Danny Puff

BUFFALO, New York (Reuters) - A powerful winter storm responsible for wind, snow, tornadoes and a flurry of traffic accidents battered the U.S. Northeast on Thursday, canceling hundreds of flights but also reviving what had been a snowless ski season.

The storm dumped a foot of snow on parts of the United States with the heaviest snow falling across northern New York and into northern New England, the National Weather Service reported.

The service issued coastal flood advisories from New York's Long Island to southern Maine and winter storm warnings for parts of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York and New England.

Airlines canceled 548 flights on Thursday after 1,500 U.S. flights were canceled on Wednesday, according to FlightAware.com, a website that tracks flights.

The massive storm system dumped record snow in north Texas and Arkansas before it swept through the U.S. South on Christmas Day and then veered north.

The system triggered tornadoes and left almost 200,000 people in Arkansas and Alabama without power on Wednesday.

The weather service forecast 12 to 18 inches of snow for northern New England after the storm moved northeast out of the lower Great Lakes, where it left more than a foot of snow on parts of Michigan.

The storm front was accompanied by freezing rain and sleet, creating hazards on the highways and at airports.

Retailers, still in the busy holiday shopping season, expected sales would continue with consumers looking for winter items.

"People are out spending anyway. Weather can trigger what you purchase - not if you purchase, but what you purchase," said Evan Gold, senior vice president of client services at Planalytics, which tracks weather for businesses including retailers.

The snow also brought renewed hope for winter recreation across upstate New York.

Daniel Ivancic, of the Buffalo suburb of Tonawanda, said he bought a snowmobile last winter that sat largely idle with snow totals well below average.

"I waited and waited and, no snow. This winter it seemed like the same thing was going to happen until the storm hit," Ivancic said. "I'm just going to take advantage of every minute of it."

About 8 to 12 inches of snow fell on Buffalo overnight. Light snow and freezing drizzle persisted throughout the morning hours, with as much as another inch or two possible in some areas.

Before Wednesday evening's snow, Buffalo was 23 inches below average for this time of year, the weather service said.

"It's just a reminder, winter is here," said Tom Paone of the National Weather Service in Buffalo.

Police patrolling the New York State Thruway from Buffalo to Albany reported as many as 50 accidents, mostly involving cars that slipped off snowy roads overnight.

Virginia State Police responded to nearly 700 car crashes on Wednesday, most of which were due to snow and ice around the Interstate 81 corridor, said spokeswoman Corinne Geller.

A 14-year-old girl was killed in a crash near Lynchburg, but police have not determined if the weather was to blame.

"The road conditions were slick at the time, but it's still being determined if it was weather-related," Geller said on Thursday.

A Southwest Airlines jet skidded off the runway on Thursday at Long Island MacArthur Airport, about 50 miles east of New York City, as it taxied for takeoff, Suffolk County police said.

None of the 134 people aboard Tampa-bound flight No. 4695 was injured, police said.

"It's been undetermined at this time if weather was a factor," a police spokeswoman said.

(Additional reporting by Colleen Jenkins, Dan Burns and Ian Simpson; Editing by Daniel Trotta, Dale Hudson and Claudia Parsons)

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LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - After a decade away from the big screen, funnyman Billy Crystal has mined his real-life experiences as a grandfather and is back in the holiday season movie "Parental Guidance."

The film, which opened in U.S. theaters on Christmas, stars Crystal as a recently fired baseball announcer, who agrees to watch his three grandchildren with his wife (Bette Midler), while his daughter and her husband go on a business trip.

Crystal, 64, sat down with Reuters to talk about the film, being a grandparent and why he won't host the Oscars ceremony anymore.

Q: You have not been on the big screen in a starring role since 2002's "Analyze That." Did you miss making movies?

A: "I spent over four years doing my one-man Broadway show, '700 Sundays' and didn't care about doing movies. I just so love being in front of live audiences. The play is more satisfying than anything. I'm not interrupted by planes flying overhead, waiting for them to light and all those gruesome slow things on a movie. But really, the last five years were spent getting this movie made."

Q: How did "Parental Guidance" become your return to film?

A: "When I wrote the first story for this movie, my wife Janice and I babysat for our daughter Jenny while she went away with her husband. We had six days with their girls, all alone. It was an eye-opener. When you're not used to that energy, it's tough. On the 7th day I rested and came in to the office and said, 'Here's the idea for the movie.'"

Q: What was eye-opening about those six days?

A: "The eye-opener was the bible that we were given before they left town about what to say (to the kids), what to do, all the rules, don't do this, don't do that, this child has to be taken here. They have my respect of how they programmed their days and weeks. It's insane what they have to do nowadays for schooling and parenting. It's wild."

Q: Quite a difference between your childhood and the grandkids' childhood, right?

A: "When I was a kid growing up, it was basically 'Go outside and play and I'll see you at dinner.' There was no thought that there were bad people out there. There was such a carefree wonderful trust which forced you to use your imagination, which also bonded you with the best of you, and your friends. We didn't have that 'inside' thing like videogames. My only 'inside' thing was watching the Yankees. Otherwise everything was outside."

Q: Speaking of the Yankees, your well-documented lifelong love of baseball is incorporated in to the film with your character being a ball-game announcer. That must have been fun to do.

A: "I love the game and I thought it was a really interesting occupation we hadn't seen before. And a good one for me to play because I love it. I wanted my character to have something he loved doing where I didn't have to fake it."

Q: In being absent from the silver screen for a while, did you find that the movie-making business has changed much?

A: "The studios are so concerned with quadrants (capturing four major demographic groups of moviegoers - men, woman and those over and under 25). I'd never heard of these things when I was in my early years of making movies. You just did them. There was no interference. Now it's a whole different ball game. They're so worried: 'Who's going to come?' Well, there's 77 million American who are babyboomers. That's a huge audience who wants to laugh and have a story told to them that doesn't have bombs and spies and killing."

Q: Does "Parental Guidance" reflect where are you now at this stage of your life?

A: "I was fortunate to be in a great romantic comedy about falling in love (1989's 'When Harry Met Sally'). I wrote the original story for my turning 40, 'City Slickers' (in 1991), which became a huge hit and a very liked movie. And now 'Parental Guidance' happened at this point in my life. I relate to it as a parent and a grandparent."

Q: You will be a grandfather for the fourth time in March. What do you like best about that role?

A: "It's so hard to understand how you can love someone so much that's not yours, but extensions of you. I'm always so moved seeing my girls pregnant, and seeing them move on in their lives. I'm going to turn 65 on March 14. My wife's birthday is the 16th. The baby's due the 18th. So we've got maybe a straight flush happening here. That would be the greatest present of all - a healthy new baby."

Q: Last year you hosted the Oscar ceremony for the ninth time, making you the second most-used host after the late Bob Hope. Are you gunning for his title?

A: "I'm not even close. I've done 9, he's done 19 and neither one of us are doing it again. It's hard to say, 'Can't wait to do it again,' but I can wait."

(Reporting By Zorianna Kit, Editing by Piya Sinha-Roy and Cynthia Osterman)

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LOS ANGELES (AP) The big deal for Hollywood is not the record $10.8 billion that studios took in domestically in 2012. It's the fact that the number of tickets sold went up for the first time in three years.

Thanks to inflation, revenue generally rises in Hollywood as admission prices climb each year. The real story is told in tickets, whose sales have been on a general decline for a decade, bottoming out in 2011 at 1.29 billion, their lowest level since 1995.

The industry rebounded this year, with ticket sales projected to rise 5.6 percent to 1.36 billion by Dec. 31, according to box-office tracker Hollywood.com. That's still well below the modern peak of 1.6 billion tickets sold in 2002, but in an age of cozy home theater setups and endless entertainment gadgets, studio executives consider it a triumph that they were able to put more butts in cinema seats this year than last.

"It is a victory, ultimately," said Don Harris, head of distribution at Paramount Pictures. "If we deliver the product as an industry that people want, they will want to get out there. Even though you can sit at home and watch something on your large screen in high-def, people want to get out."

Domestic revenue should finish up nearly 6 percent from 2011's $10.2 billion and top Hollywood's previous high of $10.6 billion set in 2009.

The year was led by a pair of superhero sagas, Disney's "The Avengers" with $623 million domestically and $1.5 billion worldwide and the Warner Bros. Batman finale "The Dark Knight Rises" with $448 million domestically and $1.1 billion worldwide. Sony's James Bond adventure "Skyfall" is closing in on the $1 billion mark globally, and the list of action and family-film blockbusters includes "The Hunger Games," ''The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part Two," ''Ice Age: Continental Drift," ''Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted," ''The Amazing Spider-Man" and "Brave."

Before television, movies were the biggest thing going, with ticket sales estimated as high as 4 billion a year domestically in the 1930s and '40s.

Movie-going eroded steadily through the 1970s as people stayed home with their small screens. The rise of videotape in the 1980s further cut into business, followed by DVDs in the '90s and big, cheap flat-screen TVs in recent years. Today's video games, mobile phones and other portable devices also offer easy options to tramping out to a movie theater.

It's all been a continual drain on cinema business, and cynics repeatedly predict the eventual demise of movie theaters. Yet Hollywood fights back with new technology of its own, from digital 3-D to booming surround-sound to the clarity of images projected at high-frame rates, which is being tested now with "The Lord of the Rings" prelude "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey," shown in select theaters at 48 frames a second, double the standard speed.

For all of the annoyances of theaters parking, pricy concessions, sitting next to strangers texting on their iPhones cinemas still offer the biggest and best way to see a movie.

"Every home has a kitchen, but you can't get into a good restaurant on Saturday night," said Dan Fellman, head of distribution for Warner Bros. "People want to escape. That's the nature of society. The adult population just is not going to sit home seven days a week, even though they have technology in their home that's certainly an improvement over what it was 10 years ago. People want to get out of the house, and no matter what they throw in the face of theatrical exhibition, it continues to perform at a strong level."

Even real-life violence at the movie theater didn't turn audiences away. Some moviegoers thought twice about heading to the cinema after a gunman killed 12 people and injured 58 at a screening of "The Dark Knight Rises" in Colorado last summer, but if there was any lull in attendance, it was slight and temporary. Ticket sales went on a tear for most of the fall.

While domestic revenues inch upward most years largely because of inflation, the real growth areas have been overseas, where more and more fans are eager for the next Hollywood blockbuster.

Rentrak, which compiles international box office data, expects 2012's foreign gross to be about $23 billion, 3 percent higher than in 2011. No data was yet available on the number of tickets sold overseas this past year.

International business generally used to account for less than half of a studio film's overall receipts. Films now often do two or even three times as much business overseas as they do domestically. Some movies that were duds with U.S. audiences, such as "Battleship" and "John Carter," can wind up being $200 million hits with overseas crowds.

Whether finishing a good year or a bad one, Hollywood executives always look ahead to better days, insisting that the next crop of blockbusters will be bigger than ever. The same goes this time as studio bosses hype their 2013 lineup, which includes the latest "Iron Man," ''Star Trek," ''Hunger Games" and "Thor" installments, the Superman tale "Man of Steel" and the second chapter in "The Hobbit" trilogy.

Twelve months from now, they hope to be talking about another revenue record topping this year's $10.8 billion.

"I've been saying we're going to hit that $11 billion level for about three years now," said Paul Dergarabedian, a box-office analyst for Hollywood.com. "Next year I think is the year we actually do it."

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BEIJING (AP) China's new communist leaders are increasing already tight controls on Internet use and electronic publishing following a spate of embarrassing online reports about official abuses.

The measures suggest China's new leader, Xi Jinping, and others who took power in November share their predecessors' anxiety about the Internet's potential to spread opposition to one-party rule and their insistence on controlling information despite promises of more economic reforms.

"They are still very paranoid about the potentially destabilizing effect of the Internet," said Willy Lam, a politics specialist at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. "They are on the point of losing a monopoly on information, but they still are very eager to control the dissemination of views."

This week, China's legislature took up a measure to require Internet users to register their real names, a move that would curtail the Web's status as a freewheeling forum to complain, often anonymously, about corruption and official abuses. The legislature scheduled a news conference Friday to discuss the measure, suggesting it was expected to be approved.

That comes amid reports Beijing might be disrupting use of software that allows Web surfers to see sites abroad that are blocked by its extensive Internet filters. At the same time, regulators have proposed rules that would bar foreign companies from distributing books, news, music and other material online in China.

Beijing promotes Internet use for business and education but bans material deemed subversive or obscene and blocks access to foreign websites run by human rights and Tibet activists and some news outlets. Controls were tightened after social media played a role in protests that brought down governments in Egypt and Tunisia.

In a reminder of the Web's role as a political forum, a group of 70 prominent Chinese scholars and lawyers circulated an online petition this week appealing for free speech, independent courts and for the ruling party to encourage private enterprise.

Xi and others on the party's ruling seven-member Standing Committee have tried to promote an image of themselves as men of the people who care about China's poor majority. They have promised to press ahead with market-oriented reforms and to support entrepreneurs but have given no sign of support for political reform.

Communist leaders who see the Internet as a source of economic growth and better-paid jobs were slow to enforce the same level of control they impose on movies, books and other media, apparently for fear of hurting fledgling entertainment, shopping and other online businesses.

Until recently, Web surfers could post comments online or on microblog services without leaving their names.

That gave ordinary Chinese a unique opportunity to express themselves to a public audience in a society where newspapers, television and other media are state-controlled. The most popular microblog services say they have more than 300 million users and some users have millions of followers reading their comments.

The Internet also has given the public an unusual opportunity to publicize accusations of official misconduct.

A local party official in China's southwest was fired in November after scenes from a videotape of him having sex with a young woman spread quickly on the Internet. Screenshots were uploaded by a former journalist in Beijing, Zhu Ruifeng, to his Hong Kong website, an online clearing house for corruption allegations.

Some industry analysts suggest allowing Web surfers in a controlled setting to vent helps communist leaders stay abreast of public sentiment in their fast-changing society. Still, microblog services and online bulletin boards are required to employ censors to enforce content restrictions. Researchers say they delete millions of postings a day.

The government says the latest Internet regulation before the National People's Congress is aimed at protecting Web surfers' personal information and cracking down on abuses such as junk e-mail. It would require users to report their real names to Internet service and telecom providers.

The main ruling party newspaper, People's Daily, has called in recent weeks for tighter Internet controls, saying rumors spread online have harmed the public. In one case, it said stories about a chemical plant explosion resulted in the deaths of four people in a car accident as they fled the area.

Proposed rules released this month by the General Administration of Press and Publications would bar Chinese-foreign joint ventures from publishing books, music, movies and other material online in China. Publishers would be required to locate their servers in China and have a Chinese citizen as their local legal representative.

That is in line with rules that already bar most foreign access to China's media market, but the decision to group the restrictions together and publicize them might indicate official attitudes are hardening.

That comes after the party was rattled by foreign news reports about official wealth and misconduct.

In June, Bloomberg News reported that Xi's extended family has amassed assets totaling $376 million, though it said none was traced to Xi. The government has blocked access to Bloomberg's website since then.

In October, The New York Times reported that Premier Wen Jiabao's relatives had amassed $2.7 billion since he rose to national office in 2002. Access to the Times' Chinese-language site has been blocked since then.

Previous efforts to tighten controls have struggled with technical challenges in a country with more than 500 million Internet users.

Microblog operators such as Sina Corp. and Tencent Ltd. were ordered in late 2011 to confirm users' names but have yet to finish the daunting task.

Web surfers can circumvent government filters by using virtual private networks software that encrypts Web traffic and is used by companies to transfer financial data and other sensitive information. But VPN users say disruptions that began in 2011 are increasing, suggesting Chinese regulators are trying to block encrypted traffic.

Curbs on access to foreign sites have prompted complaints by companies and Chinese scientists and other researchers.

In July, the American Chamber of Commerce in China said 74 percent of companies that responded to a survey said unstable Internet access "impedes their ability to do business."

Chinese leaders "realize there are detrimental impacts on business, especially foreign business, but they have counted the cost and think it is still worthwhile," said Lam. "There is no compromise about the political imperative of controlling the Internet."

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As authorities try to confirm the identity of a body found in the home of a gunman who set his house ablaze and killed two firefighters, two others who survived the attack say they're thankful for the support they've received.

West Webster volunteer firefighters Joseph Hofstetter and Theodore Scardino, who had been in guarded condition, were upgraded to satisfactory condition on Wednesday at Rochester's Strong Memorial Hospital.

The hospital released a statement from them saying they were "humbled and a bit overwhelmed by the outpouring of well wishes for us and our families."

The firefighters said their "thoughts and prayers" were with the families of colleagues Michael Chiapperini and Tomasz Kaczowka, killed by William Spengler Jr., a convicted felon barred from having guns. Funerals are set for the next few days for Chiapperini and Kaczowka.

Authorities said Spengler set a car on fire and touched off an "inferno" in his Webster home on a strip of land along the Lake Ontario shore, took up a sniper's position and opened fire on the first firefighters to arrive at about 5:30 a.m. on Christmas Eve.

Spengler, 62, traded rifle fire with a Webster police officer who had accompanied the firefighters and then killed himself with a gunshot to the head.

Investigators found a rambling, two- to three-page typed letter laying out Spengler's intention to destroy his neighborhood and "do what I like doing best, killing people."

Investigators, meanwhile, traced the gunman's weapons and tried to confirm that remains found in the house are those of Spengler's sister, Cheryl Spengler. That still hasn't been confirmed and it is not known how she died.

The Spengler siblings had lived in the home with their mother, Arline Spengler, who died in October. In all, seven houses were destroyed by the flames.

There also was no word from authorities about how William Spengler, who served time for his grandmother's beating death, got three guns found with his body: a military-style Bushmaster .223-caliber semiautomatic rifle, a 12-gauge shotgun and a .38-caliber revolver. The rifle, which had a combat-style flash suppressor, is the same make and caliber as one used by a gunman to massacre 20 children and six women at a Newtown, Conn., elementary school earlier this month.

Federal authorities confirmed Wednesday they had traced the sale of the weapons, but they didn't release details.

Spengler spent 17 years in prison for beating his paternal grandmother to death with a hammer in 1980. He had been released from parole on the manslaughter conviction in 2006, and authorities said they had had no encounters with him since.

Police Chief Gerald Pickering said investigators believe Spengler used the rifle to attack the firefighters because of the distance involved. He said police may never know Spengler's motive.

Chiapperini, who also was a police lieutenant, was driving a pumper with Scardino on board when bullets blasted the windshield. He and Kaczowka died at the scene. Hofstetter was hit in the pelvis, and Scardino was hit in the shoulder and knee.

A passing off-duty officer from the town of Greece was treated for shrapnel wounds from gunfire that hit his car.

Hearses carrying the coffins of Chiapperini and Kaczowka were escorted to West Webster Fire Station 1, where they were met by emergency vehicles with their lights flashing in salute.

Calling hours for the two men will be at Webster Schroeder High School on Friday and Saturday. A funeral for Chiapperini is scheduled for Sunday at the school, with burial in West Webster Cemetery.

A funeral Mass for Kaczowka, who worked as a Monroe County emergency dispatcher, will be held Monday in Rochester at St. Stanislaus Church, with burial at Holy Sepulchre Cemetery.

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SEATTLE (AP) Even Mark Zuckerberg's family can get tripped up by Facebook's privacy settings.

A picture that Zuckerberg's sister posted on her personal Facebook profile was seen by a marketing director, who then posted the picture to Twitter and her more than 40,000 followers Wednesday.

That didn't sit well with Zuckerberg's sister, Randi, who tweeted at Callie Schweitzer that the picture was meant for friends only and that posting the private picture on Twitter was "way uncool." Schweitzer replied by saying the picture popped up on her Facebook news feed.

The picture shows four people standing around a kitchen staring at their phones with their mouths open while Mark Zuckerberg is in the background.

Randi Zuckerberg, who used to run Facebook's marketing department and now produces a reality television show, eventually said Schweitzer was able to see the picture because they had a mutual friend. Those tweets have since been taken down.

Schweitzer declined to comment when reached by The Associated Press. Randi Zuckerberg didn't reply to a message via Twitter seeking comment.

Randi Zuckerberg used the dustup to write about online sharing etiquette.

"Digital etiquette: always ask permission before posting a friend's photo publicly. It's not about privacy settings, it's about human decency," she posted on Twitter.

But Randi Zuckerberg's comments sparked sharp reactions from people who thought the issue wasn't about etiquette, but rather Facebook's often changing and often confusing privacy settings.

"The thing that bugged me about Randi Zuckerberg's response is that she used her name as a bludgeoning device. Not everyone has that. She used her position to get it taken it down," said Eva Galperin of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a privacy advocacy group in San Francisco.

While Facebook has made improvements in explaining the social network's privacy settings, Galperin said they remain confusing to most people. She added that with people using Facebook as part of their everyday lives, the consequences of fumbling privacy settings can become serious.

"Even Randi Zuckerberg can get it wrong. That's an illustration of how confusing they can be," she said.

The Menlo Park, Calif., company recently announced it is changing its privacy settings with the aim of making it easier for users to navigate them.

The fine-tuning will include several revisions that will start rolling out to Facebook's more than 1 billion users during the next few weeks and continue into early next year.

The most visible change and perhaps the most appreciated will be a new "privacy shortcuts" section that appears as a tiny lock at the top right of people's news feeds. This feature offers a drop-down box where users can get answers to common questions such as "Who can see my stuff?"

But Galperin said Wednesday's incident also illustrates a general concern about Internet privacy. Essentially, she said, if you share information or a photo with your social network, people in your network have the ability to share that with whomever else they choose.

The mobile photo-sharing service Instagram, which is owned by Facebook Inc., had to answer to backlash to privacy concerns recently when new terms of service suggested user photos could be used in advertisements. The company later said it would remove the questionable language.

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Manuel Valdes can be reached at http://twitter.com/ByManuelValdes .

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LOS ANGELES (AP) Long lines of cars and people formed Wednesday to take advantage of a guns-for-groceries exchange program that was moved up in the wake of the Connecticut school shooting.

Police officers filled bins with more than 1,500 rifles and handguns outside the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena and the Van Nuys Masonic Temple, according to the Los Angeles Daily News.

Officials were mindful of both the massacre of students and teachers in Newtown, Conn., and a gunman's ambush that killed two firefighters in Webster, N.Y.

"All of us are still mourning the tragedy at Newtown, Conn.," said Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. "So many young innocent children were mass-murdered in the way that they were, and now the assassination of two firefighters ... just breaks the heart of so many of us, particularly in this holiday season."

The anonymous buyback program allowed weapons to be turned in with no questions asked. Handguns, rifles and shotguns could be exchanged for $100 Ralphs grocery store gift cards. Assault weapons earned a $200 card.

The program, designed to get guns off the streets, usually is held in May. Villaraigosa decided to do it now in the wake of the Dec. 14 shooting rampage at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

The last buyback netted about 1,700 guns.

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LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Toyota Motor Corp. said Wednesday it has reached a settlement worth more than $1 billion in a case involving unintended acceleration problems in its vehicles.

The company said the deal will resolve hundreds of lawsuits from Toyota owners who said the value of their cars and trucks plummeted after a series of recalls stemming from claims that Toyota vehicles accelerated unintentionally.

Steve Berman, a lawyer representing Toyota owners, said the settlement is the largest in U.S. history involving automobile defects.

"We kept fighting and fighting and we secured what we think was a good settlement given the risks of this litigation," Berman told The Associated Press.

The proposed deal was filed Wednesday and must receive the approval of U.S. District Judge James Selna, who was expected to review the settlement Friday.

Toyota said it will take a one-time, $1.1 billion pre-tax charge against earnings to cover the estimated costs of the settlement. Berman said the total value of the deal is between $1.2 billion and $1.4 billion.

Hundreds of lawsuits have been filed against Toyota since 2009, when the Japanese automaker started receiving numerous complaints that its cars accelerated on their own, causing crashes, injuries and even deaths.

The cases were consolidated in U.S. District Court in Santa Ana and divided into two categories: economic loss and wrongful death. Claims by people who seek compensation for injury and death due to sudden acceleration are not part of the settlement; the first trial involving those suits is scheduled for February.

As part of the economic loss settlement, Toyota will offer cash payments from a pool of about $250 million to eligible customers who sold vehicles or turned in leased vehicles between September 2009 and December 2010.

The company also will launch a $250 million program for 16 million current owners to provide supplemental warranty coverage for certain vehicle components, and it will retrofit about 3.2 million vehicles with a brake override system. An override system is designed to ensure a car will stop when the brakes are applied, even if the accelerator pedal is depressed.

The settlement would also establish additional driver education programs and fund new research into advanced safety technologies.

"In keeping with our core principles, we have structured this agreement in ways that work to put our customers first and demonstrate that they can count on Toyota to stand behind our vehicles," said Christopher Reynolds, Toyota vice president and general counsel.

Current and former Toyota owners are expected to receive more information about the settlement in the coming months. Some information is also available at http://www.ToyotaELsettlement.com , a website created for Toyota owners affected by the settlement.

"We are extraordinarily proud of how we were able to represent the interests of Toyota owners, and believe this settlement is both comprehensive in its scope and fair in compensation," Berman said.

Toyota has recalled more than 14 million vehicles worldwide due to acceleration problems in several models and brake defects with the Prius hybrid. The automaker has blamed driver error, faulty floor mats and stuck accelerator pedals for the problems.

Plaintiffs' attorneys have spent the past two years deposing Toyota employees, poring over thousands of documents and reviewing software code, but the company maintains those lawyers have been unable to prove that a design defect namely Toyota's electronic throttle control system was responsible for vehicles surging unexpectedly.

Both the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and NASA were unable to find any defects in Toyota's source code that could cause problems.

The company has been dogged by fines for not reporting problems in a timely manner.

Earlier this month, NHTSA doled out a record $17.4 million fine to Toyota for failing to quickly report floor mat problems with some of its Lexus models. Toyota paid a total of $48.8 million in fines for three violations in 2010.

Toyota President Akio Toyoda appeared before Congress last year and pledged to strengthen quality control. Recent sales figures show the company appears to have rebounded following its safety issues.

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Settlement website: http://www.ToyotaELsettlement.com

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NEW YORK (Reuters) - Actresses Natalie Portman and Kristen Stewart are Hollywood's most bankable stars and provide studios with the highest average returns for their films, according to Forbes.com.

Academy award winner Portman topped the list of best actors for the buck, providing about $42.70 for every dollar she earns.

"Black Swan," for which she won her best actress Oscar, was produced for an estimated $13 million and earned $329 million in global box office sales.

"We estimate that for every dollar Portman is paid by the studios, she returns $42.70. Compare that to Eddie Murphy, our most overpaid star, who returns $2.30 for every dollar he gets paid," Forbes.com said.

"Twilight" star Stewart was not far behind, bringing in $40.60. She also topped the Forbes list of highest-earning actresses with an estimated $34.5 million in salary in 2012.

"Stewart was able to earn a ton over the last three years and offer a healthy return thanks to 'Twilight,'" according to Forbes.com. "Even though she was paid $25 million to star in the last two films, she was clearly worth the money."

Forbes.com analyzed salaries, estimated box office grosses from the actor's last three films over the previous three years to calculate the studio's return on investment. The most bankable stars tended to be featured in the most profitable films.

Stewart's two co-stars in the "Twilight" films were also good investments for the studio. Robert Pattinson came in fourth with a return of $31.70 and Taylor Lautner was No. 6, making $29.50 for the studio for every dollar he was paid.

(This story was refiled to correct spelling of Kristen)

(Editing by Steve Orlofsky)

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HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) Some of the police officers who responded to the school shooting in Newtown are so traumatized they haven't been working, but they have to use sick time and could soon be at risk of going without a paycheck, a union official said Wednesday.

The union, Council 15 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, is seeking more generous assistance in talks with the town's insurer. It is also reaching out to lawmakers and the governor's office with proposals to modify state law and expand workers' compensation benefits for officers who witness horrific crime scenes.

"The insurer for the town has taken a position that these officers are entitled to only what the statute allows. Unfortunately for these officers, the statute doesn't allow any benefits," said Eric Brown, an attorney for the union, which represents nearly 4,000 officers around Connecticut.

A gunman shot his way into Sandy Hook Elementary School on Dec. 14 and slaughtered 20 first-graders and six educators. The gunman, who had also killed his mother that morning, committed suicide as police arrived.

Brown said that the number of officers "critically affected" by the tragedy is below 15 and that a small number of them are not currently working.

A spokesman for Newtown police, Lt. George Sinko, said the officers are generally holding up well.

"A couple of them are taking it harder than some of the other ones," he said. "The things that the officers had to experience underscores the need to support them in every way possible."

Officials with the town's insurer, the Connecticut Interlocal Risk Management Agency, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Authorities say the victims were shot with a high-powered, military-style rifle loaded with ammunition designed to inflict maximum damage. All the victims had been shot at least twice, the medical examiner said, and as many as 11 times. Two victims were pronounced dead at a hospital, while all others died in the school.

In the past, advocates have pushed to change the statutes on workers' compensation, which currently include provisions for officers who suffer mental impairment as the result of using or being subjected to deadly force but not for those who witness crime scenes with mass casualties.

Concerns about the potential cost to cities and towns have been an obstacle, but the issue is likely to resurface in the next legislation session, said state Rep. Stephen Dargan, a West Haven Democrat who is co-chairman of the legislature's public safety committee.

"We don't want it to be used in an abusive way, but the circumstances are so horrific in Newtown. We need to protect those first responders and give them all the help we can give them," he said.

Firefighters who responded to the scene at Sandy Hook also have described struggling with feelings of frustration and anguish, but said they were grateful they were spared from witnessing the scene that greeted police inside the school.

Brown said outside agencies have been meeting demands for counseling services, but it will be important to ensure support is in place over the long term. The officers who are not working also could use up available sick time by early January, he said.

"The emotional loads they're carrying far exceed anything they could imagine," Brown said.

Police have yet to offer a possible motive for gunman Adam Lanza's rampage.

Expansive memorials throughout the small New England town have become gathering points for residents and visitors alike. A steady stream of well-wishers have taken pictures, dropped off toys and fought back tears at a huge sidewalk memorial in the center of Newtown's Sandy Hook section that is filled with stuffed animals, poems, flowers, posters and cards.

Newtown officials plan to convert into a memorial the countless mementos paying tribute to the schoolhouse victims. Thousands of flowers, letters, signs, photos, candles, teddy bears and other items at sites around town will be turned into soil and blocks to be used in a memorial, The News Times in nearby Danbury reported.

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