Intercontinental to pay $8.2B for NYSE

The IntercontinentalExchange has agreed to buy rival exchange NYSE Euronext for $8.2 billion, as it moves to create one of the top futures markets in Europe and position the combined group to challenge arch rival CME Group.

The two exchanges said in an emailed statement on Thursday ICE had agreed to pay $33.12 a share for NYSE Euronext made up of one third cash and two thirds ICE shares.

NYSE Euronext shares were up more than 30 percent on the news while IntercontinentalExchange Inc. shares reversed earlier declines and were recently up more than 2 percent.

The multi-billion dollar deal designed to push it into the big league of European derivatives and take on arch rival CME Group.

ICE may consider a spin-off or sale of NYSE's stock markets, a source told Reuters. As well as the 200-year old New York exchange, the NYSE also owns bourses in Paris, Amsterdam, Brussels and Lisbon.

"We can't exclude any option at this stage. It's all down to what regulators will require to get the deal approved, and to the timeframe they will give ICE to meet these targets," a source familiar with the situation told Reuters, adding that a deal was expected to be announced later on Thursday.

ICE has proposed buying NYSE, which also owns derivatives market Liffe, for $33 per share, a 37 percent premium to its Wednesday closing price, CNBC said.

One-third of the deal would be funded by cash and the rest in stock, the source confirmed.

NYSE and ICE representatives declined to comment.

Analysts said a deal would give Atlanta-based ICE a strategic boost with control of Liffe, Europe's second-largest derivatives market, helping it compete against U.S.-based CME Group Inc., owner of the Chicago Board of Trade.

"ICE is after Liffe, that is the crown jewel of NYSE Euronext. ICE could potentially sell the U.S. and European equities business, but could struggle to find a buyer. A spin-off of this business could be more likely," said Peter Lenardos, analyst at RBC Capital Markets.

"Strategically it makes sense for ICE to enter the European derivatives space in a meaningful way, but paying $10 billion -- with debt -- to do so sounds generous for NYSE shareholders and expensive for ICE shareholders.

At the close of trading on Wednesday, NYSE was worth about $5.8 billion, indicating that ICE may be willing to pay roughly $8 billion for the owner of the world's largest stock market.

NYSE shares jumped 12 percent in after-hours trading to $26.96. ICE shares rose 3.1 percent to $132.32.

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An ICE-NYSE Euronext tie-up would leap-frog Deutsche Boerse to become the world's third-largest exchange group with a combined market value of $15.2 billion. CME Group, ICE's largest U.S.-based rival, has a market value of $17.5 billion, Thomson Reuters data shows.

Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing is the world's largest exchange group with a market capitalization of $19.5 billion.

ICE's main operations are in energy futures trading and unlike NYSE Euronext, it has steered clear of stocks and stock-options trading, so there is not much business overlap between the two groups, making it more likely competition authorities would approve a tie-up.

Last year, the U.S. Justice Department blocked a $11 billion joint hostile bid by ICE and Nasdaq OMX Group for NYSE Euronext on concerns the tie-up would dominate U.S. stock listings.

If that bid had succeeded, ICE planned to buy NYSE Euronext derivatives business while Nasdaq would have taken control of the stock exchanges.

A rival $9.3 billion bid by German exchange operator Deutsche Boerse also ran afoul of regulators.

"I doubt the competition authorities will have a problem with it, there's only a modest overlap between the businesses," said Richard Perrott, an analyst at Berenberg Bank.

"The rationale for the deal will be the same as that with Deutsche Boerse -- migrate the clearing of Liffe derivatives to ICE's services in London and scale up to attract OTC (Over The Counter) derivatives clearing. There could be more than $300 million in cost savings in the deal."

Before the latest ICE offer emerged, NYSE Euronext's shares had fallen by nearly a third since ICE and Nasdaq launched their thwarted joint bid.

The New York Stock Exchange, known as the Big Board and the symbol of U.S. capitalism, has seen its clout fade as new technology and the rise of private trading venues run by Wall Street banks and brokers cut its margins.

Founded in 2000 as a U.S. electricity trading platform backed by Wall Street banks and energy traders, ICE is the product of a string of acquisitions, from the London-based International Petroleum Exchange in 2001 through the New York Board of Trade and, most recently, a handful of smaller deals, including a climate exchange and a stake in a Brazilian clearing house.

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FBI offering $50,000 for help in capturing prison escapees

The FBI is offering a $50,000 reward for information leading to the capture of two convicted robbers who rappelled down the side of a high-rise federal jail in the South Loop, scurrying some 15 floors to freedom on a rope made of bedsheets.

The FBI announced the reward in a brief statement this morning. It said anyone with information can call 312-421-6700.

The daring, carefully planned escape from the Metropolitan Correctional Center Tuesday by Joseph "Jose" Banks and Kenneth Conley shocked federal law enforcement officials who scrambled to find the two violent bank robbers on a desperate run.

FBI spokeswoman Joan Hyde says there are no developments to report this morning. "Unfortunately, we don't have any new news," she said. "Our focus is still primarily on the Chicago metropolitan area."

The hulking federal jail with its narrow slits for windows has defied escape attempts. This marked only the second successful one and the first in almost three decades. Just three years ago, however, a brother of a famous Hollywood director was caught with 31 feet of roped bedsheets in his cell.

The two escapees made for memorable bank robbers — Banks for his goofy disguises and Conley for flaunting his cash loot a short time later at the strip club where he worked.

Banks and Conley were present for a 10 p.m. check Monday, but by 7 a.m., MCC employees arriving for work saw the crudely wrapped rope dangling on the south side of the building, still swinging in the wind.

Guards found the window in their cell broken and the makeshift rope tied to its bars, federal authorities revealed late Tuesday in filing escape charges against the pair. Numerous articles of clothing and sheets were piled under a blanket in both their beds to make it appear they were asleep for the standard overnight bed checks.

In addition, authorities found metal bars from the window in a mattress as well fake bars in the cell, suggesting the two had gone to some lengths to cover their tracks as they prepared their escape.

But exactly how Banks and Conley slipped through a window just 5 inches wide was not immediately clear.

"You've got to be a contortionist to pull that one off," said Scott Fawell, a top aide of convicted former Gov. George Ryan. Fawell spent about eight months at the MCC for corruption.

However, one law enforcement source said Banks and Conley may have removed a cinder block from beneath the window to make a bigger opening to slip out.

The jail, at 71 W. Van Buren St., was placed on lockdown after the break was discovered and visits with inmates were canceled, according to several criminal defense attorneys who had planned to meet with clients. The facility, which is operated by the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, opened in 1975 and houses about 700 inmates.

Conley and Banks were last seen in suburban Tinley Park and are believed to be together. Banks, 37, was described as black, 5 feet 8 inches tall and weighing 160 pounds, while Conley, 38, is white, 6 feet and 185 pounds.

Banks could have as much as $500,000 stashed away, according to testimony at his trial. He stole a combined $589,000 in two robberies, but only about $80,000 had been recovered or accounted for through Banks' purchases, prosecutors said.

The FBI called Banks one of the most prolific bank robbers in Chicago history, saying at the time of his arrest in 2008 that he was suspected in about 20 heists. However, he was charged in only two bank robberies and two attempted holdups. A jury convicted him on all counts last week.

An aspiring clothes designer, Banks was caught on bank surveillance tapes in 2007 and 2008 jumping bank counters and directing employees to empty vaults while wearing a fake beard. He was dubbed the Second Hand Bandit because of the discount clothing he wore during the robberies.

On the day he was scheduled to go to trial in late October, Conley abruptly pleaded guilty to robbing a Homewood bank in 2011 while brandishing a pistol and threatening a teller.

"If you don't give (the money) to me, I will put them in your head," he allegedly said.

Conley then went to the Chicago Heights strip club where he worked while still dressed in the black suit and white tie he wore during the holdup, flashing cash around, prosecutors alleged. He paid off a $400 debt before telling co-workers he was jetting off to Bermuda, according to the charges.

Conley, incarcerated at the MCC since October 2011, faces a maximum 20 years, while Banks, who has been in custody since 2008, could be hit with an 80-year sentence. An escape conviction carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison.

Early in the day the search for the duo zeroed in on Tinley Park, where Conley lived and where the two had last been spotted, authorities said. SWAT teams searched the home of a Conley relative, but the investigators missed the two by a few hours, authorities said.

Helicopters hovered above the southwest suburb and streets were blocked by police squads as the search continued. The SWAT team walked the nearby streets with dogs as neighbors followed behind, snapping pictures with their phones. About two blocks down, the officers searched the Metra stop.

In the wake of the deadly school shooting in Newtown, Conn., Tinley Park officials notified local schools and dispatched police officers to school buildings closest to where the search was under way.

Federal and local law enforcement also charged into Conley's old strip club, Club 390, surprising staff and patrons, in an attempt to find him, staff said.

FBI agents first showed up at the Chicago Heights club early Tuesday morning, hours before its 11 a.m. opening. The agents questioned an employee who told them she hadn't seen Conley, staff said.

Sheriff's deputies returned around 1 p.m., bursting into the club in police gear and scattering the lunch crowd, employees said. A few officers questioned staff and searched the building, including the dancers' dressing room and women's bathroom. Plainclothes officers remained seated in the darkness at the periphery of the stage around 3 p.m.

A mug shot of Conley was posted near the cash register at the bar.

Authorities were chasing numerous tips into the night Tuesday, but the search so far remained focused on Chicago and the suburbs.

A woman who answered at the home of a relative of Conley said the day's events were "very upsetting for everyone" and declined further comment.

The Banks family learned of the escape while watching the morning news, said Banks' cousin, Theresa Ann Banks, who pleaded for her cousin to turn himself in.

"I just don't want to see him get hurt or killed," she said in a shaky voice. "(The family) is trying to hold themselves together. We just have to have faith in God and hope everything goes right."

Banks represented himself at the trial, challenging U.S. District Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer so much that he was briefly strapped into a restraint chair during the trial. In court filings, he identified himself as "Joseph Banks-Bey," a Moorish national, and made legal filings defying the court's jurisdiction.

He offered a long, rambling closing that Pallmeyer finally cut off because Banks would not stop making wild accusations that the government had "trumped" up the charges and rigged photo lineups in the case.

The law enforcement source said security had been stepped up for Pallmeyer and the prosecutors involved in Banks' trial.

Tribune reporter Adam Sege contributed.

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A Minute With: Jessica Chastain on “Zero Dark Thirty”

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Jessica Chastain carries the weight of starring in one of the year’s most anticipated films, “Zero Dark Thirty,” about the decade-long hunt and eventual killing of Osama bin Laden.

Critics say Chastain pulls it off seamlessly as “Maya,” based on a real-life CIA agent who played a major role in tracking down bin Laden at his hideout in Pakistan.

As the film opens in limited U.S. release on Wednesday, Chastain, who is tipped as a likely best actress Oscar nominee for the role, talked to Reuters about playing a character she could not meet and why the film is an important look at America’s role in a dark war.

Q. What did you think when you saw this film finished?

A. “It is a tough one for me to watch, because there is so much responsibility with playing this woman. I find her to be incredible. And I didn’t want to change her story or make her a Hollywood version, with a lot of makeup. I didn’t want to trivialize what she did … I want her to like it, but I don’t know if she will ever see it.”

Q. How did you play someone you had never met?

A. “There was three months of working with (screenplay writer) Mark Boal, doing research, reading lists and talking to people. And then anything I could not solve through research, like what is her favorite candy – ’cause when we are all overseas we have something we do when we are homesick – I had to answer that question myself.”

Q. Boal hasn’t gone into too much detail about her?

A. “We have to protect her because she is an undercover CIA operative, still working.”

Q. What else did you know about her?

A. “When we finished the movie, when the Navy Seal book ‘No Easy Day’ came out. I raced to go read it, because I was like, ‘I need to know if my character is in the book!’ And they talk about Jen, the young CIA girl. Well, everything matched up. She was the only one that said 100 percent ‘he is there.’… They talked about how she had been on it close to a decade and they were only on it for 40 minutes. They said she was crying on the airplane afterwards.”

Q. During filming, were you ever worried about your safety, that the film might be misconstrued?

A. “As an actor you always worry about that. Because you think, maybe someone will see a film and they won’t understand the difference between acting and reality. The good thing is, what (director Kathryn Bigelow) and Mark have done, is that they have not made a propaganda film. They tried to make it as authentic as possible and respectful of the actual historical event as they could. That includes showing the intense interrogation techniques that were used. The end of the film – it’s not a lot of fist pumping and saying, ‘Here is our journey over 10 years and it was so difficult and we finally did it.’ It ends actually on a very different note.”

Q. Can you elaborate on that?

A. “Well, for me the whole thing is about the arc of this woman. She shows up in the beginning and she is wearing her best suit. She thinks she knows what she is in for, and she is completely out of her element. But over the 10 years, this woman, who has been trained to be unemotional and analytically precise … we see her struggling to keep it contained for 10 years and as she descends down the rabbit hole of the world she is in.

“So finally at the end when she is asked, ‘Where do you want to go?’ there is no way to answer that question. … She has no idea where she belongs, now that this is done. But not only does it speak in terms of that, but the movie ends with that question – where do you want to go? Where do we go now as a country? Where do we go as a society? It is not a movie that ends with an answer, and I find that powerful.”

Q. How did you cope with filming the torture scenes?

A. “We filmed in a real Jordanian prison, in the middle of nowhere. The environment wasn’t great, especially as a woman.

“They had a lot of trust between the actors, nothing was dangerous or unsafe. There was a lot of discussion to make sure that we weren’t doing something that was going to be salacious. They just wanted it to be accurate.

“I know I am playing a character who has trained to be unemotional. But I have spent my entire life allowing myself to be emotional, and allowing myself to feel everything. … There was actually one day that we were doing a scene, and I said, ‘I am sorry’ and I just had to walk away, and I just started crying … it was a very intense experience.”

Q. You are a top chance for Oscar nomination. Would that be more or less rewarding for this role?

A. “Because she is still an active member of the CIA and undercover, she can’t take credit for what she’s done. … And by making this film, it is my idea as a way of thanking her. It would be very emotional because of that.”

Q. You compare your character to getting lost down a CIA rabbit hole. What about your own dizzying rise as an actress?

A. “That’s a good question. I do think that next year I need to go somewhere for a month and be in a room by myself and be like, ‘Ok, what now Jessica?’ But I am nowhere near where she was at the end of this mission.”

(Reporting By Christine Kearney, editing by Jill Serjeant and Doina Chiacu)

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Global Update: African Children Still at Risk of Pneumonia Despite Ceramic Stoves

Small ceramic indoor stoves, such as those sold by women in AIDS self-help groups in Africa, do save fuel and cut down on eye-irritating smoke, a new study has found — but they do not save children from pneumonia.

The study, published in The American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, compared 168 households in rural Kenya that used either “upesi jiko” stoves or traditional three-stone indoor fires. The former — the name means “quick stove” in Swahili — has a locally made ceramic firebox that sells for $3. Clay and mud must be built up around it to insulate it and support the pot.

Since it uses less wood, it saves local forests. But it has no chimney, so the smoke stays indoors.

Biweekly visits by researchers found that children in both the stove and open-fire homes got pneumonia equally often. Pneumonia is a leading cause of death for infants in poor countries, and a 2008 study showed that the fine particles and toxic gases in cooking smoke inflame their lungs, doubling the pneumonia risk.

Two years ago, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton committed $50 million in American aid to help the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves get 100 million efficient stoves into households by 2020. But experts are still divided over which stove to pursue; chimneys do not solve all the problems, and stoves with fans burn more cleanly but are expensive and fragile.

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U.S. to sell GM stake in 15 months

The Treasury plans to sell its remaining stake in General Motors over the next 15 months, allowing the automaker to shed the stigma of being partly owned by the U.S. government.

GM said Wednesday it will spend $5.5 billion to buy back 200 million shares of its stock from the Treasury by the end of this year. The government, in turn, plans to sell its remaining stake of 300 million shares on the open market over the next 12 to 15 months.

GM will pay $27.50 for each share, about an 8 percent premium over Tuesday's closing price of $25.49. The shares shot up more than 8 percent in premarket trading to $27.57.

The deal almost certainly means that the government will lose billions on a $49.5 billion bailout that saved GM from being auctioned off in pieces during the financial crisis in 2008 and 2009. GM's buyback will cut the Treasury's stake to 19 percent from 26.5 percent. For it to break even, Treasury would have to sell the remaining 300 million shares for average of about $70.

For GM, getting the government out of its business removes a major business obstacle. GM Chief Financial Officer Dan Ammann told reporters that GM has market research showing that government ownership has held down sales of the company's cars and trucks.

"This is fundamentally good for the business," he said at a hastily called news conference Wednesday morning.

The government got its stake as part of the bailout of GM that began nearly four years ago.

The Treasury Department said in a statement that it would sell the remaining 19 percent stake "in an orderly fashion" within the next 12 to 15 months, subject to market conditions.

Treasury said it will have recovered more than $28.7 billion of its investment through repayments of loans, sales of stock, dividends, interest and other income after GM buys back the 200 million shares. But that leaves Treasury about $21 billion short of recouping its investment.

In 2008 and 2009, the U.S. Treasury bailed out GM to help stabilize and restructure the company at the trough of the financial crisis. The bailouts of GM and Chrysler were part of the $700 billion Trouble Asset Relief Program created by Congress during the financial crisis in the fall of 2008.

"The auto industry rescue helped save more than a million jobs during a severe economic crisis," said Timothy Massad, Treasury's assistant secretary for financial stability. "The government should not be in the business of owning stakes in private companies for an indefinite period of time."

Massad said that exiting the GM investment "is consistent with our dual goals of winding down TARP as soon as practicable and protecting taxpayer interests."

Although GM is paying a premium for the government shares, Ammann said it's still a good deal for GM shareholders. The number of shares on the market will reduced about 11 percent, which should increase the value of the remaining shares.

The move was approved by the GM board on Tuesday evening after the company got opinions from its management and financial advisers, GM said.

Government-ordered pay restrictions will remain in effect. But a ban on corporate jet ownership and requirements on manufacturing a certain percentage of GM cars and trucks in the U.S. will be lifted. GM says it already has exceeded the manufacturing requirements and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

The company said it has no immediate plans to buy or lease corporate jets.

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SWAT teams enter home in search for prison escapees

Chicago Tribune reporter Rosemary Regina Sobol has the latest details of two convicted bank robbers who escaped from the Metropolitan Correctional Center in downtown Chicago early this morning. (Posted on: Dec. 18, 2012.)

SWAT teams forced their way into a home in Tinley Park as authorities searched for two convicted bank robbers who escaped this morning from the federal Metropolitan Correctional Center in the Loop this morning.

No one was found in the home in the 6600 block of 175th Street, where a relative of one of the escapees, Mark Conley, is believed to live. But FBI officials said they believe Conley and the other inmate, Joseph "Jose" Banks, were there hours earlier.

FBI agents, joined by Tinley Park and Cook County sheriff's deputies, had gathered in a church parking next to the home as officers closed off local streets around 11 a.m. SWAT teams arrived soon afterward and officers, armed with assault rifles, entered the two-story wood frame home

Canine units could be seen going in and out of the home as a crowd of plainclothes officers stood outside during the search. The home is a block off Oak Park Avenue, a main street in Tinley's historic downtown.

Conley and Banks, known as the Second-Hand Bandit who was convicted just last week, were discovered missing from their cell at the federal jail at 71 W. Van Buren St. around  8:45 a.m., according to Central District Police Sgt. Michael Lazzaro. The inmates were last checked at 5 a.m., he said.

A rope could be seen dangling from about 15 stories up along the south side of the MCC, but police would not say whether it was involved in the escape. The rope appeared to be pieces tied together.

The two were reportedly last seen in the Tinley Park area, according to the FBI. It said they should be considered armed and dangerous.

Police cars also raced to the Greyhound station and checked passengers against photos of the inmates, officials said. No arrests were reported there.

Banks was described as black, 37, 5 feet 8 inches tall and weighing 160 pounds. Conley is 38, 6 feet and 185 pounds.

Banks, known as the Second-Hand Bandit, was convicted last week of two bank robberies and two attempted holdups. He made off with a nearly $600,000 in the heists, and authorities say $500,000 is still unaccounted for.

Banks was an aspiring clothing designer who claimed to be a "sovereign citizen" who could not be tried in a federal court. He acted as his own attorney and had to be restrained during his trial.

During closing arguments, Banks repeatedly interrupted Assistant U.S. Attorney Renato Mariotti, commenting on the evidence and suggesting photo lineups were rigged. Mariotti raised his voice over the interruptions to remind the jury of the evidence at trial, including $40,000 found in Banks' safe deposit box as well as a fake beard he wore in the robberies.

Security footage played for jurors showed Banks jumping bank counters and wielding a handgun as he ordered employees to open vaults and ATMs at the banks. In one video, a bank worker was shown hyperventilating on the floor of a cash room, clutching his chest and neck.

The other suspect was identified as Ken Conley, who pleaded guilty last October to robbing nearly $4,000 from a Homewood bank last year. He had lived in Tinley Park.

Conley robbed the MB Financial Bank branch at 2345 W. 184rd St. in Homewood on May 13, 2011. A floor host at a Chicago Heights strip club, he went back to work hours later to repay $500 he owed another club employee, authorities said. He was flashing a large amount of cash and was wearing the same black suit and white tie the bank robber wore, according to the criminal complaint.

Conley was caught by Chicago Heights police when he pointed a gun at someone while driving a gold Land Rover. Officers noticed he resembled the surveillance photos of the man who robbed the Homewood bank. Although the bank teller identified him and he was interviewed by authorities, he fled to California and was arrested there in September 2011.

A woman who answered at the home of a relative of Conley said it was "very upsetting for everyone" and declined further comment.

The last escape at the MCC was in 1985 when two convicted murderers enlarged a sixth-floor window and climbed down a 75-foot electrical cord attached to a floor buffer.

Bernard Welch and Hugh Colomb used a bar from exercise weights to knock out concrete and used hacksaw blades to cut metal away, enlarging a 3-inch window slit. The blade had been smuggled into the jail, authorities said.

Welch was serving a 143-year sentence for the 1980 murder of Dr. Michael Halberstam, a Washington, D.C. cardiologist and brother of Pulitzer Prize-winning author David Halberstam.

Colomb was convicted of killing an inmate and assaulting a guard in the federal penitentiary in Marion.

Both men were apprehended months later.

rsobol@tribune.com

Twitter: @RosemarySobol1

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HBO making “Game of Thrones”-themed beer

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Winter is coming – and so is a new line of beers based on HBO‘s fantasy drama “Game of Thrones.” Presumably, all will boast a full, robust head, perhaps resting on top of a spike.

HBO is teaming with Cooperstown, N.Y. brewery Ommegang for a line of brews centered around the series, the New York Times reports. The first beer, Iron Throne Blonde Ale, is slated to go on sale in March, in time for the March 31 premiere of the show’s third season.

It sounds like the perfect libation for watching the premiere from the comfort of your $ 30,000 Iron Throne replica.

A second “GoT”-themed beer will go on sale in fall 2013, with two more varieties expected to go on sale in conjunction with new seasons of the series.

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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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McDonald's urging franchisees to open on Christmas

McDonald's Corp. is urging U.S. restaurant owners to take the unusual step of opening on Christmas Day to deliver the world's biggest hamburger chain with the gift of higher December sales, AdvertisingAge reported Monday.

The request -- which comes as McDonald's tangles with resurgent rivals such as Wendy's, Burger King and Yum Brands' Taco Bell chain -- would be a break from company tradition of closing on major holidays.

"Starting with Thanksgiving, ensure your restaurants are open throughout the holidays," Jim Johannesen, chief operations officer for McDonald's USA, wrote in a Nov. 8 memo to franchisees -- one of two obtained by AdvertisingAge.

"Our largest holiday opportunity as a system is Christmas Day. Last year, (company-operated) restaurants that opened on Christmas averaged $5,500 in sales," Johannesen said.

"The decision to open our restaurants on Christmas is in the hands of our owner/operators," McDonald's spokeswoman Heather Oldani told Reuters.

Don Thompson took over as chief executive at McDonald's in July and has the difficult task of growing sales from last year's strong results in a significantly more competitive environment.

McDonald's monthly global sales at established restaurants fell for the first time in nine years in October, but unexpectedly rebounded in November.

The November surprise was partly due to a 2.5 percent rise in sales at U.S. restaurants open at least 13 months.

"Our November results were driven, in part, by our Thanksgiving Day performance," Johannesen wrote in a Dec. 12 memo to franchisees.

Oldani said 1,200 more McDonald's restaurants were open on Thanksgiving this year versus last year -- not 6,000 more as AdvertisingAge reported.

Still, the company has a high hurdle when it comes to posting an increase in restaurant sales this month because its U.S. same-restaurant sales jumped 9.8 percent in December 2011.

"It's an act of desperation. The franchisees are not happy," said Richard Adams, a former McDonald's franchisee who now advises the chain's owner/operators.

The push to open on the holidays goes against McDonald's cultural history, said Adams. In his first published operations manual, McDonald's Corp. founder Ray Kroc said the company would close on Thanksgiving and Christmas to give employees time with their families, Adams said.

"We opened for breakfast on Thanksgiving the last couple years I was a franchisee. It was easy to get kids to work on Thanksgiving because they want to get away from their family, but not on Christmas," Adams said.

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Emanuel: Time for 'an assault weapons ban'

Mayor Rahm Emanuel today called for an assault weapons ban at the state and national levels and said it was time for a "vote of conscience" in Congress following the deadly assault on schoolchildren in Connecticut.

Speaking at a Chicago Police Department graduation and promotion ceremony this morning, the mayor did not address the political difficulty of the task. Congress allowed an assault-weapon ban to expire in 2004 and state efforts at gun control legislation have regularly failed in Springfield.

But he noted he worked in the Clinton White House when Bill Clinton signed an assault weapons ban.

"As somebody who stood by President Clinton's side to make sure we had a ban on assault weapons, I do not want to see more weapons on the street, more guns on the street. They make your job all that more difficult," Emanuel said.

"It's time that we as a city have an assault weapons ban, it's time that we as a state have an assault weapons ban, it's time that we as a country have an assault weapons ban," Emanuel said. "And I would hope the leadership in Congress now will have a vote of conscience. It is time to have that vote."

On Sunday, home-state President Barack Obama signaled he was open to a gun-control debate in his remarks to grieving parents and residents in Newtown, Conn., where 20 children and eight adults were killed in Friday’s attack by a man who police said was armed with a rifle and two handguns. U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois also called for a discussion on gun control.

The tragedy is expected to influence the coming gun-control debate at the state Capitol. Last week, a federal appeals court gave the state until June to come up with a new measure permitting the public possession of guns, as it threw out a half-century-old law that banned the practice.

Any issue involving guns in Illinois has been problematic -- one of the few topics symbolizing the state's urban-rural geographic divide. Top city politicians have pressed for strict gun control measures, facing push-back from the rural culture that holds people should have greater access to weapons.

The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling already had come against a backdrop of heightened anxiety about gun violence in Chicago, ranging from concerns about crime on tony Michigan Avenue to the city surpassing last year's total of 435 homicides by the end of October.

Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan is mulling whether to appeal the decision and try to preserve Illinois' status as the last state in the nation to have a comprehensive prohibition on possessing a loaded firearm outside the home.

hdardick@tribune.com

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