resolving disputes without violence.

The control group was given advice only on better dietary habits for children. The second group of parents were sent program guides highlighting positive shows for young children. They also received newsletters encouraging parents to watch television with their children and ask questions during the shows about the best ways to deal with conflict. The parents also received monthly phone calls from the researchers, who helped them set television-watching goals for their preschoolers.

The researchers surveyed the parents at six months and again after a year about their children’s social behavior. After six months, parents in the group receiving advice about television-watching said their children were somewhat less aggressive with others, compared with those in the control group. The children who watched less violent shows also scored higher on measures of social competence, a difference that persisted after one year.

Low-income boys showed the most improvement, though the researchers could not say why. Total viewing time did not differ between the two groups.

“The take-home message for parents is it’s not just about turning off the TV; it’s about changing the channel,” said Dr. Dimitri A. Christakis, the lead author of the study and a professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington.

“We want our children to behave better,” Dr. Christakis said, “and changing their media diet is a good way to do that.”

Until she began participating in Dr. Christakis’s trial, Nancy Jensen, a writer in Seattle, had never heard of shows like Nickelodeon’s “Wonder Pets!,” featuring cooperative team players, and NBC’s “My Friend Rabbit,” with its themes of loyalty and friendship.

At the time, her daughter Elizabeth, then 3, liked“King of the Hill,”a cartoon comedy geared toward adults that features beer and gossip. In hindsight, she said, the show was “hilariously funny, but completely inappropriate for a 3-year-old.”

These days, she consults Common Sense Media, a nonprofit advocacy group in San Francisco, to make sure that the shows her daughter watches have some prosocial benefit. Elizabeth, now 6, was “not necessarily an aggressive kid,” Ms. Jensen said. Still, the girl’s teacher recently commended her as very considerate, and Ms. Jensen believes a better television diet is an important reason.

The new study has limitations, experts noted. Data on both the children’s television habits and their behavior was reported by their parents, who may not be objective. And the study focused only on media content in the home, although some preschool-aged children are exposed to programming elsewhere.

Children watch a mix of “prosocial but also antisocial media,” said Marie-Louise Mares, an associate professor of communications at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. “Merely being exposed to prosocial media doesn’t mean that kids take it that way.”

Even educational programming with messages of empathy can be misunderstood by preschoolers, with negative consequences. A study published online in November in The Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology found that preschoolers shown educational media were more likely to engage in certain forms of interpersonal aggression over time.

Preschoolers observe relationship conflict early in a television episode but do not always connect it to the moral lesson or resolution at the end, said Jamie M. Ostrov, the lead author of the November study and an associate professor of psychology at the University of Buffalo.

Preschoolers watch an estimated 4.1 hours of television and other screen time daily, according to a 2011 study. Dr. Ostrov advised parents to watch television with their young children and to speak up during the relationship conflicts that are depicted. Citing one example, Dr. Ostrov counseled parents to ask children, “What could we do differently here?” to make it clear that yelling at a sibling is not acceptable.

He also urged parents to stick with age-appropriate programming. A 3-year-old might misunderstand the sibling strife in the PBS show“Arthur,” he said, or stop paying attention before it is resolved.

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