Push for online sales taxes pick up steam in Congress

U.S. states could collect millions of dollars in online sales taxes, with members of both parties in Congress sponsoring legislation Thursday that would resolve states' decades-long struggle to tax businesses beyond their borders.

"Small businesses and states alike are suffering from the inability to collect due -- not new -- taxes from purchases made online," said Rep. Steve Womack, R-Ark., adding the legislation is a "bipartisan, bicameral, common-sense solution that promotes states' rights and levels the playing field for our Main Street businesses."

Legislation on the Amazon tax, named for the colossal Internet retailer, has languished for years.

In 1992 the Supreme Court decided the patchwork of state tax laws made it too difficult for online retailers to collect and remit sales taxes. So states can tax Internet only sales made by companies with a physical presence in the states. That means online retailers such as Amazon.com Inc. collect sales tax in some states and not in others.

The bills introduced on Thursday reconcile differences in legislation that the House of Representatives and Senate considered last year. The nearly identical details in the bills and strong bipartisan support mean the final bill could be sent to President Barack Obama this year.

Members of Congress recently assured state lawmakers they would pass a law in 2013.

In the last decade, Internet sales have gone from 1.6 percent of all U.S. retail sales to more than 5 percent, according to Commerce Department data, a proportion that will likely grow as shoppers make more purchases on handheld devices. In the third quarter of 2012,  "e-commerce" sales were $57 billion, the department said.

Large Internet retailers are worried the tax could drive up the cost of doing business. They would also have to create new systems and software to collect the surcharges, adding to their costs. Amazon said in July it prefers having the tax issue resolved at the federal level.

When the 2007-09 recession caused states' revenues to collapse, Republican and Democratic governors backed the tax as a financial solution that would not require federal aid.

A leader in the Republican party, Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell went so far as to figure online tax revenue into his recent plan for overhauling the state's transportation funding.

"The revenue states are losing out on is legally owed, but because of a pre-Internet Supreme Court ruling, states aren't able to collect it," Sen. Deb Peters, R-S.D., said in a statement.

States and cities say they can recoup billions of dollars with the tax. Fitch Ratings estimates put the states' loss at $11 billion.

Some states are considering their own legislation. Florida is debating a bill that advocates say could bring the state more than $400 million.

Small retailers, meanwhile, have said the sales tax will will allow them to compete with massive online retailers.

"While store owners collect and remit state and local sales taxes their digital competitors are off the hook -- and benefiting because of it," said David French, the National Retail Federation's senior vice president for government relations, in a statement.

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Anxiety grows as Chicago Public Schools narrows closing list

After trimming the number of schools that could be closed to 129, Mayor Rahm Emanuel's school administration on Wednesday entered the latest and what is likely to be the most intense phase so far in trying to determine which schools should be shut.

Chicago Public Schools chief Barbara Byrd-Bennett is expected to pare the preliminary list before unveiling a final one at the end of March. She said administrators will determine which schools are saved in the coming weeks amid a final round of community meetings to hear arguments from parents, teachers and community groups about why their schools should stay open.

If a hearing Wednesday night in North Lawndale was any indication, CPS still has a long way to go to gain the public's trust.

"Our schools don't need to close," Dwayne Truss, vice chairman of CPS' Austin Community Action Council, said in front of hundreds of people packed inside a church auditorium in the West Side neighborhood. "CPS is perpetrating a myth that there's a budget crisis."

CPS initially said 330 of its schools are underenrolled, the chief criterion for closing. Members of a commission assembled to gather public input on the issue told CPS officials earlier this year that closing a large number of schools would create too much upheaval. The Tribune, citing sources, said the commission indicated a far smaller number should be closed than initially feared, possibly as few as 15.

CPS then started holding its own hearings and on Wednesday, while following many of the formal recommendations made by the Commission on School Utilization, said 129 schools still fit the criteria for closing.

The new number and the latest round of hearings sets the stage for the administration to counter questions about the district's abilities to close a large number of schools and the need to do so.

For many who have already turned up to school closing meetings, this final round of hearings will be even more critical. School supporters must show how they plan to turn around academic performance and build enrollment, and also make the case for any security problems that would be created by closing their school.

"We are prepared now to move to the next level of conversation with our community and discuss a list of approximately 129 schools that still require further vetting and further conversation," Bryd-Bennett said. "We are going to take these 129 and continue to sift through these schools."

In the past, political clout has played a role in the district's final decisions. Already this year, several aldermen have spoken out on behalf of schools in their wards.

On the Near Northwest Side, for instance, the initial list of 330 underused schools included about six in the 1st Ward. Ald. Proco "Joe" Moreno helped organize local school council members, school administrators and parents to fight any closing. He also took that fight to leaders in City Hall and within CPS' bureaucracy. Nearly all of the schools in the ward were excluded from the list of 129.

"It is effort and it's organizing and not just showing up at meetings and yelling. Anybody can do that," Moreno said. "Those schools that proactively work before those meetings and explain what they are doing, what they need and that they are willing to accept new students, that's when politics works.

"My responsibility in this juncture was to focus on these schools," he said. "I had to work on the inside, with CPS and with City Hall, and with my schools on the outside."

Most of the schools on the list of 129 are on the West, South and Southwest sides, many in impoverished neighborhoods that saw significant population loss over the last decade. Largely spared were the North and Northwest sides.

In all, more than 43,000 students attend those 129 schools on the preliminary list, according to CPS records.

The area with the most schools on the list is a CPS network (the district groups its schools in 14 networks) that runs roughly from Madison Street south to 71st Street and from the lake to State Street. The preliminary list includes 24 schools in that area.

The Englewood-Gresham network has the second-largest number, 19, while the Austin-North Lawndale network where Wednesday night's meeting was held still has 16 schools on the list.

CPS critics said the preliminary list is still too large to be meaningful and that the district's promise to trim it before March 31 is only a tactic to make the final number seem reasonable.

"They started out with such a far-fetched, exaggerated list of schools, many of which are nowhere near underutilized," said Wendy Katten, co-founder of the parent group Raise Your Hand. "They might appear to be looking like they're listening, but they're not. They have not done a thorough and substantive assessment of these schools."

Following the commission's recommendations, CPS last month removed high schools and schools performing at a high level academically from consideration. On Wednesday, the district said schools with more than 600 students or utilization rates of at least 70 percent have also been taken out of consideration for closing.

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Use of Morning-After Pill Is Rising, Report Says

The use of morning-after pills by American women has more than doubled in recent years, driven largely by rising rates of use among women in their early 20s, according to new federal data released Thursday.

The finding is likely to add to the public debate over rules issued by the Obama administration under the new health care law that require most employers to provide free coverage of birth control, including morning-after pills, to female employees. Some religious institutions and some employers have objected to the requirement and filed lawsuits to block its enforcement.

Morning-after pills, which help prevent pregnancy after sex, were used by 11 percent of sexually active women from 2006 to 2010, the period of the study. That was up from just 4 percent in 2002. Nearly one in four women between the ages of 20 and 24 who had ever had sex have used the pill at some point, the data show.

Morning-after pills are particularly controversial among some conservative groups who contend they can cause abortions by interfering with the implantation of a fertilized egg that the groups regard as a person.

Medical experts say that portrayal is inaccurate, and that studies provide strong evidence that the most commonly used pills do not hinder implantation, but work by delaying or preventing ovulation so that an egg is never fertilized in the first place, or thicken cervical mucus so sperm have trouble moving.

This month, the Obama administration offered a proposal that could expand the number of groups that do not need to provide or pay for birth control coverage. But the proposal did not end the political fight over the issue, which legal experts say may end up in the Supreme Court.

The new data was released by the National Center for Health Statistics and based on interviews with more than 12,000 women from 2006 to 2010. Researchers asked sexually active women if they had ever used emergency contraception, “also known as Plan B, Preven or morning-after pills,” as well as about their use of other forms of birth control.

Over all, 99 percent of sexually active women ages 15 to 44 have used contraception at some point in their lives, or about 53 million women, up slightly from 2002. An earlier report found that 62 percent of all women of reproductive age were currently using some form of birth control.

The new report found that 98.6 percent of sexually active Catholic women had used contraception at some point, but the data did not show how many Catholic women currently use contraception.

Condom use has risen markedly. More than 93 percent of women said they had partners who had used condoms at some point, compared with 82 percent of women in 1995, a likely effect of strong public advocacy for condom use during the AIDS epidemic.

In contrast, women who had used intrauterine devices, or IUDs, at some point in their lives declined to about 8 percent from 10 percent in 1995. The use of birth control pills has remained steady since 1995 at 82 percent.

Eighty-nine percent of white women said they had used birth control pills at some point, compared with 67 percent of Hispanic women, 78 percent of black women and 57 percent of Asian women.

Education played a role in the type of contraception used. Forty percent of women without a high school diploma said they chose sterilization, while just 10 percent of women with a bachelor’s degree said they used that method. Those without a high school diploma were also far more likely to use three-month injectables, like Depo-Provera — 36 percent compared with 13 percent of women with a college degree.

About 12 percent of college graduates said they had used emergency contraception, while 7 percent of women with only a high school degree said they had used it.

Educated women were far more likely to have practiced periodic abstinence based on the menstrual cycle. About 28 percent of women with a master’s degree or higher had practiced this method, while just 13 percent of women without a high school diploma had, the report found.

White women, American-born Hispanic women and black women were most likely to practice withdrawal, with more than half of women in each group saying they have used that method. Just 44 percent of foreign-born Hispanics said they practiced withdrawal.

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Sources: American, US Airways boards approve merger

The boards of AMR Corp and US Airways Group Inc each met on Wednesday to approve a merger that would create the world's largest airline with an expected market value of around $11 billion, people familiar with the matter said.

The all-stock merger, which is set to be announced early on Thursday, would finalize the consolidation of legacy U.S. air carriers that helped put the industry on a more solid financial footing.

AMR's bankruptcy creditors will own 72 percent of the combined airline, which will do business under the American Airlines brand and be based in Fort Worth, Texas, the people said. US Airways shareholders will own the rest.

The board approval came after AMR's unsecured creditors committee, which includes all three of AMR's major unions, met earlier on Wednesday to approve a proposed merger agreement, the people said.

The merged company will have a board of 12 members: four from US Airways including its chief executive Doug Parker, three from AMR including chief executive Tom Horton and five to be designated by the AMR creditors, two of the people said.

That will shrink to 11 members in 2014 after Horton steps down following the combined company's first annual meeting, the person added. Parker becomes chief executive of the new airline.

AMR's unsecured creditors are expected to be made whole on their claims in the form of stock in the merged company and also get accrued interest, the people said. AMR's shareholders will get a small equity stake as well, they added.

All the sources asked not to be named because the matter was not public. US Airways declined to comment while AMR representatives could not be immediately reached for comment.

The deal comes more than 14 months after the bankrupt parent of American Airlines filed for bankruptcy in November 2011, and would mark the last combination of legacy U.S. carriers, following the Delta-Northwest and United-Continental mergers.

A tie-up with US Airways would create the world's top airline by passenger traffic and help American and US Air better compete with United Continental Holdings and Delta Air Lines.

Some $11 billion valuation of the combined American-US Airways compares to the roughly $12.4 billion market capitalization for Delta, and $8.7 billion for United Continental.

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Obama: Work on restoring middle class 'unfinished'

WASHINGTON — In the first State of the Union address of his second term, President Obama tried to breathe new life into his economic agenda, offering measures to spur growth and urging Congress to revive stalled talks over deficit reduction.

Entering his fifth year presiding over a flagging economy, the president declared the restoration of a strong middle class "our unfinished task" and called on a deeply divided Congress to find "reasonable compromise" to solve the nation's lingering fiscal ills.

Obama renewed a series of proposals to boost U.S. manufacturing, aid struggling homeowners and invest in infrastructure. He proposed raising the minimum wage, issued a call for tax reform and vowed to seek a deficit reduction deal that balances tax increases with changes to entitlement programs.

"It is our generation's task, then, to reignite the true engine of America's economic growth — a rising, thriving middle class," Obama told lawmakers gathered in the House chamber.

The hourlong speech largely abandoned the high, hopeful tone and delivery of the president's inaugural address last month, taking instead a wonkier and aggressive turn toward the next fight facing Washington — a standoff over the budget.

Obama and Republicans in Congress are hurtling toward another clash over deep spending cuts scheduled to take effect on March 1. The cuts, which economists think could stall economic growth, were passed as a way to force lawmakers to compromise on a less arbitrary approach to reducing the nation's $16-trillion debt. Obama suggested he would go further than he has in the past toward making changes to Medicare to curb spending, although he was not specific.

"I am open to additional reforms from both parties, so long as they don't violate the guarantee of a secure retirement," Obama said. "Our government shouldn't make promises we cannot keep — but we must keep the promises we've already made."

He touted progress on many fronts since he took office near the height of the recession and amid two wars. "We have cleared away the rubble of crisis," Obama said, pointing to job growth and improvements in the housing market.

He also announced plans to cut the number of troops in Afghanistan in half over the next year, a significant acceleration of his original timetable. "This drawdown will continue. And by the end of next year, our war in Afghanistan will be over," Obama said.

In the Republican response, Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida complained of what he called Obama's "obsession" with raising taxes and urged him to work with Republicans to encourage economic expansion.

"Mr. President, I don't oppose your plans because I want to protect the rich," Rubio said. "I oppose your plans because I want to protect my neighbors, hard-working, middle-class Americans who don't need us to come up with a plan to grow the government. They want a plan to grow the middle class."

Obama's annual addresses to Congress chronicle the way he has scaled back his legislative ambitions. In 2009, the newly elected president outlined a raft of government responses to the economic "reckoning" facing the country. By 2012, after a year of lurching from one fight to another with a GOP-led House of Representatives and with a reelection on the horizon, he offered only piecemeal executive orders and tougher talk, vowing to "fight obstruction with action."

His speech Tuesday continued in that realpolitik mode. Obama pledged to take executive action on climate change if Congress did not act "soon," and he announced plans to create a commission to review irregularities at polling places, an issue Congress was unlikely to address.

With an eye on his legacy, Obama appeared careful not to trip up negotiations on matters that appear to be moving through Congress. Last month, he laid out his markers on two of his top priorities — gun control measures and immigration reform — and lawmakers are working on legislation behind the scenes. On Tuesday, he avoided heated rhetoric, making emotional, but brief, references to both.

Still, as he stepped into the House chamber, Obama was surrounded by reminders of the human element — and the political difficulties — behind his legislative agenda.

Democratic lawmakers brought victims of gun violence, including some of those affected by the December mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., the impetus for the president's gun control push. Citing his call for a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, as well as expanded background checks, Obama said Congress owed the victims and their families action on the measures.

"They deserve a vote," Obama said, as Democrats in the chamber chanted, "Vote!"

Republicans, too, issued invitations that underscored their positions. Natalie Hammond, a Sandy Hook teacher who was injured in the shooting, found herself in the same audience as Ted Nugent, the aging rocker and gun enthusiast who declared he'd be "dead or in jail" if Obama won a second term.

In line with recent tradition, First Lady Michelle Obama was accompanied by guests meant to underscore her husband's message. She sat with a Louisville, Ky., man retrained as a machinist, Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook and a Wisconsin brewing entrepreneur. She was also joined by the parents of Hadiya Pendleton, a Chicago teenager who was shot and killed just days after she traveled to Washington to perform in the president's inauguration parade and has become a symbol of the need for tougher gun laws.

Although the speech was largely focused on domestic issues, Obama defended the secretive CIA drone program, which targets suspected militants overseas, including Americans, in foreign countries. He aimed to answer critics, largely from within his own party, who have complained about its secrecy and questioned its legality.

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Alec Baldwin, wife expecting a baby this summer

NEW YORK (AP) — Alec Baldwin and his wife are expecting their first child together.

Publicist Matthew Hiltzik confirmed Tuesday that Hilaria Baldwin is due late this summer.

Alec Baldwin already is the father of a 17-year-old daughter, Ireland, from his previous marriage to actress Kim Basinger (BAY’-sing-ur). Hilaria Baldwin is a special correspondent for the TV show “Extra.” The couple wed last June after a three-month engagement.

Alec Baldwin recently won a SAG Award for best actor in a TV series for the NBC comedy “30 Rock,” which concluded its seven-year run two weeks ago.

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Well: Getting the Right Dose of Exercise

Phys Ed

Gretchen Reynolds on the science of fitness.

A common concern about exercise is that if you don’t do it almost every day, you won’t achieve much health benefit. But a commendable new study suggests otherwise, showing that a fairly leisurely approach to scheduling workouts may actually be more beneficial than working out almost daily.

For the new study, published this month in Exercise & Science in Sports & Medicine, researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham gathered 72 older, sedentary women and randomly assigned them to one of three exercise groups.

One group began lifting weights once a week and performing an endurance-style workout, like jogging or bike riding, on another day.

Another group lifted weights twice a week and jogged or rode an exercise bike twice a week.

The final group, as you may have guessed, completed three weight-lifting and three endurance sessions, or six weekly workouts.

The exercise, which was supervised by researchers, was easy at first and meant to elicit changes in both muscles and endurance. Over the course of four months, the intensity and duration gradually increased, until the women were jogging moderately for 40 minutes and lifting weights for about the same amount of time.

The researchers were hoping to find out which number of weekly workouts would be, Goldilocks-like, just right for increasing the women’s fitness and overall weekly energy expenditure.

Some previous studies had suggested that working out only once or twice a week produced few gains in fitness, while exercising vigorously almost every day sometimes led people to become less physically active, over all, than those formally exercising less. Researchers theorized that the more grueling workout schedule caused the central nervous system to respond as if people were overdoing things, sending out physiological signals that, in an unconscious internal reaction, prompted them to feel tired or lethargic and stop moving so much.

To determine if either of these possibilities held true among their volunteers, the researchers in the current study tracked the women’s blood levels of cytokines, a substance related to stress that is thought to be one of the signals the nervous system uses to determine if someone is overdoing things physically. They also measured the women’s changing aerobic capacities, muscle strength, body fat, moods and, using sophisticated calorimetry techniques, energy expenditure over the course of each week.

By the end of the four-month experiment, all of the women had gained endurance and strength and shed body fat, although weight loss was not the point of the study. The scientists had not asked the women to change their eating habits.

There were, remarkably, almost no differences in fitness gains among the groups. The women working out twice a week had become as powerful and aerobically fit as those who had worked out six times a week. There were no discernible differences in cytokine levels among the groups, either.

However, the women exercising four times per week were now expending far more energy, over all, than the women in either of the other two groups. They were burning about 225 additional calories each day, beyond what they expended while exercising, compared to their calorie burning at the start of the experiment.

The twice-a-week exercisers also were using more energy each day than they had been at first, burning almost 100 calories more daily, in addition to the calories used during workouts.

But the women who had been assigned to exercise six times per week were now expending considerably less daily energy than they had been at the experiment’s start, the equivalent of almost 200 fewer calories each day, even though they were exercising so assiduously.

“We think that the women in the twice-a-week and four-times-a-week groups felt more energized and physically capable” after several months of training than they had at the start of the study, says Gary Hunter, a U.A.B. professor who led the experiment. Based on conversations with the women, he says he thinks they began opting for stairs over escalators and walking for pleasure.

The women working out six times a week, though, reacted very differently. “They complained to us that working out six times a week took too much time,” Dr. Hunter says. They did not report feeling fatigued or physically droopy. Their bodies were not producing excessive levels of cytokines, sending invisible messages to the body to slow down.

Rather, they felt pressed for time and reacted, it seems, by making choices like driving instead of walking and impatiently avoiding the stairs.

Despite the cautionary note, those who insist on working out six times per week need not feel discouraged. As long as you consciously monitor your activity level, the findings suggest, you won’t necessarily and unconsciously wind up moving less over all.

But the more fundamental finding of this study, Dr. Hunter says, is that “less may be more,” a message that most likely resonates with far more of us. The women exercising four times a week “had the greatest overall increase in energy expenditure,” he says. But those working out only twice a week “weren’t far behind.”

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Downtown condo market showing signs of life

Downtown Chicago's condo market is on the rebound after many moribund years, as sales volume and pricing improve in a market constrained by a lack of inventory.

It's a rare piece of good news for downtown condo owners as well as for developers pondering projects and trying to line up financing.

With a steady stream of apartment projects delivering in the next two years, the lack of new condo construction could signal opportunities for companies interested in pursuing smaller projects in key neighborhoods because the demand is there. Until those projects materialize, condo owners looking to sell face a better market than they have in several years.

Sales of existing downtown condos rose 31.2 percent last year, to 4,675 units sold, while the median sales price of $300,000 was a gain of about 2.6 percent from 2011, according to data from Appraisal Research Counselors.

Another piece of good news for current condo owners: Of the 65 downtown buildings studied by the firm, the average sales price per square foot of units sold during the second half of last year rose while the number of distressed condo sales in those buildings saw a substantial drop. Distressed sales, which accounted for  28 percent of sales since 2010, fell to 17 percent of sales during the second half of 2012.

In addition, only 1,104 newly constructed condo units remain unsold downtown.

"When we see more transactions occurring, that's a really good indication of demand," said Gail Lissner, a vice president at the firm. "The look of the condo market has changed in terms of unsold inventory."

Lissner's remarks came Tuesday during a lunchtime briefing on the local housing market.

Most of the unsold inventory, more than 500 units, is in the South Loop and the bulk of it is in the newly named and repositioned 500-unit South Loop Luxury by Related.

The three buildings, once called One Museum Park West, 1600 Museum Park and Museum Park Place 2 were taken over by New York-based Related Cos. in July have been renamed the Grant, Adler Place and Harbor View, respectively.

Since December, 40 units there are under contract, according to Related Midwest, which officially launched sales in the project Tuesday.

Other new projects reporting positive sales trends are Park Monroe Phase II, a 48-unit adaptive reuse project with 16 sales and CA3, a 40-unit building with 18 sales.

"These are all great indicators of strong sales," Lissner said. "Price stabilization has occurred in the market. You don't hear people talking about bottoming out. That was so yesterday."

mepodmolik@tribune.com | Twitter @mepodmolik

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Hadiya's dad: 'Thanking God that these two guys are off the streets'

Two reputed gang members were out for revenge from a previous shooting when they opened fire on a group of students in a South Side park last month, killing 15-year-old Hadiya Pendleton in a heartbreaking case that has brought national attention to Chicago's rampant gun violence, police said.

Michael Ward, 18, and Kenneth Williams, 20, were each charged with first-degree murder, attempted murder and aggravated battery with a firearm in the Jan. 29 attack that also left two teens wounded.

Ward confessed to police that he and Williams mistook a Pendleton companion for rivals who had shot and wounded Williams last July, police Superintendent Garry McCarthy said at a news conference Monday night at the Area Central police headquarters.

Ward told police that he and Williams got out of their car, crept up on the group and opened fire in Harsh Park, McCarthy said. Williams then drove them from the scene, he said.

"The offenders had it all wrong. They thought the group they shot into included members of a rival gang. Instead it was a group of upstanding, determined kids who, like Hadiya, were repulsed by the gang lifestyle," said McCarthy, flanked by two dozen detectives and gang investigators who worked the case.

Detectives arrested the two Saturday night as the suspects were on their way to a suburban strip club to celebrate a friend's birthday, McCarthy said. Pendleton had been buried only hours earlier in a funeral attended by first lady Michelle Obama.

"I don't even know what to say about that," McCarthy said. "They were going out to celebrate at a strip club."

Williams did not confess and police have not recovered a weapon, McCarthy said. Both are due in bond court Tuesday.

Hadiya's father, Nathaniel Pendleton, said Monday night that news of the charges marked the first time since his daughter's slaying that he had a "legitimate" smile on his face.

"I'm ecstatic that they found the two guys," he told the Tribune during a brief telephone interview from Washington, D.C., where he and wife Cleopatra Cowley-Pendleton will attend the State of the Union address Tuesday as guests of President Barack Obama. "(I'm) thanking God that these two guys are off the streets, so that this doesn't happen to another innocent person."

Danetria Hutson, 15, who held Hadiya in her arms after she was shot, said she and others in the group have had nightmares since the shooting.

In addition to waking up in the middle of the night, Hutson, also a sophomore at King, said she and other in that group also haven't been able to bring themselves to hang out at parks since that day.

"A lot of us were actually paranoid because the guys were still out there," Hutson said in a telephone interview. "They knew where we went to school."

On Monday night, Hutson was a little frustrated because of the "ignorance" portrayed in social media, where some people are suggesting that Ward and Williams weren't involved in Hadiya's slaying. But Hutson felt a sigh of relief today when charges were announced against them.

"I just want to see how her family reacts," she said. "It gave me some closure, but I don't think (Hadiya's) family will get closure."

McCarthy said that two days before the killing, police had stopped Ward in his Nissan Sentra as part of a routine gang investigation. That information wound up being the starting point for detectives when witnesses in the shooting described seeing a similar car driving away from the shooting scene, he said.

Through surveillance and interviews — including several fruitful interviews with parolees in the neighborhood — detectives were able to home in on Ward and Williams, McCarthy said. On Saturday night, the decision was made to stop the two if they were spotted. Police watched as they departed in a caravan of cars headed to the strip club in Harvey. They were stopped near 67th Street and South King Drive and taken in for questioning.

McCarthy said Williams was shot July 11 at 39th Street and South Lake Park Avenue, and an arrest was made. But that gunman was let go after Williams refused to cooperate, McCarthy said.

McCarthy also noted that at the time of Hadiya's slaying, Ward was on probation for a weapons conviction. McCarthy said weak Illinois gun laws allowed Ward to avoid jail time because of the absence of mandatory minimum sentences.

"This incident did not have to occur," McCarthy said. "And if mandatory minimums existed in the state of Illinois, Michael Ward would not have been on the street to commit this heinous act."

In announcing the charges, McCarthy praised the "meticulous" detective work that led to the arrests, but he also expressed frustration that despite a $40,000 reward for information in the shooting, no one who had knowledge of the crime came forward.

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Bloomberg Lauds Companies for Cutting Salt Content

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, in the midst of a long-running campaign to change the eating habits of New Yorkers and consumers across the country, declared a victory against salt on Monday, as 21 companies, from Kraft and Goya to FreshDirect, said they had met the first stage in reductions in salt content in foods.

After focusing on reducing trans fats and smoking, Mr. Bloomberg turned his attention to salt in 2010, announcing that about 30 companies had signed up to reduce salt in foods by 25 percent within five years, as a way of lowering consumers’ blood pressure and saving lives lost to heart attack and stroke.

“These companies have a huge presence on our shelves and in our diets,” Mr. Bloomberg said at a news conference at City Hall as he announced the results, surrounded by a half-dozen executives of food companies.

The first stage focused on the low-hanging fruit — salsa, dips, bacon, ketchup, barbecue sauce, cold cuts, processed cheese, salad dressing, canned beans and pizza — foods whose salt content is so high that reducing it up to a point probably would not be noticed by many consumers.

Mr. Bloomberg called them “some of America’s most beloved and iconic foods,” suggesting that the cuts might have a disproportionately salutary effect. But Dr. Thomas A. Farley, the city’s health commissioner, said he did not know how much salt the results so far had removed from the average person’s diet.

One side effect of the salt reduction drive is that food companies are looking for salt substitutes to make food taste better.

The main way to do that is to add potassium chloride instead of sodium chloride, said Russ Moroz, vice president for research at Kraft Foods. But because potassium tends to have a bitter, mineral taste, other ingredients have to be added. He said these were proprietary secrets, and he declined to name them.

Potassium is good, Dr. Farley said, because it lowers blood pressure and most people do not get enough of it. It is removed from fruits and vegetable during processing, he said. Mr. Bloomberg said he thought fears of additives were overdone.

But a salt industry scientist said Monday that too much potassium could be bad for the kidneys, and that the “cocktail of chemical constituents” added to balance the bitterness and enhance the salty taste could present unknown risks, as those ingredients were undisclosed.

“They do it with one eye on the lab and the other eye on the label,” said Morton Satin, vice president for science and research at the Salt Institute, a trade association. “They make sure it’s below the level that the F.D.A. requires for it to be on the label.”

Mr. Satin said that the link between high blood pressure and salt was just “a theory,” and that reducing salt too much could have harmful effects, like iodine deficiency in children, a cause of mental retardation, and diabetes.

Some companies said reducing salt proved to be a popular marketing tool. Goya reported that it had reduced salt in its regular canned beans by 5 or 6 percent, without any drop in sales. “We tasted them, and you really wouldn’t notice the difference,” Joseph Perez, senior vice president of Goya Foods, said Monday.

Mr. Bloomberg said it might surprise many people to know that bread and rolls were the “biggest contributor” to salt in the diet. Eating a muffin, he said, could be worse than eating a small bag of Lays potato chips.

Bread makers are hard to spot on the list of companies that have pledged to reduce salt, perhaps, Mr. Satin said, because it is more difficult to make bread without salt. However, some companies, like Au Bon Pain, have reduced salt in some baked goods.

On an irreverent note, Mr. Bloomberg said that he loved Subway sandwiches and would eat his favorite, the Italian B.M.T. — it includes salami, pepperoni and ham — regardless of the salt content, but that he was glad that it now contained 27 percent less.

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