GM to buy back stock from Treasury as U.S. plans bailout exit

The U.S. Treasury on Wednesday announced plans to liquidate its holdings in General Motors Co. over the next 15 months, starting with the sale of about 40% of its shares by the end of this month.

GM will purchase 200 million of the 500 million shares held by the government at $27.50 a share, almost 8% above Tuesday's closing price but still barely more than half the price at which the government needs to sell if it is to break even.

The Treasury Department said it intends to sell the remaining 300 million shares “through various means in an orderly fashion within the next 12-15 months, subject to market conditions.” Some of the sales could start as early as next month.

“The auto industry rescue helped save more than a million jobs during a severe economic crisis, but TARP was always meant to be a temporary, emergency program. The government should not be in the business of owning stakes in private companies for an indefinite period of time,” said Timothy G. Massad, the department’s assistant secretary for financial stability.

The government became GM’s single largest shareholder following a $49.5-billion bailout of the automaker in 2008 and 2009. So far, the Treasury Department has recovered almost $29 billion, including the expected $5.5 billion from the GM buyback planned this month.

“This announcement is an important step in bringing closure to the successful auto industry rescue, it further removes the perception of government ownership of GM among customers, and it demonstrates confidence in GM’s progress and our future,” said Dan Akerson, GM’s chief executive.

After the repurchase, taxpayers will still own about 19% of GM’s stock on a fully diluted basis.

“A U.S. Treasury selldown was increasingly anticipated, although the actions were earlier than we expected and at a lower price," said Peter Nesvold, an analyst with Jefferies & Co.

Nesvold said he expected a price of about $30 a share, given the potential value of GM.

The deal will not affect the automaker's credit positions as it has more than enough cash to handle the transaction, said Robert Schulz, an analyst with Standard & Poor's Ratings Services.

Since the government bailout, GM has announced investments of more than $7.3 billion in the U.S., is expanding its product line and adding jobs.  It remains the largest seller of autos in the U.S., although it will lose the top ranking globally to Toyota Motor Corp. this year.

In morning trading, GM’s shares rose $2.31, or 9% to $27.80.

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Newport Beach dock renters may withhold holiday love

Marcy Cook embraces the holiday season. The tell? Start with the teddy bears dressed as Santa. More than 1,500 stand sentry around and inside her Newport Beach waterfronthome. Garland and strings of lights threaten to strangle the place like kudzu.

"We decorate a little bit, if you haven't noticed," said Cook, 69. "It's the highlight of the year for us."

Each Christmas, Newport Harbor is ablaze in lights as homeowners go to extraordinary lengths to complement the city's annual Christmas Boat Parade — an indelible tradition that renews itself Wednesday night and continues through Sunday.

But this has been a stressful season here along the tranquil waterfront lined with multimillion-dollar homes.

An increase in city rental fees for residential docks that protrude over public tidelands created a furor when it was approved last week by the City Council.

It also prompted a call to boycott the boat parade and festival of lights by a group calling itself "Stop the Dock Tax."

"It costs us thousands of dollars to voluntarily decorate our homes and boats to bring holiday smiles to nearly 1 million people," organization Chairman Bob McCaffrey wrote to the city. "This year, we are turning off our lights and withdrawing our boats in protest of the massive new dock tax we expect the City Council to levy."

Pete Pallette, a fellow boycott proponent and harbor homeowner, told city leaders the group would call off the boycott only if the council delayed voting on the rent hike. "Otherwise," he vowed, "game on."

In a place where homes come with names and mega-yachts bob in the harbor, it might appear the wealthy are wielding a weapon most often reserved for the masses. A holiday blackout, proponents say, will underscore their displeasure.

Newport's dock fee, which has stood at $100 a year for the last two decades, will now be based on a dock's size. The city says rents will increase to about $250 for a small slip to $3,200 annually for a large dock shared by two homeowners.

"People have been paying $8 a month all these years to access what is public waters," said Newport Beach City Manager Dave Kiff. "That's a pretty good deal. The City Council didn't think the increase it approved was too extreme."

Many did.

They packed council meetings when the hike was discussed, accusing the city of an excessive money grab.

They brushed aside the city's rationale: Statelawmandates cities charge fair market rents for the private use of public lands, and Newport Beach was only now catching up.

And they were unmoved by arguments that the extra revenue will go exclusively to badly needed repairs to a harbor that, despite outward appearances, needs a lot of work.

The city's five-year plan for the harbor calls for $29 million in long-overdue maintenance. Its silt-filled channels haven't been fully dredged since the Great Depression. Ancient, leaky sea walls protecting neighborhoods need to be repaired or replaced.

"We have the makings of a perfect storm like they did on the East Coast" during Superstorm Sandy, said Chris Miller, the city's harbor resources manager. "The sea walls are nearing the end of their useful life."

Even with the rent increases, Newport's dock owners will contribute a tiny fraction of that cost — the rest coming from the federal government and the city's general operating fund.

As dock owners fumed over having to pay more, others recoiled at the proposed boycott of the boat parade, which dates to 1908 when a single gondola led eight canoes illuminated by Japanese lanterns around the harbor. It has now swelled to a decent-sized armada of dozens of boats — some carrying paying customers — that circle past the decorated harbor-front homes.

"The boycott is ridiculous," said Shirley Pepys, whose frontyard on Balboa Island has been taken over by a family of penguins dressed for a Hawaiian luau.

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NBC correspondent escapes Syria kidnapping

BEIRUT (AP) — NBC's chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel said he and his television crew were kidnapped for five days by pro-regime gunmen who subjected them to mock executions and kept them bound and blindfolded. They escaped during a firefight between their captors and rebels and reached Turkey on Tuesday.

However, it was not immediately clear whether all those abducted with Engel were accounted for.

Speaking to NBC's "Today" show one day after the escape, an unshaven Engel said the kidnappers executed at least one of his rebel escorts on the spot at the time he was captured. He also said he believes the kidnappers were a Shiite militia group loyal to the Syrian government, which is fighting a deadly civil war against rebels.

"They kept us blindfolded, bound," said 39-year-old Engel, who speaks and reads Arabic. "We weren't physically beaten or tortured. A lot of psychological torture, threats of being killed. They made us choose which one of us would be shot first and when we refused, there were mock shootings," he added.

"They were talking openly about their loyalty to the government," Engel said. He said the captors were trained by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and allied with Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite militant group.

Both Iran and Hezbollah are close allies of the embattled Syrian regime, which has become a global pariah since it unleashed its forces in March 2011 to crush mostly peaceful protests against the regime. The bloody crackdown on protests led many in Syria to take up arms against the government, and the conflict has morphed into a civil war.

Engel said he was told the kidnappers wanted to exchange him and his crew for four Iranian and two Lebanese prisoners being held by the rebels.

"They captured us in order to carry out this exchange," he said.

Around 11 p.m. Monday, Engel said he and the others were being moved to another location in northern Idlib province.

"And as we were moving along the road, the kidnappers came across a rebel checkpoint, something they hadn't expected. We were in the back of what you would think of as a minivan," he said. "The kidnappers saw this checkpoint and started a gunfight with it. Two of the kidnappers were killed. We climbed out of the vehicle and the rebels took us. We spent the night with them."

Engel and his crew crossed back into neighboring Turkey earlier Tuesday.

NBC did not identify the others who were kidnapped along with Engel. The network said there was no claim of responsibility, no contact with the captors and no request for ransom during the time the crew was missing.

The Syrian government has barred most foreign media coverage of the civil war in Syria, which has killed more than 40,000 people since the uprising began in March 2011. Those journalists whom the regime has allowed in are tightly controlled in their movements by Information Ministry minders. Many foreign journalists sneak into Syria illegally with the help of smugglers.

Several journalists have been killed covering the conflict. Among them are award-winning French TV reporter Gilles Jacquier, photographer Remi Ochlik and Britain's Sunday Times correspondent Marie Colvin. Also, Anthony Shadid, a correspondent for The New York Times, died after an apparent asthma attack while on assignment in Syria.

Engel joined NBC in 2003 and was named chief foreign correspondent in April 2008. He previously worked as a freelance journalist for ABC News, including during the U.S. invasion of Iraq. He has lived in the Middle East since he graduated from Stanford University in 1996, according to his biography from NBC.

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Mind: A Misguided Focus on Mental Illness in Gun Control Debate

The gunman, Adam Lanza, 20, has been described as a loner who was intelligent and socially awkward. And while no official diagnosis has been made public, armchair diagnosticians have been quick to assert that keeping guns from getting into the hands of people with mental illness would help solve the problem of gun homicides.

Arguing against stricter gun-control measures, Representative Mike Rogers, Republican of Michigan and a former F.B.I. agent, said, “What the more realistic discussion is, ‘How do we target people with mental illness who use firearms?’ ”

Robert A. Levy, chairman of the Cato Institute, told The New York Times: “To reduce the risk of multivictim violence, we would be better advised to focus on early detection and treatment of mental illness.”

But there is overwhelming epidemiological evidence that the vast majority of people with psychiatric disorders do not commit violent acts. Only about 4 percent of violence in the United States can be attributed to people with mental illness.

This does not mean that mental illness is not a risk factor for violence. It is, but the risk is actually small. Only certain serious psychiatric illnesses are linked to an increased risk of violence.

One of the largest studies, the National Institute of Mental Health’s Epidemiologic Catchment Area study, which followed nearly 18,000 subjects, found that the lifetime prevalence of violence among people with serious mental illness — like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder — was 16 percent, compared with 7 percent among people without any mental disorder. Anxiety disorders, in contrast, do not seem to increase the risk at all.

Alcohol and drug abuse are far more likely to result in violent behavior than mental illness by itself. In the National Institute of Mental Health’s E.C.A. study, for example, people with no mental disorder who abused alcohol or drugs were nearly seven times as likely as those without substance abuse to commit violent acts.

It’s possible that preventing people with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and other serious mental illnesses from getting guns might decrease the risk of mass killings. Even the Supreme Court, which in 2008 strongly affirmed a broad right to bear arms, at the same time endorsed prohibitions on gun ownership “by felons and the mentally ill.”

But mass killings are very rare events, and because people with mental illness contribute so little to overall violence, these measures would have little impact on everyday firearm-related killings. Consider that between 2001 and 2010, there were nearly 120,000 gun-related homicides, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. Few were perpetrated by people with mental illness.

Perhaps more significant, we are not very good at predicting who is likely to be dangerous in the future. According to Dr. Michael Stone, professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia and an expert on mass murderers, “Most of these killers are young men who are not floridly psychotic. They tend to be paranoid loners who hold a grudge and are full of rage.”

Even though we know from large-scale epidemiologic studies like the E.C.A. study that a young psychotic male who is intoxicated with alcohol and has a history of involuntary commitment is at a high risk of violence, most individuals who fit this profile are harmless.

Jeffery Swanson, a professor of psychiatry at Duke University and a leading expert in the epidemiology of violence, said in an e-mail, “Can we reliably predict violence?  ‘No’ is the short answer. Psychiatrists, using clinical judgment, are not much better than chance at predicting which individual patients will do something violent and which will not.”

It would be even harder to predict a mass shooting, Dr. Swanson said, “You can profile the perpetrators after the fact and you’ll get a description of troubled young men, which also matches the description of thousands of other troubled young men who would never do something like this.”

Even if clinicians could predict violence perfectly, keeping guns from people with mental illness is easier said than done. Nearly five years after Congress enacted the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, only about half of the states have submitted more than a tiny proportion of their mental health records.

How effective are laws that prohibit people with mental illness from obtaining guns? According to Dr. Swanson’s recent research, these measures may prevent some violent crime. But, he added, “there are a lot of people who are undeterred by these laws.”

Adam Lanza was prohibited from purchasing a gun, because he was too young. Yet he managed to get his hands on guns — his mother’s — anyway. If we really want to stop young men like him from becoming mass murderers, and prevent the small amount of violence attributable to mental illness, we should invest our resources in better screening for, and treatment of, psychiatric illness in young people.

All the focus on the small number of people with mental illness who are violent serves to make us feel safer by displacing and limiting the threat of violence to a small, well-defined group. But the sad and frightening truth is that the vast majority of homicides are carried out by outwardly normal people in the grip of all too ordinary human aggression to whom we provide nearly unfettered access to deadly force.

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Cerberus to sell Freedom Group, maker of gun used in Newtown massacre

Private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management is distancing itself from Friday's shooting at a Connecticut elementary school by selling the company that makes one of the weapons purportedly used in the attack.

Cerberus said in a statement Tuesday that it will abandon its investment in Freedom Group, which produces the Bushmaster line of firearms. Adam Lanza is believed to have used a .223-caliber Bushmaster AR-15 rifle -- the equivalent of the military's M-16 weapon -- in his assault on Sandy Hook Elementary School.

The massacre left 26 people dead, 20 of them children, which Cerberus called a "tragic and devastating event," a "watershed event that has raised the national debate on gun control to an unprecedented level."

Cerberus bought Bushmaster in 2006 and eventually added other gunmakers to create Freedom Group. The firearms company, which also includes the Remington brand, has been in business 194 years and has more than 3,000 employees, according to its website.

As of a 2010 regulatory filing, Cerberus owns more than 95% of Freedom Group.

Freedom does not sell weapons or ammunition directly to consumers, making its sales legally through firearms dealers and distributors, Cerberus said.

"We do not believe that Freedom Group or any single company or individual can prevent senseless violence or the illegal use or procurement of firearms and ammunition," Cerberus said in its statement.  

But amid increasingly passionate arguments for and against stricter weapons laws, the firm said it wanted to focus on its investments, not on playing "statesmen or policy makers."

"Our role is to make investments on behalf of our clients who are comprised of the pension plans of firemen, teachers, policemen and other municipal workers and unions, endowments, and other institutions and individuals," Cerberus said. "It is not our role to take positions, or attempt to shape or influence the gun control policy debate."

On Monday, the California State Teachers’ Retirement System said it would review its investment in Cerberus. California Treasurer Bill Lockyer may order CalSTRS as well as the California Public Employees’ Retirement System to strip their portfolios of all investments in gun manufacturers.

By removing its association with Freedom and Bushmaster, Cerberus said it hopes to avoid "being drawn into the national debate." Cerberus plans to return capital from the sale of its Freedom stake back to investors.

Beyond its financial ties to the shooting, Cerberus has a history in Newtown, where Sandy Hook Elementary is located. Martin Feinberg, father of Cerberus founder and Chief Executive Stephen Feinberg, lives in the town, according to Bloomberg News.

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U.S. moves ahead on new downtown L.A. courthouse

Downtown Los Angeles is finally getting its new federal courthouse, and it's going to stand out amid the aging government buildings in the Civic Center.

A 550,000-square-foot courthouse — planned for the southwest corner of Broadway and 1st Street, across from the old county law library and the Los Angeles Times building — will feature a bright, serrated facade and a structural design that allow the structure to appear to float over its stone base, officials said.

It will have a public plaza along 1st Street near recently opened Grand Park. Officials say the building's design has received a "platinum" rating for energy efficiency from the U.S. Green Building Council.

The U.S. General Services Administration is moving forward on the project despite last-minute opposition from some Republicans in Congress, who question the viability of the agency's plans to sell the federal courthouse on North Spring Street to private developers. The lawmakers also questioned whether the extra courtrooms were actually necessary.

The GSA awarded a $318-million contract last week to the architecture firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and Clark Construction Group, and released several renderings of the proposed design. The building will rise on a 3.6-acre lot on Broadway that city officials have long wanted to develop.

"We are moving toward the groundbreaking of a critically needed facility that will resolve long-standing security and space issues," Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-East Los Angeles) said in a statement. "At a time when we need to keep investing in our recovering economy, we expect the courthouse to create thousands of new jobs in the construction industry and related businesses."

Peter Zellner, faculty member at Southern California Institute of Architecture, noted that the courthouse design in some ways is reminiscent of Mid-Century architectural styles of other Los Angeles government centers, particularly the Wilshire Federal Building. Zellner also suggested the architects consider the courthouse plaza as part of a chain of public spaces spilling down from the Walt Disney Concert Hall.

The courthouse will include 24 courtrooms and 32 judicial chambers. Along with the judges of the U.S. District Court, the building will be used by the U.S. Marshals Service, U.S. attorneys' office and the Federal Public Defender.

Federal judges have been pushing for new space downtown since the late 1990s. In addition to the Spring Street courthouse, federal judges occupy space elsewhere in downtown, but they have complained about overcrowding and security issues.

Construction on the courthouse is expected to begin sometime next year, with completion set for 2016, the GSA said.

The agency also announced that it had released a formal "request for information" to solicit ideas for adaptive reuse of one of the old federal courthouses, on North Spring Street. Under the agency's plan, the 72-year-old building would be sold to a private developer, with the proceeds to help finance construction of a second federal office building next to the new courthouse.

Some real estate experts have questioned whether the exchange proposal would be feasible, saying it could be difficult for a private owner to adapt the old courthouse because of its structural issues, location and historic status. And the Republican critics of the courthouse plan expressed concern that if the GSA could not manage to sell the old courthouse, it would be stuck with a vacant building and higher costs to taxpayers.

There is still no specific timeline on when the exchange would be made, a GSA spokeswoman said, but officials remain upbeat about the plan.

"This step is just another example of GSA's commitment to providing real value to the American public," said acting GSA Administrator Dan Tangherlini.

sam.allen@latimes.com

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Beck looks for new connection with 'Song Reader'

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Beck Hansen wants you to think about the way music has changed over the last century and what that means about how human beings engage each other these days.

Laboring over the intricate and ornate details of his new "Song Reader" sheet music project, he was struck by how social music used to be — something we've lost in the age of ear buds.

"You watch an old film and see how people would dance together in the '20s, '30s and '40s. You'd go out and people would switch partners and it was a way of social interaction," Hansen said. "It's something that was part of what brought people together. Playing music in the home is another aspect of that that's been lost. Again, I'm not on a campaign to get people to take up songs and play music in their home or anything. But it is interesting to me, the loss of that, what it means."

Beck hopes the "Song Reader" inspires some of us to pick up instruments and limber our vocal cords. It includes 20 songs annotated on sheet music that's been decorated in the style popular in the early 20th century when the songwriting industry was a thriving enterprise with billions of songs sold.

The 42-year-old singer notes in the book's preface that Bing Crosby's "Sweet Leilani" sold an estimated 54 million copies in 1937, meaning about 40 percent or more of the U.S. population was engaged in learning how to play that song. They were touching it directly, speeding it up, slowing it down, changing the lyrics and creating something new.

"There's popular bands now that people know the words to their songs and can sing along, but there's something about playing a song for yourself or for your friends and family that allows you to inhabit the song and by some sort of osmosis it becomes part of who you are in a way," he said. "So when I think of my great-grandparents' generations, music defined their lives in a different way than it does now."

Beck proposed the idea to McSweeney's Dave Eggers in 2004 and it soon blossomed into something more ambitious as the artist wrapped his mind around the challenge of not just writing a song, but presenting it in a classic way that also engages fans who might not be able to read music or play their own instruments.

They quickly agreed it would make no money, but it seemed like an idea worth exploring.

"And it seemed like only Beck would have thought of it," Eggers said in an email to the Associated Press. "It's a very generous project, in that he wrote a bunch of songs and just gives them to the world to interpret. That's a very expansive kind of generosity and inclusiveness that we're happy to be part of. On a formal level, we love projects like this, that are unprecedented, and that result in a beautiful object full of great art and great writing. And it all started with Beck. It's a testament to his groundbreaking approach to everything he does."

Beck hopes fans will record their own versions and upload them to the Internet so those songs grow into something more universal.

As for his own recorded music, that's a little more complicated.

Beck's not sure where he's headed at the moment. He recorded an album in 2008, but set it aside to work with Charlotte Gainsbourg on "IRM," which he wrote and produced. He's also been writing songs for soundtracks and special projects and producing artists like Thurston Moore, Stephen Malkmus and Dwight Yoakam. All that has left him feeling creatively satisfied, but he does acknowledge it's been a while since he released 2008's Danger Mouse-produced "Modern Guilt."

He says in many ways he's reached a crossroads he's not yet sure how to navigate.

"This last year I've been thinking about whether I'd finish those songs (from 2008), whether they're relevant or worthy of releasing. I know that doesn't sound very definitive," he said, laughing, "but that's the kind of place I'm in — in this kind of limbo — and, um, yeah."

The "Song Reader" spurred Beck to think about his own work in a new light as well. Spending six months finishing off the project after working on it sporadically over the years, he was struck by how much craft went into the creation of each song and how quickly music can come into existence today.

"There is so much music out there, to me," he said. "I don't know if it's just where I am in my own music making or if it's a product of the amount of music out there, but I feel like a piece of music does have to have a certain validity to be put out there and to ask people to listen. ... I feel like it's impossible for everyone to keep up, you know, so I guess I've been feeling like maybe there's something to picking what you're going to put out, about being more particular about what you put out."

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Online:

http://beck.com

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Follow AP Music Writer Chris Talbott: http://twitter.com/Chris_Talbott.

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The New Old Age Blog: In the Middle: Why Elderly Couples Fight

George and Gracie (let’s call them that because using their real names would make them even unhappier than they already appear to be) are in their 80s and have been married for more than 65 years. Until recently they seemed to ride the waves that are inevitable in any marriage that spans nearly seven decades; through good and bad, they were partners and best friends.

But lately — ever since her hospitalization and his fall — they have been arguing more bitterly than usual (“Do you have to make such a mess in the kitchen?”), criticizing each other (“Why haven’t you dealt with the insurance company yet?”), withdrawing from each other, and generally making each other more miserable, more often than ever before.

This kind of degenerative relationship is not uncommon among the elderly in even the happiest marriages, marriage therapists and geriatricians said. But that is small comfort to either the couple in the middle of the maelstrom, or the children who care for them, as evidenced by a number of postings on caregiver blogs. As some of the children have wondered there: “Why can’t we all just get along?”

Therapists and others who work with the elderly said the first step to addressing the problem is understanding where it came from.

“A key question is whether the marital bickering is part of a lifelong marital style or a change,” said Dr. Linda Waite, director of the Center on Demography and Economics of Aging at NORC/University of Chicago. Is it new behavior – or just new to the grown children who are suddenly so deeply enmeshed in their parents’ lives that they are only now noticing that something is amiss?

How much of the problem is really just the marriage style? “Some couples like to fight and argue – it keeps their adrenaline going,” said Dr. Nancy K. Schlossberg, professor emerita of counseling psychology at the University of Maryland and author of “Overwhelmed: Coping With Life’s Ups and Downs.”

Sometimes the best judges of whether there is a problem are outsiders, said Dr. William Dale, chief of geriatrics at the University of Chicago Geriatrics Medicine. Pay attention if someone says, “‘Gee, Mom seems more argumentative or withdrawn than the last time I saw her,’” Dr. Dale advised.

If the tone or severity of the marital tensions seem new, then it is important to find out why. The causes could be mental or physical, doctors say.

On the mental front, increased anger and fighting could be one of the first signs of mild cognitive impairment, a precursor of dementia or Alzheimer’s, in one or both of the spouses, said Dr. Lisa Gwyther, director of the Duke Center for Aging Family Support Program and an associate professor in the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences.

Dr. Dale concurs: “There is good evidence that the earliest signs of cognitive impairment are often emotional changes” — anger, anxiety, depression — “rather than cognitive ones” — memory, abstract thought.

But these early signs of cognitive decline can be so subtle that neither the spouses themselves, or their grown children, recognize them for what they are, Dr. Gwyther said. So husband and wife blame each other for the changes and allow feelings of hurt and resentment to grow.

Withdrawing from activities that used to give them pleasure can be a telltale sign of mild cognitive impairment – and can trigger anger and arguments.

“In one couple, the husband just didn’t want to participate in the holidays — the wife got angry and said he was being lazy and stubborn,” said Dr. Gwyther. But the truth was that his cognitive decline made all the activity overwhelming, and he didn’t want anyone to know that he was anxious about not remembering everyone’s names and embarrassing himself.

Suspicion and paranoia can also accompany mild cognitive decline and precipitate distrust and hurtful accusations. Dr. Gwyther recalled another woman who “called her daughter frantic because she said her husband dropped her at her chemo appointment, went to park the car, and didn’t return to get her.” The woman couldn’t imagine that her husband could possibly have lost his sense of time and direction, Dr. Gwyther added. She took it personally, complaining to her daughter that “your father doesn’t seem to care any more.”

Dr. Dale told of a spouse who accused her mate of infidelity because “she was convinced that when he was out grocery shopping he was really having an affair.”

Hoarding, an early symptom of mild cognitive impairment, can also create tension in a marriage. (For new treatments, see this recent post by my colleague Paula Span.)

When one couple came to a counseling session with Dr. Norman Abeles, emeritus professor of psychology and former director of psychological clinic at Michigan State University, the hoarding spouse finally said she did it because she thought that they would run out of money, “even though there was enough money to go around.” Dr. Abeles said that incident led to her diagnosis of mild cognitive impairment.

Adding to the confusion, mild cognitive impairment, or M.C.I., comes and goes. “There are good days and bad days, good hours and bad hours,” said Dr. Gwyther. “Alzheimer’s and dementia don’t start on Tuesday — it’s a slow insidious onset.” But the diagnosis is becoming more common: The Institute for Dementia Research and Prevention predicts that 1 in 6 women, and 1 in 10 men, who live past the age of 55 will develop dementia in their lifetime.

“Spouses find it difficult to know when their partner with M.C.I. is acting differently, usually badly, due to the advancing illness or due to ‘willful’ personality issues,” said Dr. Dale, citing a 2007 study in the journal Family Relations exploring the problems this can create for couples.

Blaming is often easier than understanding. Another of Dr. Gwyther’s patients was furious at her husband for not filing their taxes. “He’s a C.P.A.,” she said. “How could we owe back taxes?” It did not occur to her that he might be unable to handle that task — and was too frightened about his deteriorating mental focus to let her know.

But as harmful as mental decline can be for a marriage, it is just part of the equation. Physical ailments – even those that seem completely unrelated to marital relations – “can upset the equilibrium of the marriage,” according to a study in The Canadian Medical Association Journal.

“Most men get angry at what’s happened to them when they get ill, women get angry and scared when he’s not what he used to be — so they fight,” said Dr. Schlossberg.

Chronic illnesses, like diabetes, arthritis and heart disease, can have a strong negative effect on mood, said Dr. Waite, who will soon be publishing a study on the subject. Diabetes is so often accompanied by depression that Dr. Waite said “one of my colleagues argues that that it is even part of the disease.”

And ailments can have an effect on a couple’s sex life — which can compound the marital problems, doctors said.

“Diabetes brings on neuropathy,” said Dr. Waite. “That means touching and feeling in sex is not as rewarding.” Without the pleasures of affectionate touching — whether a passing hug at the sink or more — tensions can build. That’s why, if a couple is having problems with sex, they are more likely to have problems in the relationship — and vice versa, according to a 2007 New England Journal of Medicine study of sex and health among older adults.

Other changes in circumstances — retirement, shifting roles, the loss of autonomy, disparities in health and abilities — can wreak havoc. Losing independence can feel like losing oneself — and if you don’t know who you are any more, how can you know how to relate to your spouse?

“Fighting may come from a misguided notion that you can regain power by asserting it over your spouse,” said Dr. Schlossberg, whose observations are echoed in a 1984 study in The Canadian Journal of Medicine. “It doesn’t work, it’s false power – but they’ll try anything.”

The sheer exhaustion that can come from being the caregiving spouse is also bound to “make them stressed and angry,” said Dr. Waite. Not to mention guilty and resentful — never a prescription for happy marital relations.

“Part of the trap for the caregiver is the idea that you have to do it all, and the guilt you feel when you cannot live up to it,” said Dr. Gordon Herz, a psychologist in private practice in Madison, Wisc. Not surprisingly, resentment can soon follow, Dr. Herz added, because it is hard to admit to anyone that, “‘this is too much for me.’”

What can outside caregivers — children or other loved ones — do about these golden marriages on the rocks? Should they intervene — or butt out? And can marital therapy help — or is it too late to change?

Share your thoughts and experiences — and on Tuesday we will try to provide some advice from experts.

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RIM sends out invite for BlackBerry 10 event in January

Research in Motion has sent out media invitations for the BlackBerry 10 unveiling.

The Canadian company will unveil the next version of its mobile operating system on Jan. 30 in New York City on Pier 36, according to CNET, which posted a picture of the invite.

As with most tech invitations, RIM's invite is vague about what the company will reveal besides BlackBerry 10.

PHOTOS: Top 10 tech products of 2012

The invite has a blurry background picture of what seems to be New York City. It also says "The BlackBerry Experience" in large letters at the top, followed by "Re-designed. Re-engineered. Re-invented."

The company does say this is the global unveiling of BlackBerry 10, an operating system that has been plagued with delays, but RIM is also expected to unveil at least one and possibly two new smartphones.

One is expected to be a fully touchscreen device while the other may be more like its Bold line of devices, according to CNET.

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Speculation over autism, but shooter's 'why' has no easy answer

Among the details to emerge in the aftermath of the Connecticut elementary school massacre was the possibility that the gunman had some form of autism.

Adam Lanza, 20, had a personality disorder or autism, his brother reportedly told police. Former classmates described him as socially awkward, friendless and painfully shy.

While those are all traits of autism, a propensity for premeditated violence is not. Several experts said that at most, autism would have played a tangential role in the mass shooting -- if Lanza had it at all.

FULL COVERAGE: Connecticut school shooting

“Many significant psychiatric disorders involve social isolation,” said Catherine Lord, director of the Center for Autism and the Developing Brain at New York-Presbyterian Hospital.

Autism, she said, has become a catch-all term to describe anybody who is awkward.

Some type of schizophrenia, delusional disorder or psychotic break would more clearly fit the crime, experts said.

The hallmark characteristics of autism are social inability, communication problems and repetitive behaviors or obsessive interests. It emerges in early childhood and exists on a vast spectrum, from those who bang their head against the wall to those who can recite train schedules from memory.

PHOTOS: Connecticut school shooting

The rate of autism has skyrocketed over the last two decades, largely because of an expanded definition of the disorder and increasing awareness. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 1 in 88 children have it.

Researchers have struggled to draw clear lines between the various forms. As a result, the American Psychiatric Assn. is folding all of its varieties into a single diagnosis next year: autism spectrum disorder.

It will include people with Asperger’s syndrome -- the higher-functioning type that Lanza was most likely to have had.

There is more aggression associated with autism than with other disabilities. But it usually amounts to a tantrum and does not involve planning, weapons or an intention to harm anybody.

People with autism are more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators. Those who are bright -- as Lanza was by several accounts -- often face bullying.

Some wind up in trouble with the law because they are unaware of social convention, and quirkiness or attempts at being friendly get misinterpreted.

Dr. John Constantino, an autism specialist at Washington University in St. Louis, said the social detachment and withdrawal associated with the disorder can accentuate other psychiatric conditions that are connected to violence.

And the feelings of isolation often intensify after high school, with the loss of a structured environment that allows many people with autism to stay afloat.

“They sort of fall off this cliff when they don’t have a village,” Constantino said.

Lanza finished high school early and was living with his mother. Police said he was disturbed by the divorce of his parents in 2009.

None of that, of course, explains why his killed his mother, 20 elementary school students, six women at the school and then himself.

“The only way somebody could do something like this is if they totally lost touch with reality,” said Dr. Daniel Geschwind, an autism expert at UCLA. “Autistic people are not sociopaths.”

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alan.zarembo@latimes.com

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