Grammys pay tribute to Shankar, King, Temptations

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Ravi Shankar passed away in December before he could attend The Recording Academy‘s Special Merit Awards celebration where he was to receive a lifetime achievement award. But the 91-year-old sitar master, Indian music promoter and friend to The Beatles got the call a few days before he passed away, and that meant everything to his family.

“I was very excited to hear about the lifetime achievement award a week before my dad passed away, one day before he went into surgery,” Shankar’s daughter, Norah Jones, said in an email to the Associated Press a few hours before the ceremony. “He knew about it and was very happy, and also that he and my sister, Anoushka, were both nominated in the same category for a Grammy (this year) was a special thing as well. We all miss him and are very proud of him. I will forever be discovering and re-discovering his music from all walks of his long and amazing life.”

Jones and Anoushka Shankar‘s acceptance of their father’s award Saturday afternoon at the Wilshire Ebert Theatre in Los Angeles was one of many memorable moments in the ceremony honoring performers and non-performers alike.

The crowd made a happy birthday video for Carole King, saluted husband-and-wife songwriters Marilyn and Alan Bergman on their 55th anniversary, and swooned as Charlie Haden paid tribute to his wife and family.

Shankar, singer-songwriter King and jazz bassist Haden were honored with lifetime achievement awards along with classical pianist Glenn Gould, who made his final public performance in the same theatre, blues guitarist Lightnin’ Hopkins, The Temptations and pop singer Patti Page, who like Shankar passed away in the last two months.

Special merit awards also were handed out to non-performers. Chess Records founders Philip and Leonard Chess, husband-and-wife songwriters Marilyn and Alan Bergman, and former Capitol Records executive Alan Livingston won the Trustees Award given to non-performers. And MIDI developers Ikutaro Kakehashi and Dave Smith and ribbon microphone manufacturer Royer Labs won technical Grammys.

Haden noted the importance of his family in his acceptance speech.

“I thank my brother Jim for letting me listen to his jazz records,” Haden said. “I heard Charlie Parker and that changed my life forever.”

For King, it was James Taylor who sent her down a new path. She noted in her video message he forced her to get up and sing one of her own songs in concert when she really didn’t see herself as a performer: “I guess he was right.”

The Bergmans, who wrote “The Way We Were,” turned in a romantic acceptance speech, adding another special moment to a partnership that produced some of our most well-known songs.

“I just want to say this in public: I’m married to the most remarkable woman in the world,” Alan Bergman said.

“Oh, cut it out,” Marilyn Berman responded.

___

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

___

Online:

http://www.grammy.com

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Boeing 787 Completes Test Flight

A Boeing 787 test plane flew for more than two hours on Saturday to gather information about the problems with the batteries that led to a worldwide grounding of the new jets more than three weeks ago.

The flight was the first since the Federal Aviation Administration gave Boeing permission on Thursday to conduct in-flight tests. Federal investigators and the company are trying to determine what caused one of the new lithium-ion batteries to catch fire and how to fix the problems.

The plane took off from Boeing Field in Seattle heading mostly east and then looped around to the south before flying back past the airport to the west. It covered about 900 miles and landed at 2:51 p.m. Pacific time.

Marc R. Birtel, a Boeing spokesman, said the flight was conducted to monitor the performance of the plane’s batteries. He said the crew, which included 13 pilots and test personnel, said the flight was uneventful.

He said special equipment let the crew check status messages involving the batteries and their chargers, as well as data about battery temperature and voltage.

FlightAware, an aviation data provider, said the jet reached 36,000 feet. Its speed ranged from 435 to 626 miles per hour.

All 50 of the 787s delivered so far were grounded after a battery on one of the jets caught fire at a Boston airport on Jan. 7 and another made an emergency landing in Japan with smoke coming from the battery.

The new 787s are the most technically advanced commercial airplanes, and Boeing has a lot riding on their success. Half of the planes’ structural parts are made of lightweight carbon composites to save fuel.

Boeing also decided to switch from conventional nickel cadmium batteries to the lighter lithium-ion ones. But they are more volatile, and federal investigators said Thursday that Boeing had underestimated the risks.

The F.A.A. has set strict operating conditions on the test flights. The flights are expected to resume early this week, Mr. Birtel said.

Battery experts have said it could take weeks for Boeing to fix the problems.

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Big Bear locked down amid manhunt

The bustling winter resort of Big Bear took on the appearance of a ghost town Thursday as surveillance aircraft buzzed overhead and police in tactical gear and carrying rifles patrolled mountain roads in convoys of SUVs, while others stood guard along major intersections.

Even before authorities had confirmed that the torched pickup truck discovered on a quiet forest road belonged to suspected gunman Christopher Dorner, 33, officials had ordered an emergency lockdown of local businesses, homes and the town's popular ski resorts. Parents were told to pick up their children from school, as rolling yellow buses might pose a target to an unpredictable fugitive on the run.

By nightfall, many residents had barricaded their doors as they prepared for a long, anxious evening.

PHOTOS: A tense manhunt amid tragic deaths

"We're all just stressed," said Andrea Burtons as she stocked up on provisions at a convenience store. "I have to go pick up my brother and get him home where we're safe."

Police ordered the lockdown about 9:30 a.m. as authorities throughout Southern California launched an immense manhunt for the former lawman, who is accused of killing three people as part of a long-standing grudge against the LAPD. Dorner is believed to have penned a long, angry manifesto on Facebook saying that he was unfairly fired from the force and was now seeking vengeance.

Forest lands surrounding Big Bear Lake are cross-hatched with fire roads and trails leading in all directions, and the snow-capped mountains can provide both cover and extreme challenges to a fugitive on foot. It was unclear whether Dorner was prepared for such rugged terrain.

Footprints were found leading from Dorner's burned pickup truck into the snow off Forest Road 2N10 and Club View Drive in Big Bear Lake.

San Bernardino County Sheriff John McMahon said that although authorities had deployed 125 officers for tracking and door-to-door searches, officers had to be mindful that the suspect may have set a trap.

"Certainly. There's always that concern and we're extremely careful and we're worried about this individual," McMahon said. "We're taking every precaution we can."

PHOTOS: A fugitive's life on Facebook

Big Bear has roughly 400 homes, but authorities guessed that only 40% are occupied year-round.

The search will probably play out with the backdrop of a winter storm that is expected to hit the area after midnight.

Up to 6 inches of snow could blanket local mountains, the National Weather Service said.

FULL COVERAGE: Sweeping manhunt for rampaging ex-cop

Gusts up to 50 mph could hit the region, said National Weather Service meteorologist Mark Moede, creating a wind-chill factor of 15 to 20 degrees.

Extra patrols were brought in to check vehicles coming and going from Big Bear, McMahon said, but no vehicles had been reported stolen.

"He could be anywhere at this point," McMahon said. When asked if the burned truck was a possible diversion, McMahon replied: "Anything's possible."

Dorner had no known connection to the area, authorities said.

Craig and Christine Winnegar, of Murrieta, found themselves caught up in the lockdown by accident. Craig brought his wife to Big Bear as a surprise to celebrate their 28th wedding anniversary. Their prearranged dinner was canceled when restaurant owners closed their doors out of fear.

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Fate of Historic Landsat Mission Hinges on Upcoming Launch

Since 1972 the Landsat mission has been monitoring natural and human-made changes to our planet. But the continuity of that scientifically precious dataset could be lost unless all goes according to plan on Monday, when the Landsat 8 satellite is scheduled to be launched into orbit from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Landsat 8 will take over for the hobbled 14-year old Landsat 7 that has been valiantly carrying the mission alone since December when, after 29 years in orbit, Landsat 5 began to be decommissioned after a gyroscope failure.

The launch is not likely to fail, but if it does, it won’t be the first time the continuity of the 40-year mission was jeopardized. Along the way funding has come under fire, ownership of the satellites has been transferred between government agencies and private companies, sensors have quit working, and one mission tragically failed to reach orbit. If Landsat 8 fails, Landsat 7 would run out of fuel near the end of 2016, before a replacement could be built and put into orbit.

“I’ve devoted the latter part of my career to the formulation and development of this mission,” the project’s lead scientist, James Irons, told Wired. “On Monday I go out there and look at my baby sitting on top of an enormous firecracker and hope everything goes well.”

“Yeah, I’ll be nervous.”

The scientists and engineers behind the Landsat mission will be hugely relieved once the craft is safely in place 700 kilometers above their heads and then begins beaming data back to Earth about a month later.

In addition to saving the mission from a gap in data, Landsat 8 — more officially known as the Landsat Data Continuity Mission – will boost the rate of coverage of the Earth and will also add more sensing capability and deliver better imagery than its predecessors.

Relying on Landsat 7 alone has meant only imaging the full Earth every 16 days. Once there are two eyes open, coverage will return to 8-day intervals, essentially doubling the resolution of landscape change that will be recorded.

“The major goal of the mission is for us to understand land cover and land use change, and determine the human impacts on the global landscape,” Irons said. “These changes are going on at rates unprecedented in human history.”

“Continuity is more important than ever.”

The new satellite will also add more sensing capability and deliver better imagery than its predecessors. Landsat 8 will measure all the spectral bands of its predecessors, but will add two new bands that are tailored for detecting the coastal zone and cirrus clouds.

The new satellite has a more advanced imaging design as well. Previous Landsat satellites used what is known as a whisk broom sensor system, where an oscillating mirror would sweep back and forth over a row of detectors that collect data across a 185-kilometer swath of the Earth. The new push system uses a very long array of more than 7,000 detectors that will view the 185 km swath simultaneously, alternately collecting light and recording data. This allows each detector to dwell on each pixel for a longer time, resulting in more detailed, accurate descriptions of the landscape.

Once Landsat 8 reaches orbit, the engineers will begin testing the spacecraft during the first week. The next few weeks will be dedicated to testing all the instruments. The satellite will then do a cross-over rendezvous with Landsat 7 to calibrate the two systems. Around day 25, the shutters will be opened and Landsat 8 will take its first look at Earth. By the end of May, the data should be flowing. The new satellite has a design life of five years, but it has enough fuel to operate for 10 years.

But first, the new craft has to get safely into orbit.

“I have a lot of assurance from everyone,” Irons said. “They are taking extraordinary care, proceeding very methodically, cautiously and rigorously.”

“Still, you realize all rocket launches have some inherent risk,” he said. “So, it’s just hold your breath and hope everything goes well.”

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Humble Damon cheers Oscar hopeful, friend Ben Affleck

BERLIN (Reuters) – It seems that wherever Matt Damon goes to promote his movies he is asked about something else altogether – his old friend and collaborator Ben Affleck, whose Iranian hostage drama “Argo” is in the running for a Best Picture Oscar.

Damon shared a screenplay Academy Award with Affleck for the 1997 film “Good Will Hunting” and has gone on to become one of the biggest stars in Hollywood, with blockbusters including the “Ocean’s Eleven” and “Bourne Identity” series.

He was in Berlin on Friday for the festival premiere of “Promised Land”, a tale set in rural America that tackles the controversial gas extraction technique known as “fracking”.

At a news conference following the press screening, the 42-year-old did not have to wait long for a question about Affleck, and, once again, he lavished praise on an actor who he said had endured his share of tough times.

“His life is so interesting that I kind of never get tired of talking (about it),” Damon joked.

Of the critical acclaim and string of awards for “Argo,” he said: “I’m really happy for him. He certainly deserves it.”

“He’s worked so hard and he’s taken it on the chin for years from the press and just from everywhere. He was really in a rough spot 10 years ago,” Damon told reporters, referring to the ridicule Affleck suffered during his romance with Jennifer Lopez and their 2003 movie flop “Gigli.”

The actor recalled Affleck once telling him he was “in the worst place you could be career-wise: I sell magazines and I don’t sell movie tickets’.”

Damon singled out some “fantastic” performances by Affleck in recent years: “Hollywoodland,” “The Town” and “Argo” itself, the last two of which he also directed.

He would not, however, be drawn on the chances of “Argo” landing the big prize at the Oscars on February 24.

PROMISED LAND “BOMBS”

Less successful has been “Promised Land,” which Damon readily admitted had “bombed” in the United States. It opens across Europe in February, March and April.

According to Boxofficemojo.com, the movie earned just $ 7.6 million at the North American box office.

“I’m leery of becoming one of those people who lives so much in a bubble that I just think everything I do is great,” he said. “I try to be mindful of that and listen.

“I’ve had a lot of movies that … haven’t been well received by an audience and I’m realistic about that, but with this one I just really love it and a big part of my heart is in it and I don’t understand what I’m hearing back.”

He said it was possible that “Promised Land,” also starring Frances McDormand and directed by “Good Will Hunting” filmmaker Gus Van Sant, would be appreciated more in the future.

“I’ve had movies bomb worse than this one and then actually make their money back.”

“Promised Land” is one of 19 movies in the main competition at the Berlin film festival running from Thursday to February 17.

Also screening on Friday were Polish entry “In the Name of” and Austrian director Ulrich Seidl’s “Paradise: Hope,” the final part in a trilogy looking at the lives of a single family, in this case an overweight teenager sent to a diet camp.

(Reporting by Mike Collett-White, editing by Jill Serjeant and Doina Chiacu)

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In Nigeria, Polio Vaccine Workers Are Killed by Gunmen

At least nine polio immunization workers were shot to death in northern Nigeria on Friday by gunmen who attacked two clinics, officials said.

The killings, with eerie echoes of attacks that killed nine female polio workers in Pakistan in December, represented another serious setback for the global effort to eradicate polio.

Most of the victims were women and were shot in the back of the head, local reports said.

A four-day vaccination drive had just ended in Kano State, where the killings took place, and the vaccinators were in a “mop-up” phase, looking for children who had been missed, said Sarah Crowe, a spokeswoman for the United Nations Children’s Fund, one of the agencies running the eradication campaign.

Dr. Mohammad Ali Pate, Nigeria’s minister of state for health, said in a telephone interview that it was not entirely clear whether the gunmen were specifically targeting polio workers or just attacking the health centers where vaccinators happened to be gathering early in the morning. “Health workers are soft targets,” he said.

No one immediately took responsibility, but suspicion fell on Boko Haram, a militant Islamist group that has attacked police stations, government offices and even a religious leader’s convoy.

Polio, which once paralyzed millions of children, is now down to fewer than 1,000 known cases around the world, and is endemic in only three countries: Nigeria, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Since September — when a new polio operations center was opened in the capital and Nigeria’s president, Goodluck Jonathan, appointed a special adviser for polio — the country had been improving, said Dr. Bruce Aylward, chief of polio eradication for the World Health Organization. There have been no new cases since Dec. 3.

While vaccinators have not previously been killed in the country, there is a long history of Nigerian Muslims shunning the vaccine.

Ten years ago, immunization was suspended for 11 months as local governors waited for local scientists to investigate rumors that it caused AIDS or was a Western plot to sterilize Muslim girls. That hiatus let cases spread across Africa. The Nigerian strain of the virus even reached Saudi Arabia when a Nigerian child living in hills outside Mecca was paralyzed.

Heidi Larson, an anthropologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine who tracks vaccine issues, said the newest killings “are kind of mimicking what’s going on in Pakistan, and I feel it’s very much prompted by that.”

In a roundabout way, the C.I.A. has been blamed for the Pakistan killings. In its effort to track Osama bin Laden, the agency paid a Pakistani doctor to seek entry to Bin Laden’s compound on the pretext of vaccinating the children — presumably to get DNA samples as evidence that it was the right family. That enraged some Taliban factions in Pakistan, which outlawed vaccination in their areas and threatened vaccinators.

Nigerian police officials said the first shootings were of eight workers early in the morning at a clinic in the Tarauni neighborhood of Kano, the state capital; two or three died. A survivor said the two gunmen then set fire to a curtain, locked the doors and left.

“We summoned our courage and broke the door because we realized they wanted to burn us alive,” the survivor said from her bed at Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital.

About an hour later, six men on three-wheeled motorcycles stormed a clinic in the Haye neighborhood, a few miles away. They killed seven women waiting to collect vaccine.

Ten years ago, Dr. Larson said, she joined a door-to-door vaccination drive in northern Nigeria as a Unicef communications officer, “and even then we were trying to calm rumors that the C.I.A. was involved,” she said. The Iraq and Afghanistan wars had convinced poor Muslims in many countries that Americans hated them, and some believed the American-made vaccine was a plot by Western drug companies and intelligence agencies.

Since the vaccine ruse in Pakistan, she said, “Frankly, now, I can’t go to them and say, ‘The C.I.A. isn’t involved.’ ”

Dr. Pate said the attack would not stop the newly reinvigorated eradication drive, adding, “This isn’t going to deter us from getting everyone vaccinated to save the lives of our children.”

Aminu Abubakar contributed reported from Kano, Nigeria.

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John E. Karlin, 1918-2013: John E. Karlin, Who Led the Way to All-Digit Dialing, Dies at 94

Courtesy of Alcatel-Lucent USA

John E. Karlin, a researcher at Bell Labs, studied ways to make the telephone easier to use.

A generation ago, when the poetry of PEnnsylvania and BUtterfield was about to give way to telephone numbers in unpoetic strings, a critical question arose: Would people be able to remember all seven digits long enough to dial them?

And when, not long afterward, the dial gave way to push buttons, new questions arose: round buttons, or square? How big should they be? Most crucially, how should they be arrayed? In a circle? A rectangle? An arc?

For decades after World War II, these questions were studied by a group of social scientists and engineers in New Jersey led by one man, a Bell Labs industrial psychologist named John E. Karlin.

By all accounts a modest man despite his variegated accomplishments (he had a doctorate in mathematical psychology, was trained in electrical engineering and had been a professional violinist), Mr. Karlin, who died on Jan. 28, at 94, was virtually unknown to the general public.

But his research, along with that of his subordinates, quietly yet emphatically defined the experience of using the telephone in the mid-20th century and afterward, from ushering in all-digit dialing to casting the shape of the keypad on touch-tone phones. And that keypad, in turn, would inform the design of a spate of other everyday objects.

It is not so much that Mr. Karlin trained midcentury Americans how to use the telephone. It is, rather, that by studying the psychological capabilities and limitations of ordinary people, he trained the telephone, then a rapidly proliferating but still fairly novel technology, to assume optimal form for use by midcentury Americans.

“He was the one who introduced the notion that behavioral sciences could answer some questions about telephone design,” Ed Israelski, an engineer who worked under Mr. Karlin at Bell Labs in the 1970s, said in a telephone interview on Wednesday.

In 2013, the 50th anniversary of the introduction of the touch-tone phone, the answers to those questions remain palpable at the press of a button. The rectangular design of the keypad, the shape of its buttons and the position of the numbers — with “1-2-3” on the top row instead of the bottom, as on a calculator — all sprang from empirical research conducted or overseen by Mr. Karlin.

The legacy of that research now extends far beyond the telephone: the keypad design Mr. Karlin shepherded into being has become the international standard on objects as diverse as A.T.M.’s, gas pumps, door locks, vending machines and medical equipment.

Mr. Karlin, associated from 1945 until his retirement in 1977 with Bell Labs, headquartered in Murray Hill, N.J., was widely considered the father of human-factors engineering in American industry.

A branch of industrial psychology that combines experimentation, engineering and product design, human-factors engineering is concerned with easing the awkward, often ill-considered marriage between man and machine. In seeking to design and improve technology based on what its users are mentally capable of, the discipline is the cognitive counterpart of ergonomics.

“Human-factors studies are different from market research and other kinds of studies in that we observe people’s behavior and record it, systematically and without bias,” Mr. Israelski said. “The hallmark of human-factors studies is they involve the actual observation of people doing things.”

Among the issues Mr. Karlin examined as the head of Bell Labs’ Human Factors Engineering department — the first department of its kind at an American company — were the optimal length for a phone cord (a study that involved gentle, successful sabotage) and the means by which rotary calls could be made efficiently after the numbers were moved from inside the finger holes, where they had nestled companionably for years, to the rim outside the dial.

John Elias Karlin was born in Johannesburg on Feb. 28, 1918, and reared nearby in Germiston, where his parents owned a grocery store and tearoom.

He earned a bachelor’s degree in philosophy, psychology and music, and a master’s degree in psychology, both from the University of Cape Town. Throughout his studies he was a violinist in the Cape Town Symphony Orchestra and the Cape Town String Quartet.

Moving to the United States, Mr. Karlin earned a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1942. Afterward, he became a research associate at Harvard; he also studied electrical engineering there and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

At Harvard, Mr. Karlin did research for the United States military on problems in psychoacoustics that were vital to the war effort — studying the ways, for instance, in which a bomber’s engine noise might distract its crew from their duties.

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FBI searches Las Vegas home of fugitive

Federal and local authorities served a search warrant at the Las Vegas home of an ex-police officer sought in connection with a series of shootings in Southern California, but said the suspect was not located.

FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller confirmed agents and Las Vegas police searched the home Thursday as part of the ongoing investigation into Christopher Jordan Dorner, 33, but did not elaborate as to what was recovered. The surrounding neighborhood was cleared as a precaution, she said.

No one was home at the time, Eimiller said.

PHOTOS: Manhunt for ex-LAPD officer

Several law enforcement agencies are involved in the ongoing manhunt for Dorner and alerts have been issued all across California and in Nevada, warning Dorner was considered "armed and extremely dangerous." Dorner was believed to be carrying multiple weapons, including an assault rifle.

In California, a SWAT team clad in military fatigues spent Thursday afternoon combing the mountain community of Big Bear after Dorner's burned-out truck was found on a forest road. Authorities were going door-to-door and checking all vehicles coming and going from the mountain.

Dorner, who was fired from the LAPD in 2009, is suspected of shooting three police officers, one of whom died, in Riverside County early Thursday.

PHOTOS: Manhunt for ex-LAPD officer

He also is suspected of killing a couple who were found shot in a car in Orange County earlier this week. One of the victims was the daughter of a former LAPD captain named in a lengthy online manifesto that law enforcement officials attributed to Dorner.

The Los Angeles Police Department had dispatched units across the region to protect at least 40 officers and others named in the document, which threatened "unconventional and asymmetrial warfare" against police.

Dorner received awards for his expertise with a rifle and pistol, according to military records obtained by The Times. He received an Iraq Campaign Medal and was a member of a mobile inshore undersea warfare unit.

Riverside Police Chief Sergio Diaz, calling the attack on his officers a "cowardly ambush," said Dorner is suspected of opening fire with a rifle about 1:30 a.m. Thursday as he pulled up to two police officers waiting at a traffic light.

The attack was carried out about 20 minutes after Dorner wounded an LAPD officer in a shooting in nearby Corona, police said.

Early Thursday, two women delivering the Los Angeles Times in Torrance were shot by Los Angeles police who were headed to the home of a police captain named in the manifesto.

The women, shot in the 19500 block of Redbeam Avenue, were taken to area hospitals, Torrance Police Lt. Devin Chase said. One suffered a minor wound, and the other was struck twice and listed in stable condition, LAPD Chief Charlie Beck told reporters.

"Tragically," Beck said, "we believe this is a case of mistaken identity."

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Apparent Facebook Widget Snafu Brings Down Sites

Several sites across the web could not be reached by some visitors on Thursday afternoon, apparently because of a problem with Facebook widgets embedded in the sites. Several sites — including Business Insider, Huffington Post and Salon — were reportedly affected, redirecting visitors to a Facebook error page.

Facebook did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but the problem has apparently been fixed. The problem was first reported by Marketing Land.

When trying to visit a page that used Facebook Connect or Like widgets, users were redirected to a page saying simply “An error occurred. Please try again later.” When they clicked the “Okay” button, they were taken to an error page. If they hit back, they would get to the page they were trying to visit momentarily before being automatically forwarded to the error page again.

Facebook provides code to embed widgets that display information such as which of your friends like a site’s Facebook page, or which articles have recently been “liked” by a friend. These widgets execute JavaScript code in the user’s web browser that originates at Facebook, not the site that the user is trying to view. The problem only seems to affect users who are not logged into Facebook.

Home Page Photo: Pshab / Flickr

Update: Facebook has now said: “For a short period of time, there was a bug that redirected people logging in with Facebook from third party sites to Facebook.com. The issue was quickly resolved, and Login with Facebook is now working as usual.”

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California boy to be arraigned in “swatting” prank on actor Kutcher

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Prosecutors charged a 12-year-old boy on Thursday with making a false emergency call that sent police swarming to the home of actor Ashton Kutcher in a “swatting” prank.

The name of the boy, who was arrested by Los Angeles police in December, was withheld due to his age. He was scheduled to be arraigned in a juvenile court in Los Angeles on Friday.

The trend toward placing false emergency calls is known as “swatting” because SWAT (Special Weapons and Tactics) officers often are sent to the purported crime scenes. Authorities say such situations can be dangerous due to the risk of a misunderstanding between police and occupants of a building.

The boy has been charged with two felony counts each of making false bomb threats and computer intrusion in connection with the October 3 emergency call that drew police to the Hollywood Hills home of Kutcher, star of the sitcom “Two and a Half Men,” and a similar call on October 10 that sent police to a Wells Fargo Bank.

Authorities have accused the boy of having reported men armed with guns and explosives in Kutcher’s home and that several people had been shot. Dozens of emergency personnel were sent to the house. Kutcher was not home at the time.

Swatting calls in recent months have also sent police to the homes of singers Justin Bieber and Miley Cyrus.

(Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis; Editing by Bill Trott)

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