Ravi Shankar, sitar master, dies at 92

Ravi Shankar was already revered as a master of the sitar in 1966 when he met George Harrison, the Beatle who became his most famous disciple and gave the Indian musician-composer unexpected pop-culture cachet.

Suddenly the classically trained Shankar was a darling of the hippie movement, gaining widespread attention through memorable performances at the Monterey Pop Festival, Woodstock and the 1971 Concert for Bangladesh.

Harrison called him "the godfather of world music," and the great violinist Yehudi Menuhin once compared the sitarist's genius to Mozart's. Shankar continued to give virtuoso performances into his 90s, including one in 2011 at Walt Disney Concert Hall.

PHOTOS: Ravi Shankar | 1920 - 2010

Shankar, 92, who introduced Indian music to much of the Western world, died Tuesday at a hospital near his home in Encinitas. Stuart Wolferman, a publicist for his record label Unfinished Side Productions, said Shankar had undergone heart valve replacement surgery last week.

Well-established in the classical music of his native India since the 1940s, he remained a vital figure on the global music stage for six decades. Shankar is the father of pop music star Norah Jones and Anoushka Shankar, his protege and a sitar star in her own right.

Before the 1950s, Indian classical music — with its improvised melodic excursions and complex percussion rhythms — was virtually unknown in America. If Shankar had done nothing more than compose the movie scores for Indian filmmaker Satyajit Ray's "Apu" trilogy in the 1950s, he "would be remembered and revered," Times music critic Mark Swed wrote last fall.

PHOTOS: Notable deaths of 2012

Shankar was on a path to international stardom during the 1950s, playing the sitar in the Soviet Union and debuting as a soloist in Western Europe and the United States. Two early albums also had considerable impact, "Three Classical Ragas" and "India's Master Musician."

During his musical emergence in the West, his first important association was with violinist Menuhin, whose passion for Indian music was ignited by Shankar in 1952. Their creative partnership peaked with their "West Meets East" release, which earned a Grammy Award in 1967. The recording also showed Shankar's versatility — and the capacity of Indian music to inspire artists from different creative disciplines.

He presented a new form of classical music to Western audiences that was based on improvisation instead of written compositions. Shankar typically played in the Hindustani classical style, in which he was accompanied by a player of two tablas, or small hand drums. Concerts in India that often lasted through the night were generally shortened to a few hours for American venues as Shankar played the sitar, a long-necked lute-like stringed instrument.

At first, he especially appealed to fans of jazz music drawn to improvisation. He recorded "Improvisations" (1962) with saxophonist Bud Shank and "Portrait of a Genius" (1964) with flutist Paul Horn, gave lessons to saxophonist John Coltrane (who named his saxophone-playing son Ravi), and wrote a percussion piece for drummer Buddy Rich and Alla Rakha.

On the Beatles' 1965 recording "Norwegian Wood," Harrison had played the sitar and met Shankar the next year in London.

Shankar was "the first person to impress me," among the impressive people the Beatles met, "because he didn't try to impress me," Harrison later said. The pair became close and their friendship lasted until Harrison's death in 2001.

Harrison was instrumental in getting Shankar booked at the now legendary Monterey Pop Festival in 1967. They partnered in organizing the Concert for Bangladesh and were among the producers who won a Grammy in 1972 for the subsequent album. They toured together in 1974, and Harrison produced Shankar's career-spanning mid-1990s boxed set, "In Celebration."

But Shankar came away from his festival appearances with mixed feelings about his rock generation followers. He expressed hope that his performances might help young people better understand Indian music and philosophy but later said "they weren't ready for it."

"All the young people got interested … but it was so mixed up with superficiality and the fad and the drugs," Shankar told The Times in 1996. "I had to go through several years to make them understand that this is a disciplined music, needing a fresh mind."

When Shankar was criticized in India as a sellout for spreading his music in the West, he responded in the early 1970s by lowering his profile and reaffirming his classical roots. He followed his first concerto for sitar and orchestra in 1971 with another a decade later.

"Our music has gone through so much development," Shankar told The Times in 1997. "But its roots — which have something to do with its feelings, the depth from where you bring out the music when you perform — touch the listeners even without their knowing it."

In the 1980s and '90s, Shankar maintained a busy performing schedule despite heart problems. He recorded "Tana Mana," an unusual synthesis of Indian music, electronics and jazz; oversaw the American premiere of his ballet, "Ghyanshyam: The Broken Branch"; and collaborated with composer Philip Glass on the album "Passages."

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One Small Step for Kim: North Korea Inches Closer to an ICBM

North Korea has just put a satellite into orbit for the first time. Does that mean an intercontinental ballistic missile is next? Not exactly.

All the data so far shows a successful space launch for Pyongyang, after firing off its Unha-3 multi-stage rocket at 7:49 p.m. EST Tuesday. So far, it appears North Korea was able to pull off two things they haven’t been able to do before. One, Pyongyang’s rocket appears to have hit its anticipated splashdown points, or where a rocket’s jettisoned boosters land after exhausting their fuel. This implies the North Koreans now — unlike previous tests with rockets based on similar technology — have improved their ability to control where a long-range rocket can go. Second, North Korea has joined a small club of 11 other nations that have successfully launched their own payloads into orbit. There’s no telling yet if Pyongyang’s satellite is working and useful or not, but having sent something up is still a major accomplishment.

But translating that expertise into a working intercontinental ballistic missile program is still a ways away, experts believe. “It is definitely a step forward towards potentially having the capability. But it does not mean they have it now, nor that they are guaranteed to get it in the future,” Brian Weeden, a former officer with the U.S. Air Force Space Command, e-mails Danger Room. “Last night (or this morning for them) was the first time they’ve gotten a long-range rocket to work right in 14 years (counting from their first attempt in 1998). One success indicates progress, but not victory.”

Even so, there’s been panicked talk for years in Washington about Pyongyang developing “long-range missiles that will be threatening to the United States,” as the Pentagon report Ballistic Missile Review stated in 2010. While there is still a lot of uncertainty around the question of how long North Korea will need to develop an ICBM, those fears have been a major driver behind efforts by politicians to install missile defense batteries in the homeland, and boost the number of missile interceptors around the world. The problem was, for years, the North Koreans shot up nothing but duds. Now, there’s a tangible step toward those fears perhaps one day coming true, even though Pyongyang still has a lot of work to do.

For one, a working rocket — which can be seen in this Chinese video spotted by NK News – is only one part of building a working ICBM, or intercontinental ballistic missile, Weeden says. ICBM launch trajectories are quite different from space launch trajectories, namely being that an ICBM has to go into space, and then re-enter the atmosphere while targeting a city on the other side of the planet. To simplify, that’s really hard to do, for several reasons.

 The heat and stress of atmospheric re-entry are extreme, which requires building a tough heat shield. In order to hit a city in North America, North Korea would need a much more sophisticated guidance system than they currently have, according to Victoria Samson, a rockets expert at the Secure World Foundation. Plus, ”for an ICBM to be effective, it needs to carry a payload that makes launching an ICBM worth it, which means a decent-sized, heavy payload that can pack a big enough punch to merit doing so,” Samson says.

But the payload can’t be too big to carry. North Korea also needs a nuclear warhead that’s small enough to fit on a rocket, while being reliable enough to work when they fire it. Getting all of these things right is a major technical challenge. There is also an entire physical and technical infrastructure needed to build a full-fledged weapons program, as compared to a single successful space launch with reassembled Soviet rockets.

Keeping the rockets maintained, figuring out the right fuel balance so the liquid stuff doesn’t eat through your missile, monitoring the status of missiles for errors, faults, or anything else that could inhibit a launch — and, most importantly, having the right command and control in place so that you don’t have an accidental launch or detonation — all of that is really tough.

“As anyone in the military will tell you, there is a huge gap between being able to do make a system work once and having a system that is reliable enough to be militarily useful,” Weeden noted. “We didn’t just test the first American ICBM until we got the first success and then call it a day. It took many years of focused, dedicated efforts with many tests and multiple successes to mature the technology to the point where it could be operationally useful.”

How many years? Before North Korea can even be confident in having the ability to build one, Pyongyang “would probably need to conduct five or six tests to be sure,” Andrew Futter, a missile defense expert at the University of Leicester, told NK News. At the current pace, that could be three years at the earliest. And then North Korea could consider it.

Another question is where North Korean rocket technology might end up next. ”DPRK could sell this technology to others, including Iran and Pakistan, who have been regular customers of North Korea’s other missiles (Scud, Nodong, Musudan),” writes Victor Cha, the Korea Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “The North has crossed a major threshold in terms of mating an ICBM with a nuclear weapon. They still have other technological thresholds to cross (miniaturized warheads, reentry vehicle), but this was undeniably a major one.”

The launch date also took the world by surprise. When North Korea first announced it was launching the rocket in December, it originally set a launch window between Dec. 10 and Dec. 22. Just prior to the launch, however, Pyongyang announced an extension of the window to Dec. 29 and admitted the rocket’s first-stage engine was having technical problems. This led a number of analysts and journalists — me included — to speculate that North Korea was being forced to delay the launch. “Sure, they expected it would happen eventually, but most everyone was blindsided when North Korea lit the fuse just one day from their delay announcement,” Business Insider‘s Geoffrey Ingersoll noted.

The bait-and-switch could also have been carried out to intentionally head-fake the planet. “The technical glitch was either a minor one quickly fixed or just a camouflage to trick the Japanese, who have openly talked about intercepting the rocket,” Yang Moo-jin, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul, told The New York Times. Other theories involve North Korea attempting to keep up with a growing arms race with South Korea, timing with December elections in South Korea and Japan, or simply a plea for attention. And boy, did that work.

– additional reporting by Noah Shachtman

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‘Lincoln,’ ‘Les Mis,’ ‘Playbook’ lead SAG awards

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The Civil War saga “Lincoln,” the musical “Les Miserables” and the comic drama “Silver Linings Playbook” boosted their Academy Awards prospects Wednesday with four nominations apiece for the Screen Actors Guild Awards.

All three films were nominated for overall performance by their casts. Also nominated for best ensemble cast were the Iran hostage-crisis thriller “Argo” and the British retiree adventure “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.”

Directed by Steven Spielberg, “Lincoln” also scored individual nominations for Daniel Day-Lewis in the title role as best actor, Sally Field for supporting actress as Mary Todd Lincoln and Tommy Lee Jones for supporting actor as abolitionist firebrand Thaddeus Stevens.

“Les Miserables,” from “The King’s Speech” director Tom Hooper, had nominations for Hugh Jackman for best actor as Victor Hugo’s long-suffering hero Jean Valjean and Anne Hathaway for supporting actress as a woman fallen into prostitution, plus a nomination for its stunt ensemble.

“Silver Linings Playbook,” made by “The Fighter” director David O. Russell, also had lead-acting nominations for Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence as lost souls who find a second chance at love and Robert De Niro for supporting actor as a football-obsessed dad.

Besides Lawrence, best-actress nominees are Jessica Chastain as a CIA analyst pursuing Osama bin Laden in “Zero Dark Thirty”; Marion Cotillard as a woman who finds romance after tragedy in “Rust and Bone”; Helen Mirren as Alfred Hitchcock’s strong-willed wife in “Hitchcock”; and Naomi Watts as a woman caught in the devastation of a tsunami in “The Impossible.”

Joining Cooper, Day-Lewis and Jackman in the best-actor field are John Hawkes as a polio victim aiming to lose his virginity in “The Sessions” and Denzel Washington as a boozy airline pilot in “Flight.”

SAG nominees are almost all familiar names in Hollywood’s awards season. Eighteen of the 20 film acting contenders are past Academy Awards nominees and 13 have won Oscars, among them five two-time winners. Only Cooper and Jackman have never before earned Oscar nominations.

One of the year’s most-acclaimed films, Paul Thomas Anderson’s “The Master,” earned only one nomination, supporting actor for Philip Seymour Hoffman as a mesmerizing cult leader. The film was snubbed on nominations for ensemble, lead actor Joaquin Phoenix and supporting actress Amy Adams.

Other individual performances overlooked by SAG voters include Anthony Hopkins in the title role of “Hitchcock,” Keira Knightley in the title role of “Anna Karenina,” Bill Murray as Franklin Roosevelt in “Hyde Park on Hudson” and “Argo” director Ben Affleck, who also starred in the film.

The SAG Awards will be presented Jan. 27. The guild nominations are one of Hollywood’s first major announcements on the long road to the Feb. 24 Oscars Awards, whose nominations will be released Jan. 10.

Nominations for the Golden Globes, the second-biggest film honors after the Oscars, come out Thursday.

Maggie Smith had four individual and ensemble nominations. Along with sharing the ensemble honor for “Best Exotic Marigold Hotel,” Smith joined the cast of “Downton Abbey” among TV ensemble contenders and had nominations for supporting film actress as a cranky retiree in “Marigold Hotel” and TV drama actress for “Downton Abbey.”

Nicole Kidman earned two individual nominations, as supporting film actress as a woman smitten with a prison inmate in “The Paperboy” and best actress in a TV movie or miniseries as war correspondent Martha Gellhorn in “Hemingway & Gellhorn.”

Bryan Cranston had three overall nominations, as best actor in a TV drama for “Breaking Bad,” an ensemble honor for that show and a film ensemble honor for “Argo.”

Along with “Breaking Bad” and “Downton Abbey,” best TV drama ensemble contenders are “Boardwalk Empire,” ”Homeland” and “Mad Men.” TV comedy ensemble nominees are “30 Rock,” ”The Big Bang Theory,” ”Glee,” ”Modern Family,” ”Nurse Jackie” and “The Office.”

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Online:

http://www.sagawards.org

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'Right-to-work' measure passes in Michigan Legislature

Controversial "right-to-work" legislation covering public-sector employees passed the Michigan House of Representatives on Tuesday, bringing it one step closer to being signed into law.

The House passed the bill, 58 to 51, as union opponents of the measure booed inside the Capitol and an estimated 12,000 people rallied outside. The state's Senate approved the bill last week.

The House is now scheduled to vote on a right-to-work bill for private-sector employees, which would cover Michigan's auto industry. If that measure passes, Michigan would become the 24th right-to-work state, meaning unions cannot require members to pay dues as a condition of employment.

Michigan is the fourth state in the Midwest to become embroiled in labor controversy since 2010, when a slate of Republican governors were swept into statehouses across the nation. The speed with which the right-to-work measure are being passed worries some labor experts, who say that it was once unimaginable that Michigan, where 17.5% of the workforce is unionized, would become a right-to-work state.

"Michigan could prove defining," said Harley Shaiken, a labor expert at UC Berkeley. "What happens here, given the role of unions historically in Michigan, and the larger political implications of right-to-work, will mean a lot."

But even as the Rev. Jesse Jackson rallied protesters on the steps of Lansing City Hall, labor leaders were hurriedly seeking ways to reverse the legislation down the road.

Michigan can't go the way of Ohio, where a referendum last year reversed legislation that would have restricted collective bargaining. Michigan's right-to-work legislation is attached to an appropriations bill, meaning it can't be reversed by referendum. Also, it may be too risky to wait and go the way of Wisconsin, where litigation continues after a judge struck down parts of a collective bargaining law.

However, in Michigan, there is an option of a "statutory initiative," which would be permitted if opponents of the bills can collect enough signatures to equal 8% of the votes cast in the last gubernatorial election, union leaders say. A so-called veto referendum could be triggered by collecting signatures equal to 5% of the votes cast.

A statutory initiative would allow voters to cast a ballot on right-to-work legisation in November 2014, when Gov. Rick Snyder, who has said he would support the legislation, will be up for reelection.

"There are multiple options for a referendum," a senior labor leader said Tuesday. "All options are on the table. This fight is far from over."

It’s unclear whether unions are promoting a referendum now to warn Snyder of the repercussions that signing the legislation would have.

Democrats including Sen. Carl Levin and Rep. John Dingell met with Snyder on Monday to urge him to veto the legislation. The governor promised to "seriously" consider their concerns, but Democrats remained worried that he would sign the bills.

“The governor has a choice: He can put this on the ballot, and let the voters make the determination, or he can jam it through a lame-duck session,” Dingell said Monday.

Snyder, a businessman before he became governor, was elected in 2010 by a landslide, beating his opponent by a nearly 2-to-1 margin. But only 35.5% of respondents said they thought he was doing an "excellent" or "good" job in a Michigan State University survey this fall, and that figure could fall as the controversy continues.

"I think this will pass, and be signed, and there will be a long struggle with the United Auto Workers and other unions,” said Kristin Dziczek, director of the labor and industry group at the Center for Automotive Research. "They’re going to focus their attentions on overturning this. I don’t think the war has even begun."

ALSO:

Obama blasts right-to-work in Michigan

Ohio votes to overturn new collective bargaining law

Protests re-ignite as Michigan right-to-work bill nears final OK

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Our Favorite Tweets Highlight Our 'Second Screen' Culture, Twitter Survey Shows

Twitter released its annual look back at the year’s most popular tweets, biggest trends and most notable moments as seen through the lens of 140-character updates. There was a lot going on, from Hurricane Sandy to Whitney Houston, but the clear standout trend: We love to talk about things on TV.

Almost all of the year’s major conversations were about sports, politics or entertainment. Twitter went wild during the the Super Bowl, the Olympics, the presidential debates and the MTV Video Music Awards. It was the second screen where we went online to root for teams and politicians and musicians.

You could see this even more vividly reflected in the most retweeted moments of the year. Barack Obama had the most retweeted (810,000!) message with “Four more years.” But every one of the top tweets was related to politics, sports or entertainment.

This is the second-screen culture we keep hearing about, where we take to a phone or a tablet to talk about the things we’re seeing on TV. Even when it comes to Sandy’s destruction, or Houston’s self-destruction, when news hits we no longer just digest it; we go online to disseminate, dissect and discuss it. This isn’t a new behavior, of course. It’s the water cooler writ large, all across the planet, all at once. Except instead of taking place the day after an event, Twitter and Facebook and the like let us talk about events as they happen.

Which is exactly why politics and sports, and even natural disasters, lead to so many conversation. They are unscripted moments, happening in real time, with uncertain outcomes. They tend to be full of drama and human emotion. They elicit passionate takes, which themselves elicit passionate replies (and maybe even passionate retweets).

There’s a lot of talk about Twitter remaking itself into a media company. And Twitter clearly is trying to position itself as the place people go online to talk about current events — the Discover tab in its app was more or less made just for that.

But really, just as we gave it the retweet and the hashtag, we are the ones remaking Twitter. It may be able to point out things that are going on, but we’re the ones who make things happen. If Twitter is a media company now, it’s because we’ve made it that.

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‘Lincoln’ leads Critics’ Choice Awards nominees

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Film critics love “Lincoln.” The historical drama earned a record-breaking 13 nominations for the Critics’ Choice Movie Awards.

The Broadcast Film Critics Association announced the nominees for its 18th annual awards ceremony Tuesday in Los Angeles.

“Lincoln” beat the 12 nods earned by 2010′s “Black Swan” with bids for director Steven Spielberg, star Daniel Day-Lewis and supporting actors Sally Field and Tommy Lee Jones, as well as cinematography, adapted screenplay, costume design, makeup, editing, art direction, score and acting ensemble.

“Les Miserables” follows with 11 nominations and “Silver Linings Playbook” has 10. “Life of Pi” earned nine nods. “Argo,” ”Skyfall” and “The Master” each have seven.

Winners will be announced Jan. 10, 2013, at a ceremony set to be broadcast live on the CW network.

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Online:

www.criticschoice.com

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Global Update: Hand-Held Device Locates Hot Spots of Lead Contamination

Using a hand-held scanner to map hot spots where the soil is full of lead could protect children in mining towns against brain damage, scientists at Columbia University concluded in a new study.

Touched to the ground, the device, an X-ray fluorescence scanner,can measure the soil’s lead content in less than a minute, said Alexander van Geen, a geochemist at Columbia’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and an author of the study, which is in the current issue of the Bulletin of the World Health Organization. The “XRF guns,” which are often used by scrap-metal sorters, cost between $15,000 and $40,000.

His team tested the scanners in Cerro de Pasco, Peru, a town in the high Andes with mines dating back 1,400 years. Samples as close as 100 yards apart showed widely variable lead levels, so it is possible to find and mark off the areas most dangerous to young children, who get fine lead dust on their hands while playing and then put their fingers in their mouths.

“People assume the contamination is everywhere, and it’s not,” Dr. van Geen said. “It could be in one backyard and not in another.” Or, he said, in an untested playground, schoolyard, or any place where children gather.

The technology could be useful anywhere families live close to mines or smelters, which is common in Latin America and Africa, he said. Lead is a byproduct not just of lead mines, but of mining for gold, silver, copper and other metals.

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Barry Diller Sells TripAdvisor Shares

ENGLEWOOD, Colo. (AP) — Barry Diller is stepping down as chairman of TripAdvisor after selling his stake in the travel website to Liberty Interactive.

Liberty Interactive bought 4.8 million shares of TripAdvisor Inc.'s common stock from Diller and The Diller-von Furstenberg Family Foundation for a total of about $300 million, making it the travel website's new majority shareholder.

Shares of TripAdvisor jumped 8.2 percent to $41.55 in afternoon trading Tuesday.

Diller, a former Fox and Paramount executive, said that he's stepping down as chairman and selling his shares because he has other obligations to attend to.

Diller will remain a director at TripAdvisor, based in Newton, Mass. He also serves as chairman of IAC/InterActiveCorp.

Liberty spent $62.50 per share. It now owns and controls 18.2 million shares of TripAdvisor's common stock and 12.8 million shares of its Class B common stock. That's about 22 percent of the equity and 57 percent of the total votes of all classes of TripAdvisor common stock.

Greg Maffei, Liberty's president and CEO, called TripAdvisor a leader in the travel industry and said the increased investment in the company will be a strong addition to Liberty's portfolio.

Liberty Interactive Corp. owns shopping websites like the QVC shopping channel and also invests in other companies.

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Latin music star Jenni Rivera believed dead in plane crash

Fans of Mexican-American singing star Jenni Rivera held a vigil Sunday night in Lynwood

MEXICO CITY — Mexican American singer Jenni Rivera, the "diva de la banda" whose commanding voice burst through the limits of regional Latin music and made her a cross-border sensation and the queen of a business empire, was believed to have died Sunday when the small jet carrying her and members of her entourage crashed in mountainous terrain.

Rivera, a native of Long Beach, was 43. Mexico's ministry of transportation did not confirm her death outright, but it said that she had been aboard the plane and that no one had survived the crash. Six others, including two pilots, also were on board.

"Everything suggests, with the evidence that's been found, that it was the airplane that the singer Jenni Rivera was traveling in," said Gerardo Ruiz Esparza, Mexico's secretary of communications and transportation. Of the crash site, Ruiz said: "Everything is destroyed. Nothing is recognizable."

Word of the accident ricocheted around the entertainment industry, with performer after performer expressing shock and grief. Fans gathered outside Rivera's four-acre estate in Encino.

"She was the Diana Ross of Mexican music," said Gustavo Lopez, an executive vice president at Universal Music Latin Entertainment, an umbrella group that includes Rivera's label. Lopez called Rivera "larger than life" and said that based on ticket sales, she was by far the top-grossing female artist in Mexico.

"Remember her with your heart the way she was," her father, Don Pedro Rivera, told reporters in Spanish on Sunday evening. "She never looked back. She was a beautiful person with the whole world."

Rivera had performed a concert in Monterrey, Mexico, on Saturday night — her standard fare of knee-buckling power ballads, pop-infused interpretations of traditional banda music and dizzying rhinestone costume changes.

At a news conference after the show, Rivera appeared happy and tranquil, pausing at one point to take a call on her cellphone that turned out to be a wrong number. She fielded questions about struggles in her personal life, including her recent separation from husband Esteban Loaiza, a professional baseball player.

"I can't focus on the negative," she said in Spanish. "Because that will defeat you. That will destroy you.... The number of times I have fallen down is the number of times I have gotten up."

Hours later, shortly after 3 a.m., Rivera is believed to have boarded a Learjet 25, which took off under clear skies. The jet headed south, toward Toluca, west of Mexico City; there, Rivera had been scheduled to tape the television show "La Voz" — Mexico's version of "The Voice" — on which she was a judge.

The plane, built in 1969 and registered to a Las Vegas talent management firm, reached 11,000 feet. But 10 minutes and 62 miles into the flight, air traffic controllers lost contact with its pilots, according to Mexican authorities. The jet crashed outside Iturbide, a remote city that straddles one of the few roads bisecting Mexico's Sierra de Arteaga national park.

Wreckage was scattered across several football fields' worth of terrain. An investigation into the cause of the crash was underway, and attempts to identify the remains of the victims had begun.

Rivera, a mother of five and grandmother of two, was believed to have been traveling with her publicist Arturo Rivera, who was not related to her, as well as with her lawyer, hairstylist and makeup artist; reports of their names were not consistent. Their identities were not confirmed by authorities. The pilots were identified as Miguel Perez and Alejandro Torres.

In the world of regional Latin music — norteño, cumbia and ranchera are among the popular niches — Rivera was practically royalty.

Her father was a noted singer of the Mexican storytelling ballads known as corridos. In the 1980s he launched the record label Cintas Acuario. It began as a swap-meet booth and grew into an influential and taste-making independent outfit, fueling the careers of artists such as the late Chalino Sanchez. Jenni Rivera's four brothers were associated with the music industry; her brother Lupillo, in particular, is a huge star in his own right.

Born on July 2, 1969, Rivera initially showed little inclination to join the family business. She worked for a time in real estate. But after a pregnancy and a divorce, she went to work for her father's record label and found her voice, literally and figuratively.

She released her first studio album in 2003, when she was 34.

Her path had not been easy, but rather than running from it, she wrote it into her music — domestic violence; struggles with weight; raising her children alone, or "sin capitan," without a captain. She was known for marathon live shows that left audiences exhilarated and exhausted; by the fifth hour of one recent performance, she was drinking straight from a tequila bottle and launching into a cover of "I Will Survive."

In a witty and sometimes baffling stew of Spanish and English, she sang about her three husbands, about drug traffickers, in tribute to her father, in tribute to her gynecologist.

She became, in a most unlikely way, a feminist hero among Latin women in Mexico and the United States and a powerful player in a genre of music dominated by men and machismo. Regional Mexican music styles had long been seen as limiting to artists, but Rivera shrugged off the labels and brought traditional-laced music — some of which sounded perilously close to polka — to a massive pop audience.

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PlayStation-Controlled DIY Tank May Be the Wildest Weapon Yet in the Syria War

Syria’s rebels may have taken the concept of a videogame a tad too far. A homemade rebel tank has recently been seen rolling down the road like a post-apocalyptic battle wagon — and armed with a machine gun controlled like it’s a PlayStation.

The Sham II — reportedly so named after ancient Syria — is also ready to be added to the rebels’ growing arsenal of DIY weapons. According to the AFP, a rebel engineer based near the city of Aleppo spent a month building the armored vehicle around a re-purposed car chassis, added cameras to it, and then hooked up a machine gun to a PlayStation controller and a TV screen inside. Four meters long and two meters wide, the vehicle is now readying to “join the fray in Aleppo as part of the Saad Benmoaz battalion of the Al-Ansar brigade.”

It’s the gun that makes it into a proper fighting vehicle, if on the crude side. The machine gun appears to be a 7.62 millimeter PKM with a camera hooked onto it. This gun and its camera are also controlled by a game controller from inside the truck. The driver, meanwhile, has a TV screen linked to three cameras mounted to Sham II’s front with a fourth camera in the back. Protecting both the driver and gunner are 2.5 centimeters of steel plating, which can’t resist rounds from tanks or rocket-propelled grenades but is reportedly able to withstand fire from a 23-millimeter cannon.

“Not including from the gun, the vehicle costs about $10,000,” a rebel named Abud, whose brother built the vehicle, told the AFP.

But it’s hard to say how effective the machine really is at resisting bullets. If the armor is sloppily built, it risks being knocked out by “spall.” That’s what happens when a piece of armor is hit by a projectile of sufficient power, and the armor is strong enough to stop the round from penetrating, but is still hit with enough force to cause a concussive blast wave to detach shards of material from the armor’s interior side. The blast wave then propels that material through the interior of the vehicle at incredibly high speeds. That can be very lethal to passengers and crew, and means that bad armor can often be worse than no armor at all.

The Sham II is also reportedly an upgrade to an even cruder predecessor. The first Sham has already seen combat, but only had enough armor to protect the driver. Syria’s rebels aren’t the only insurgents building crude, homemade armored trucks, either. Mexican drug cartels use them, often F-150s and semi-trucks re-purposed with steel plates, firing ports and room for passengers.

The thing is, the rebels also have real tanks captured from Assad’s army. Those have been used in recent weeks to repeatedly shell regime troops and bases, as the rebels continue seizing territory, particularly in Syria’s north. On Sunday, a rebel group comprised of Islamic extremists reportedly captured a major military base to the west of Aleppo — the last base to the city’s west that was still under Assad’s control. But the war isn’t over yet, and the rebels need every piece of equipment they can get their hands on; which apparently now includes a meatspace videogame.

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