Miss America pageant returns to Atlantic City, NJ

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (AP) — There she is, Miss America, headed back to Atlantic City.

The Miss America pageant, a staple in Atlantic City for decades before it was moved to Las Vegas in 2006, is making a return, Gov. Chris Christie's spokesman Michael Drewniak confirmed Wednesday. Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno was scheduled to make a formal announcement Thursday at Atlantic City's Boardwalk Hall.

The Miss America pageant started as little more than a bathing suit revue. It broke viewership records in its heyday and bills itself as one of the world's largest scholarship programs for women. But, like other pageants, it has struggled to stay relevant as national attitudes regarding women's rights have changed.

The news of the pageant's return to Atlantic City came as a surprise to the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, which sponsored the pageant on the Las Vegas Strip in January, spokeswoman Courtney Fitzgerald said in a telephone interview. In a subsequent statement, she said the tourism organization wished the pageant well in its new home.

"Las Vegas is honored to have hosted the Miss America pageant for the past seven years," she said. "We understand that moving the televised event to various cities showcases America's diverse destinations which represent our great country."

Pageant officials didn't immediately respond to after-hours phone and email messages seeking comment Wednesday.

Many details remained unclear, including whether the pageant would return to the elaborate show it had been for decades at Boardwalk Hall or continue as more of the reality show it became with its move to Las Vegas. Also unknown was where it would be broadcast and whether it is returning permanently or for a limited run.

According to the Miss America Organization's website, the contest originated in 1920 as the Fall Frolic, which became the Inter-City Beauty Contest the following year. In 1921, a high school junior named Margaret Gorman was one of approximately 1,000 entrants in a photo contest held by the Washington Herald. She was chosen as the first Miss Washington, D.C., and her prize was a trip to Atlantic City, where she won the top prize: the Golden Mermaid Trophy.

The next year, Gorman was expected to defend her title. But when the Washington Herald selected a new Miss Washington, D.C., Atlantic City pageant officials didn't know what new title to award Gorman. Since both titles she won in 1921 — Inter-City Beauty, Amateur and The Most Beautiful Bathing Girl in America — were considered somewhat awkward, it was decided to call her Miss America.

The pageant was conceived by the Businessmen's League of Atlantic City as a way to extend the summer tourism season in Atlantic City for another week, being held the weekend after Labor Day weekend, when temperatures were generally still warm.

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Associated Press writer Hannah Dreier in Las Vegas contributed to this story.

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Wayne Parry can be reached at http://twitter.com/WayneParryAC

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Sources: American, US Airways boards approve merger

The boards of AMR Corp and US Airways Group Inc each met on Wednesday to approve a merger that would create the world's largest airline with an expected market value of around $11 billion, people familiar with the matter said.

The all-stock merger, which is set to be announced early on Thursday, would finalize the consolidation of legacy U.S. air carriers that helped put the industry on a more solid financial footing.

AMR's bankruptcy creditors will own 72 percent of the combined airline, which will do business under the American Airlines brand and be based in Fort Worth, Texas, the people said. US Airways shareholders will own the rest.

The board approval came after AMR's unsecured creditors committee, which includes all three of AMR's major unions, met earlier on Wednesday to approve a proposed merger agreement, the people said.

The merged company will have a board of 12 members: four from US Airways including its chief executive Doug Parker, three from AMR including chief executive Tom Horton and five to be designated by the AMR creditors, two of the people said.

That will shrink to 11 members in 2014 after Horton steps down following the combined company's first annual meeting, the person added. Parker becomes chief executive of the new airline.

AMR's unsecured creditors are expected to be made whole on their claims in the form of stock in the merged company and also get accrued interest, the people said. AMR's shareholders will get a small equity stake as well, they added.

All the sources asked not to be named because the matter was not public. US Airways declined to comment while AMR representatives could not be immediately reached for comment.

The deal comes more than 14 months after the bankrupt parent of American Airlines filed for bankruptcy in November 2011, and would mark the last combination of legacy U.S. carriers, following the Delta-Northwest and United-Continental mergers.

A tie-up with US Airways would create the world's top airline by passenger traffic and help American and US Air better compete with United Continental Holdings and Delta Air Lines.

Some $11 billion valuation of the combined American-US Airways compares to the roughly $12.4 billion market capitalization for Delta, and $8.7 billion for United Continental.

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Dorner manhunt: Fate of fugitive ex-cop is unclear

ANGELUS OAKS, California (Reuters) - A gunman thought to be an ex-cop who led California authorities on a six-day manhunt barricaded himself inside a mountain cabin northeast of Los Angeles on Tuesday and traded gunfire with police, killing one before the cabin burned to the ground.

Hours after the cabin went up in flames, uncertainty surrounded the fate of the man who authorities said earlier they presumed to be fugitive former Los Angeles policeman Christopher Dorner, 33, suspected of a revenge-fueled killing spree in the region.

No body had yet been recovered from the smoldering ruins, despite several media reports to the contrary, because the site was still too hot for police to enter and search, authorities said.

San Bernardino County Sheriff's spokeswoman Cindy Bachman later told reporters in the nearby mountain town of Angelus Oaks, "We believe he was still inside" after the cabin caught fire.

The death of a sheriff's deputy in the shootout at the cabin, located in the snow-covered, wooded hills of the San Bernardino National Forest, brought to four the number of killings Dorner is suspected of committing. A second sheriff's deputy was wounded in Tuesday's gunfight.

An angry, rambling manifesto posted last week on Dorner's Facebook page claimed he had been wrongly terminated from the Los Angeles Police Department in 2008. He vowed to seek revenge by unleashing "unconventional and asymmetrical warfare" on police officers and their families.

Tuesday's climax to the saga, following several days in which Dorner eluded law enforcement, unfolded after police learned that a gunman they believed was him had broken into a home near the ski resort community of Big Bear Lake, tied up a couple and stole their vehicle, authorities said.

GAME WARDENS ENCOUNTER SUSPECT

State game wardens later spotted the stolen vehicle and gave chase. The suspect crashed the car in the course of his getaway attempt, then quickly commandeered a pickup truck at gunpoint from another motorist and continued to flee, said Lieutenant Patrick Foy of the state Fish and Wildlife Department.

As game wardens pursued him, the suspect fired at them from the window of the truck, and one of the game officers stopped his truck and fired back with a high-powered rifle, Foy said, adding that he did not know whether the suspect was hit.

Several bullets struck the warden's vehicle, but officers got close enough at one point to get a good look at his face and recognized him as Dorner, Foy said.

Bachman said the suspect ultimately abandoned the pickup and fled on foot into the woods to a cabin believed to be vacant, where he holed up inside and exchanged fire with sheriff's deputies who closed in on the building.

Local television news footage of the shootout showed several officers taking cover from a barrage of gunfire audible in the broadcast. Sheriff John McMahon later confirmed that one deputy was killed and another wounded in the ensuing shootout.

After a lull in the gunfire, the cabin suddenly caught fire, with smoke and flames seen engulfing the structure. Loud popping sounds could be heard from inside.

Bachman said a "smoke bomb" had been set off at the cabin before the fire started, but she was uncertain if it had been detonated by the gunman or by law enforcement authorities.

Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck has called the search for Dorner the most extensive manhunt in the region's history.

ACCUSED OF AMBUSHING POLICE

Dorner's last confirmed encounter with authorities came early last Thursday, when police said he ambushed two policemen at a traffic light in Riverside, about 60 miles east of Los Angeles. One officer was killed and the other wounded.

Dorner, a former Navy officer, is also suspected of exchanging gunfire on Thursday with police and wounding one officer in nearby Corona.

Law enforcement later that day converged on the Big Bear area when a pickup truck identified as the one Dorner had been driving was found abandoned and burning in the snow, launching an intense search of the mountain as Dorner seemed to vanish.

He first came to public notice last Wednesday when police identified him as a suspect in the slayings of a campus security officer and his fiancee, the daughter of a retired Los Angeles police captain. In the manifesto posted on his Facebook page, Dorner blamed the captain for his dismissal from the LAPD.

The couple, Keith Lawrence, 27, and Monica Quan, 28, an assistant college basketball coach, were found shot dead on February 3 in their car on the top level of a parking structure in the city of Irvine, south of Los Angeles.

Quan's father, Randy Quan, had represented Dorner in disciplinary proceedings that led to his dismissal after a police inquiry found Dorner had made false statements accusing a superior officer of using excessive force, police said.

Riverside County prosecutors have formally charged Dorner with one count of first-degree murder and three counts of attempted murder in connection with Thursday's shootings of police officers.

Authorities posted a $1 million reward for information leading to Dorner's capture, an amount they said was the largest ever offered in a Southern California criminal investigation.

(Reporting by Brandon Lowrey; Additional reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis and Dana Feldman; Writing by Steve Gorman; Editing by Cynthia Johnston and Eric Beech)

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Yahoo CEO says Microsoft search deal underperforms

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Yahoo Inc Chief Executive Marissa Mayer said the company's search partnership with Microsoft Corp was not delivering the market share gains or the revenue boost that it should.

"One of the points of the alliance is that we collectively want to grow share rather than just trading share with each other," Mayer said at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference in San Francisco on Tuesday.

In her first appearance at an investor conference since taking the reins of the struggling Web portal in July, Mayer said she planned to prune a sprawling lineup of mobile apps and she reiterated her focus on enticing consumers to spend more time on Yahoo's online properties, in order to display more money-making ads.

"I'm not confused. Our biggest business problem right now is impressions. Basically can we grow impressions, can we get growth happening here," Mayer said.

Yahoo shares finished Tuesday's regular trading session up 31 cents at $21.21.

Mayer, 37, took over after a tumultuous period at Yahoo in which former CEO Scott Thompson resigned after less than 6 months on the job over a controversy about his academic credentials and in which Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang resigned from the board and cut his ties with the company.

Yahoo's revenue in 2012 was flat year-over-year, at roughly $5 billion, and down from roughly $6.3 billion in 2010.

"We need to see monetization working better because we know that it can and we've seen other competitors in the space illustrate how well it can work," Mayer said of the search deal with Microsoft.

Yahoo and Microsoft entered into a 10-year search partnership in 2010, hoping their combined efforts could mount a more competitive challenge to Google Inc, the world's No.1 search engine. But the partnership has not lived up to expectations.

Google remains the dominant search engine, with a 66.7 percent share of the U.S. market in December, almost unchanged from its 66.6 percent share two years earlier, according to online analytics firm comScore.

Microsoft had 16.3 percent share and Yahoo had 12.2 percent share in December, a reversal of two years earlier when Yahoo's U.S. search share was 16 percent and Microsoft had 12 percent share.

Yahoo's stock has risen more than 30 percent since Mayer took the helm in July, reaching its highest levels since 2008.

Analysts say that part of the stock's rise has been driven by significant stock buybacks, using proceeds from a $7.6 billion deal to sell half of its 40 percent stake in Chinese Internet company Alibaba Group.

Mayer said that she viewed the company's relationship with Yahoo Japan, which is partly owned by Softbank, as "strategic" to the company. Under previous CEOs, Yahoo had engaged in unsuccessful discussions to "monetize" its roughly 35 percent stake in Yahoo Japan.

(Reporting by Alexei Oreskovic; Editing by Phil Berlowitz)

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Body slam for wrestling: Sport cut from Olympics

LAUSANNE, Switzerland (AP) — For wrestling, this may have been the ultimate body slam: getting tossed out of the Olympic rings.

The vote Tuesday by the IOC's executive board stunned the world's wrestlers, who see their sport as popular in many countries and steeped in history as old as the Olympics themselves.

While wrestling will be included at the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, it was cut from the games in 2020, which have yet to be awarded to a host city.

2004 Olympic Greco-Roman champion Khasan Baroev of Russia called the decision "mind-boggling."

"I just can't believe it. And what sport will then be added to the Olympic program? What sport is worthy of replacing ours?" Baroev told the ITAR-Tass news agency. "Wrestling is popular in many countries — just see how the medals were distributed at the last Olympics."

American Rulan Gardner, who upset three-time Russian Olympic champion Alexander Karelin at the Sydney Games in an epic gold-medal bout known as the "Miracle on the Mat," was saddened by the decision to drop what he called "a beloved sport."

"It's the IOC trying to change the Olympics to make it more mainstream and more viewer-friendly instead of sticking to what they founded the Olympics on," Gardner told The Associated Press in a telephone interview from Logan, Utah.

The executive board of the International Olympic Committee reviewed the 26 sports on its summer program in order to remove one of them so it could add one later this year. It decided to cut wrestling and keep modern pentathlon — a sport that combines fencing, horse riding, swimming, running and shooting — and was considered to be the most likely to be dropped.

The board voted after reviewing a report by the IOC program commission report that analyzed 39 criteria, including TV ratings, ticket sales, anti-doping policy and global participation and popularity. With no official rankings or recommendations contained in the report, the final decision by the 15-member board was also subject to political, emotional and sentimental factors.

"This is a process of renewing and renovating the program for the Olympics," IOC spokesman Mark Adams said. "In the view of the executive board, this was the best program for the Olympic Games in 2020. It's not a case of what's wrong with wrestling; it is what's right with the 25 core sports."

According to IOC documents obtained by the AP, wrestling ranked "low" in several of the technical criteria, including popularity with the public at the London Games — just below 5 on a scale of 10. Wrestling sold 113,851 tickets in London out of 116,854 available.

Wrestling also ranked "low" in global TV audience with a maximum of 58.5 million viewers and an average of 23 million, the documents show. Internet hits and press coverage were also ranked as low.

NBC, which televises the Olympics in the U.S., declined comment.

The IOC also noted that FILA — the international wrestling federation — has no athletes on its decision-making bodies, no women's commission, no ethics rules for technical officials and no medical official on its executive board.

Modern pentathlon also ranked low in general popularity in London, with 5.2 out of 10. The sport also ranked low in all TV categories, with maximum viewership of 33.5 million and an average of 12.5 million.

FILA has 177 member nations, compared to 108 for modern pentathlon.

Modern pentathlon, which has been on the Olympic program since the 1912 Stockholm Games, was created by French baron Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the modern Olympic movement.

It also benefited from the work of Juan Antonio Samaranch Jr., the son of the former IOC president who is a UIPM vice president and member of the IOC board.

"We were considered weak in some of the scores in the program commission report but strong in others," Samaranch told the AP. "We played our cards to the best of our ability and stressed the positives."

Klaus Schormann, president of governing body UIPM, lobbied hard to protect his sport's Olympic status and it paid off in the end.

"We have promised things and we have delivered," he said after Tuesday's decision. "That gives me a great feeling. It also gives me new energy to develop our sport further and never give up."

The IOC executive board will meet in May in St. Petersburg, Russia, to decide which sport or sports to propose for 2020 inclusion. The final vote will be made at the IOC session, or general assembly, in September in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Wrestling will now join seven other sports in applying for 2020, but it is extremely unlikely that it would be voted back in so soon after being removed by the executive board.

The other sports vying for a single opening in 2020 are a combined bid from baseball and softball, karate, squash, roller sports, sport climbing, wakeboarding and wushu, a martial art.

"Today's decision is not final," Adams said. "The session is sovereign and the session will make the final decision."

Wrestling featured 344 athletes competing in 11 medal events in freestyle and seven in Greco-Roman at last year's London Olympics, with Russia dominating the podium but Iran and Azerbaijan making strong showings. Women's wrestling was added to the Olympics at the 2004 Athens Games.

Karelin noted in an interview with Vyes' Sport that Russians and Soviets have won 77 gold medals.

"It's understandable that a lot of people didn't like this," Karelin said. "I'm not a supporter of conspiracy theory, but it seems to me that the underlying cause here is obvious."

Tuesday's decision came via secret ballot over four rounds, with 14 members voting each time on which sport should not be included in the core group. IOC President Jacques Rogge did not vote.

Three sports were left in the final round: wrestling, field hockey and modern pentathlon. Eight members voted against wrestling and three each against the other two sports. Taekwondo and canoe kayaking survived the previous rounds.

"I was shocked," said IOC board member Rene Fasel of Switzerland.

"It was an extremely difficult decision to take," added IOC Vice President Thomas Bach of Germany. "The motivation of every member is never based on a single reason. There are always several reasons. It was a secret vote. There will always be criticism, but I think the great majority will understand that we took a decision based on facts and for the modernization of the Olympic Games."

Wrestling was featured in the first modern Olympics in Athens in 1896. Along with Russia's Karelin, it has produced such American stars as Gardner, Bruce Baumgartner, Jeff Blatnick and Jordan Burroughs.

U.S. Olympic Committee CEO Scott Blackmun also expressed surprise at the IOC decision, citing "the history and tradition of wrestling, and its popularity and universality."

"It is important to remember that today's action is a recommendation, and we hope that there will be a meaningful opportunity to discuss the important role that wrestling plays in the sports landscape both in the United States and around the world," Blackmun said in a statement. "In the meantime, we will fully support USA Wrestling and its athletes."

FILA said in a statement that it was "greatly astonished" by the decision, adding that the federation "will take all necessary measures to convince the IOC executive board and IOC members of the aberration of such decision against one of the founding sports of the ancient and modern Olympic Games."

It said it has always complied with IOC regulations and is represented in 180 countries, with wrestling the national sport in some of them.

The federation, which is headed by Raphael Martinetti and based in Corsier-sur-Vevey, Switzerland, said it would meet next week in Thailand to discuss the matter.

Gardner cited wrestling's worldwide popularity and urged a campaign to keep it in the Olympics.

"It just seems like wrestling — if we don't fight, we're going to die," he said. "At this point, it's time for everybody to man up and support the program."

The decision hit hard in Russia, which has long been a power in the sport.

Mikhail Mamiashvili, president of the Russian Wrestling Federation, suggested FILA had not done enough to keep the sport in the games.

"We want to hear what was done to prevent this issue from even being discussed at the board," he said on the Rossiya TV channel.

In comments carried by ITAR-Tass, Mamiashvili added: "I can say for sure that the roots of this problem is at the FILA. I believe that Martinetti's task was to work hard, socialize and defend wrestling's place before the IOC."

Alexander Leipold, a 2000 Olympic champion from Germany and former freestyle German team coach, said he was shocked.

"We are a technical, tactical martial sport where the aim is not to harm the opponent," he said. "Competing at the Olympics is the greatest for an athlete."

Wrestling's long history in the Olympics has featured some top names and moments:

— Karelin won the super-heavyweight gold in Greco-Roman over three straight Olympics — 1988, 1992 and 1996 — until his streak was ended by Gardner, who beat him for the gold in 2000.

— Baumgartner won four Olympic medals, including golds in 1984 and 1992.

— Blatnick overcame cancer to win gold in Greco-Roman at the 1984 Los Angeles Games, bursting into tears after the match. Blatnick died last year at age 55.

— Burroughs emerged as the star of the sport in London, where he won the 74-kilogram gold.

The last sports removed from the Olympics were baseball and softball, voted out by the IOC in 2005 and off the program since the 2008 Beijing Games. Golf and rugby will be joining the program at the 2016 Games in Rio.

Among those in Lausanne were the leaders of the recently created World Baseball Softball Confederation. The two sports agreed last year to merge in a joint bid to return to the games.

Don Porter, the American who heads international softball, and Riccardo Fraccari, the Italian who leads baseball, are working out the final details of their unified body ahead of their presentation to the IOC in May.

A major hurdle remains the lack of a commitment from Major League Baseball to release top players for the Olympics.

Porter and Fraccari said they hope to have another meeting with MLB officials in April in Tokyo.

"The next thing is to sit down with them and see how they can help us," Porter said. "It all depends on the timing, the timing of the season. It's not an easy decision to allow players a week off."

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Associated Press writers Lynn Berry in Moscow and Luke Meredith in Des Moines, Iowa, contributed to this story.

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Study questions kidney cancer treatment in elderly

In a stunning example of when treatment might be worse than the disease, a large review of Medicare records finds that older people with small kidney tumors were much less likely to die over the next five years if doctors monitored them instead of operating right away.

Even though nearly all of these tumors turned out to be cancer, they rarely proved fatal. And surgery roughly doubled patients' risk of developing heart problems or dying of other causes, doctors found.

After five years, 24 percent of those who had surgery had died, compared to only 13 percent of those who chose monitoring. Just 3 percent of people in each group died of kidney cancer.

The study only involved people 66 and older, but half of all kidney cancers occur in this age group. Younger people with longer life expectancies should still be offered surgery, doctors stressed.

The study also was observational — not an experiment where some people were given surgery and others were monitored, so it cannot prove which approach is best. Yet it offers a real-world look at how more than 7,000 Medicare patients with kidney tumors fared. Surgery is the standard treatment now.

"I think it should change care" and that older patients should be told "that they don't necessarily need to have the kidney tumor removed," said Dr. William Huang of New York University Langone Medical Center. "If the treatment doesn't improve cancer outcomes, then we should consider leaving them alone."

He led the study and will give results at a medical meeting in Orlando, Fla., later this week. The research was discussed Tuesday in a telephone news conference sponsored by the American Society of Clinical Oncology and two other cancer groups.

In the United States, about 65,000 new cases of kidney cancer and 13,700 deaths from the disease are expected this year. Two-thirds of cases are diagnosed at the local stage, when five-year survival is more than 90 percent.

However, most kidney tumors these days are found not because they cause symptoms, but are spotted by accident when people are having an X-ray or other imaging test for something else, like back trouble or chest pain.

Cancer experts increasingly question the need to treat certain slow-growing cancers that are not causing symptoms — prostate cancer in particular. Researchers wanted to know how life-threatening small kidney tumors were, especially in older people most likely to suffer complications from surgery.

They used federal cancer registries and Medicare records from 2000 to 2007 to find 8,317 people 66 and older with kidney tumors less than 1.5 inches wide.

Cancer was confirmed in 7,148 of them. About three-quarters of them had surgery and the rest chose to be monitored with periodic imaging tests.

After five years, 1,536 had died, including 191 of kidney cancer. For every 100 patients who chose monitoring, 11 more were alive at the five-year mark compared to the surgery group. Only 6 percent of those who chose monitoring eventually had surgery.

Furthermore, 27 percent of the surgery group but only 13 percent of the monitoring group developed a cardiovascular problem such as a heart attack, heart disease or stroke. These problems were more likely if doctors removed the entire kidney instead of just a part of it.

The results may help doctors persuade more patients to give monitoring a chance, said a cancer specialist with no role in the research, Dr. Bruce Roth of Washington University in St. Louis.

Some patients with any abnormality "can't sleep at night until something's done about it," he said. Doctors need to say, "We're not sticking our head in the sand, we're going to follow this" and can operate if it gets worse.

One of Huang's patients — 81-year-old Rhona Landorf, who lives in New York City — needed little persuasion.

"I was very happy not to have to be operated on," she said. "He said it's very slow growing and that having an operation would be worse for me than the cancer."

Landorf said her father had been a doctor, and she trusts her doctors' advice. Does she think about her tumor? "Not at all," she said.

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Online:

Kidney cancer info: http://www.cancer.net/cancer-types/kidney-cancer

and http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/types/kidney

Study: http://gucasym.org

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Marilynn Marchione can be followed at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP

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Beyonce joined by Oprah at documentary premiere

NEW YORK (AP) — Oprah Winfrey made a surprise appearance Tuesday night at the premiere of Beyonce's HBO documentary, 'Life is But a Dream,' posing with the star and speaking of the candor she showed in making it.

The film takes a no-holds-barred look at moments in the 31-year old singer's life, including her miscarriage, reports of faking her pregnancy, and firing her father as her manager.

While the revelations Beyonce makes about herself in the film are comparable to the results Winfrey usually gets from her tough style of interviewing, the talk show host gave kudos to the singer.

Winfrey said Beyonce did a "much better job" of telling her own story. "I wouldn't have been in the bedroom and in the closet and in the car and on vacation," she said.

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Downtown condo market showing signs of life

Downtown Chicago's condo market is on the rebound after many moribund years, as sales volume and pricing improve in a market constrained by a lack of inventory.

It's a rare piece of good news for downtown condo owners as well as for developers pondering projects and trying to line up financing.

With a steady stream of apartment projects delivering in the next two years, the lack of new condo construction could signal opportunities for companies interested in pursuing smaller projects in key neighborhoods because the demand is there. Until those projects materialize, condo owners looking to sell face a better market than they have in several years.

Sales of existing downtown condos rose 31.2 percent last year, to 4,675 units sold, while the median sales price of $300,000 was a gain of about 2.6 percent from 2011, according to data from Appraisal Research Counselors.

Another piece of good news for current condo owners: Of the 65 downtown buildings studied by the firm, the average sales price per square foot of units sold during the second half of last year rose while the number of distressed condo sales in those buildings saw a substantial drop. Distressed sales, which accounted for  28 percent of sales since 2010, fell to 17 percent of sales during the second half of 2012.

In addition, only 1,104 newly constructed condo units remain unsold downtown.

"When we see more transactions occurring, that's a really good indication of demand," said Gail Lissner, a vice president at the firm. "The look of the condo market has changed in terms of unsold inventory."

Lissner's remarks came Tuesday during a lunchtime briefing on the local housing market.

Most of the unsold inventory, more than 500 units, is in the South Loop and the bulk of it is in the newly named and repositioned 500-unit South Loop Luxury by Related.

The three buildings, once called One Museum Park West, 1600 Museum Park and Museum Park Place 2 were taken over by New York-based Related Cos. in July have been renamed the Grant, Adler Place and Harbor View, respectively.

Since December, 40 units there are under contract, according to Related Midwest, which officially launched sales in the project Tuesday.

Other new projects reporting positive sales trends are Park Monroe Phase II, a 48-unit adaptive reuse project with 16 sales and CA3, a 40-unit building with 18 sales.

"These are all great indicators of strong sales," Lissner said. "Price stabilization has occurred in the market. You don't hear people talking about bottoming out. That was so yesterday."

mepodmolik@tribune.com | Twitter @mepodmolik

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Hadiya's dad: 'Thanking God that these two guys are off the streets'

Two reputed gang members were out for revenge from a previous shooting when they opened fire on a group of students in a South Side park last month, killing 15-year-old Hadiya Pendleton in a heartbreaking case that has brought national attention to Chicago's rampant gun violence, police said.

Michael Ward, 18, and Kenneth Williams, 20, were each charged with first-degree murder, attempted murder and aggravated battery with a firearm in the Jan. 29 attack that also left two teens wounded.

Ward confessed to police that he and Williams mistook a Pendleton companion for rivals who had shot and wounded Williams last July, police Superintendent Garry McCarthy said at a news conference Monday night at the Area Central police headquarters.

Ward told police that he and Williams got out of their car, crept up on the group and opened fire in Harsh Park, McCarthy said. Williams then drove them from the scene, he said.

"The offenders had it all wrong. They thought the group they shot into included members of a rival gang. Instead it was a group of upstanding, determined kids who, like Hadiya, were repulsed by the gang lifestyle," said McCarthy, flanked by two dozen detectives and gang investigators who worked the case.

Detectives arrested the two Saturday night as the suspects were on their way to a suburban strip club to celebrate a friend's birthday, McCarthy said. Pendleton had been buried only hours earlier in a funeral attended by first lady Michelle Obama.

"I don't even know what to say about that," McCarthy said. "They were going out to celebrate at a strip club."

Williams did not confess and police have not recovered a weapon, McCarthy said. Both are due in bond court Tuesday.

Hadiya's father, Nathaniel Pendleton, said Monday night that news of the charges marked the first time since his daughter's slaying that he had a "legitimate" smile on his face.

"I'm ecstatic that they found the two guys," he told the Tribune during a brief telephone interview from Washington, D.C., where he and wife Cleopatra Cowley-Pendleton will attend the State of the Union address Tuesday as guests of President Barack Obama. "(I'm) thanking God that these two guys are off the streets, so that this doesn't happen to another innocent person."

Danetria Hutson, 15, who held Hadiya in her arms after she was shot, said she and others in the group have had nightmares since the shooting.

In addition to waking up in the middle of the night, Hutson, also a sophomore at King, said she and other in that group also haven't been able to bring themselves to hang out at parks since that day.

"A lot of us were actually paranoid because the guys were still out there," Hutson said in a telephone interview. "They knew where we went to school."

On Monday night, Hutson was a little frustrated because of the "ignorance" portrayed in social media, where some people are suggesting that Ward and Williams weren't involved in Hadiya's slaying. But Hutson felt a sigh of relief today when charges were announced against them.

"I just want to see how her family reacts," she said. "It gave me some closure, but I don't think (Hadiya's) family will get closure."

McCarthy said that two days before the killing, police had stopped Ward in his Nissan Sentra as part of a routine gang investigation. That information wound up being the starting point for detectives when witnesses in the shooting described seeing a similar car driving away from the shooting scene, he said.

Through surveillance and interviews — including several fruitful interviews with parolees in the neighborhood — detectives were able to home in on Ward and Williams, McCarthy said. On Saturday night, the decision was made to stop the two if they were spotted. Police watched as they departed in a caravan of cars headed to the strip club in Harvey. They were stopped near 67th Street and South King Drive and taken in for questioning.

McCarthy said Williams was shot July 11 at 39th Street and South Lake Park Avenue, and an arrest was made. But that gunman was let go after Williams refused to cooperate, McCarthy said.

McCarthy also noted that at the time of Hadiya's slaying, Ward was on probation for a weapons conviction. McCarthy said weak Illinois gun laws allowed Ward to avoid jail time because of the absence of mandatory minimum sentences.

"This incident did not have to occur," McCarthy said. "And if mandatory minimums existed in the state of Illinois, Michael Ward would not have been on the street to commit this heinous act."

In announcing the charges, McCarthy praised the "meticulous" detective work that led to the arrests, but he also expressed frustration that despite a $40,000 reward for information in the shooting, no one who had knowledge of the crime came forward.

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Judge speeds up schedule in Apple versus Einhorn case

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A judge approved Apple Inc's request to speed up the schedule in a lawsuit filed by star hedge fund manager David Einhorn's Greenlight Capital, part of an effort to get the company to share its huge cash reserves with investors.

U.S. District Judge Richard Sullivan of the Southern District of New York on Monday brought forward the legal schedule by a few days at Apple's request, which argued that the issue would have a big impact on the upcoming shareholder meeting on February 27.

Apple told the judge that the request to modify the schedule had the support of Einhorn's counsel.

Einhorn, a well-known short-seller and Apple gadget fan, shocked Wall Street last week by suing Apple to stop the iPhone maker from eliminating from its charter the ability to issue preferred stock without shareholder approval.

He wants Apple to return a bigger piece of its $137 billion cash pile to investors, through the issuance of perpetual preferred shares that pay dividends to existing shareholders.

Einhorn is objecting to how the proposed charter change is bundled together with two other corporate governance-related proposals in the proxy document for the annual meeting.

The lawsuit contends Apple violated Securities and Exchange Commission rules that prohibit companies from "bundling" unrelated matters into a single proposal for a shareholder vote.

Apple says removing the board's ability to issue preferred stock at its discretion heightens governance, because future issuances would then require shareholder approval.

The company will file its response to the lawsuit by the end of Wednesday while Greenlight will file its own response papers by Friday. The judge ordered both parties to appear for oral arguments on February 19.

Apple has said that the proposal in its proxy had the support of many shareholders, and striking such a "blank check" provision from its charter would not preclude preferred share issuances in future.

The law firm of O'Melveny & Myers LLP is representing Apple in the case, with San Francisco-based partner George Riley arguing for Apple.

(Reporting By Poornima Gupta; Editing by Tim Dobbyn)

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