'Lincoln' leads race for British Academy Awards

LONDON (AP) — Historical biopic "Lincoln" leads the race for the British Academy Film Awards, with 10 nominations including best picture and best actor — but nothing for director Steven Spielberg.

Epic musical "Les Miserables" and boy-meets-tiger saga "Life of Pi" received nine nominations each Wednesday for Britain's equivalent of the Oscars. James Bond adventure "Skyfall" got eight — rare awards recognition for an action movie — and Iran hostage thriller "Argo" took seven.

"Lincoln" focuses on the last months in the life of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, as he struggled to end the Civil War and pass a constitutional amendment banning slavery.

Britain's Daniel Day-Lewis is nominated for leading actor for his uncanny embodiment of the iconic president, and there are supporting nominations for Sally Field as his wife Mary Todd Lincoln and Tommy Lee Jones as abolitionist firebrand Thaddeus Stevens.

The best picture nominees are "Lincoln," ''Les Miserables," ''Life of Pi," ''Argo" and Osama bin Laden thriller "Zero Dark Thirty."

"Les Miserables" is also a contender in the separate category of best British film, alongside "Anna Karenina," ''The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel," ''Seven Psychopaths" and "Skyfall."

"Les Mis" producer Tim Bevan said he was pleased with the movie's nine nominations, but surprised director Tom Hooper didn't make the shortlist.

"Steven Spielberg wasn't nominated for best director for 'Lincoln,' which tops the list, so it just goes to show how wide open it is this year," he said.

Ben Affleck is nominated both as director of "Argo" and as its leading actor. The other male acting contenders are Day-Lewis, Bradley Cooper for "Silver Linings Playbook," Hugh Jackman for "Les Miserables" and Joaquin Phoenix for "The Master."

"Skyfall" star Daniel Craig was snubbed, but the film received supporting acting nominations for Judi Dench's spy chief and Javier Bardem's scene-stealing baddie.

The best-actress shortlist includes 85-year-old "Amour" star Emmanuelle Riva — who was nominated for the same prize 52 years ago for "Hiroshima, Mon Amour" — Jennifer Lawrence for "Silver Linings Playbook," Jessica Chastain for "Zero Dark Thirty," Marion Cotillard for "Rust and Bone" and Helen Mirren for "Hitchcock."

Mirren said it had been wonderful to play Hitchcock's wife in Sacha Gervasi's film.

"Alma Reville was more than Hitchcock's wife, in many ways she was his muse, his assistant, his editor and more, and I am proud to have had the opportunity to portray her," Mirren said.

Besides Affleck, the heavyweight best-director list includes, Michael Haneke for Cannes Film Festival prize-winner "Amour," Quentin Tarantino for "Django Unchained," Ang Lee for "Life of Pi" and Kathryn Bigelow for "Zero Dark Thirty."

Poignant old-age portrait "Amour" is up for best foreign-language film, along with Norway's "Headhunters," Denmark's "The Hunt" and French films "Rust and Bone" and "Untouchable."

In recent years, the British awards, known as BAFTAs, have helped underdog films including "Slumdog Millionaire," ''The King's Speech" and "The Artist" gain momentum for Oscars success.

The winners will be announced at a ceremony in London on Feb. 10, two weeks before the Hollywood awards.

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Jill Lawless can be reached at http://Twitter.com/JillLawless

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Recipes for Health: Cauliflower and Tuna Salad — Recipes for Health

Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times

I have added tuna to a classic Italian antipasto of cauliflower and capers dressed with vinegar and olive oil. For the best results give the cauliflower lots of time to marinate.

1 large or 2 small or medium cauliflowers, broken into small florets

1 5-ounce can water-packed light (not albacore) tuna, drained

1 plump garlic clove, minced or pureéd

1/3 cup chopped flat-leaf parsley

3 tablespoons capers, drained and rinsed

1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

3 tablespoons sherry vinegar or champagne vinegar

6 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

Salt and freshly ground pepper

1. Place the cauliflower in a steaming basket over 1 inch of boiling water, cover and steam 1 minute. Lift the lid for 15 seconds, then cover again and steam for 5 to 8 minutes, until tender. Refresh with cold water, then drain on paper towels.

2. In a large bowl, break up the tuna fish and add the cauliflower.

3. In a small bowl or measuring cup, mix together the garlic, parsley, capers, lemon juice, vinegar, and olive oil. Season generously with salt and pepper. Add the cauliflower and toss together. Marinate, stirring from time to time, for 30 minutes if possible before serving. Serve warm, cold, or at room temperature.

Yield: Serves 6 as a starter or side dish

Advance preparation: You can make this up to a day ahead, but omit the parsley until shortly before serving so that it doesn’t fade. It keeps well in the refrigerator for up to 5 days.

Nutritional information per serving: 188 calories; 15 grams fat; 2 grams saturated fat; 2 grams polyunsaturated fat; 10 grams monounsaturated fat; 10 milligrams cholesterol; 8 grams carbohydrates; 3 grams dietary fiber; 261 milligrams sodium (does not include salt to taste); 9 grams protein

Martha Rose Shulman is the author of “The Very Best of Recipes for Health.”

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Disneyland fights multiday pass abuse by photographing holders

Workers at Disneyland and Disney California Adventure Park took photos of visitors entering the parks Tuesday as part of a new crackdown on abuse of multiday passes.

The photographing of guests — including children — delayed visitors' getting into the park by about 45 minutes, parkgoers said.

"They delayed literally thousands of people in line to do this process," said Bob Shoberg, a San Jose resident who visited Disneyland with his wife, daughters, in-laws and grandchildren.

Disneyland officials denied that guests suffered significant delays and said only multiday pass holders were photographed.

Disney has been struggling to stop several ticket brokers in Anaheim from buying multiday park passes and then "leasing" or "renting" them to visitors for individual days.

The scenario works like this: A ticket broker buys a three-day "park hopper" pass for $205 and rents the ticket to three guests for $99 a day. The broker makes a profit of $92, and the guests, who would otherwise pay $125 for a one-day "park hopper" ticket, save $26 each.

Disneyland prohibits visitors from sharing multiday passes, but the practice does not violate local laws.

To help stop the practice, Disneyland workers a few months ago began adding the names of parkgoers to the passes and requiring that they show identification at the front gate.

On Tuesday, Disneyland took the latest step of photographing visitors who are using a multiday pass for the first time, park spokeswoman Suzi Brown said.

When the pass is used a second time, Disneyland workers at the park turnstiles will see a photo of the guest pop up on a computer screen, she said. If the person at the turnstile is not the person shown on the screen, Brown said the guest won't be allowed to use the ticket.

Disneyland officials declined to say what percentage of visitors use multiday passes, but Brown said only a "very small percentage of guests" were photographed, and that did not cause a significant delay.

"So that our guests are not taken advantage of, we strongly advise that they only purchase tickets at Disneyland Resort, at our hotels or through an authorized seller to ensure that tickets are valid," Brown added.

Brown said the parks realized the problem was growing when park workers noticed ticket brokers waving signs hawking discounted passes on the streets around the park.

One business, Bestticketshere.com, says on its website that it rents multiday passes for Disneyland and Universal Studios. The website said the business guarantees its tickets will be accepted or customers will get a full refund.

In response to an email request for comment on Disneyland's new crackdown, the company wrote: "Is the ultimate goal to shut these companies down so everyone has to pay full price?"

Most theme parks take photographs of people who buy annual passes and affix them to the pass.

Universal Studios Hollywood uses fingerprints and cross-checks the names printed on the annual passes to ensure that the tickets are not shared, park officials said. At Raging Waters in San Dimas, annual pass buyers are photographed and their photo is affixed to the pass.

hugo.martin@latimes.com

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LAPD force exceeds 10,000 for the first time, officials say

For the first time in the city's history, Los Angeles' police force now exceeds 10,000 officers, city officials said Monday.

Appearing with LAPD Chief Charlie Beck to discuss the continued drop in crime last year, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said the department is budgeted for 10,023 officers, up from the 9,963 authorized over the last three years, during a deep budget crisis.

The staffing increase took effect Jan. 1, when 60 sworn officers moved into the LAPD from the General Services Department, which patrols parks, libraries and other municipal buildings, said Villaraigosa spokesman Peter Sanders. Those officers will continue to patrol city facilities, budget officials said.

Some questioned the significance of the staffing milestone, since the overall number of sworn officers employed by the city hasn't grown.

"It's an increase for show," said Kevin James, a candidate for mayor in the March 5 election who has questioned Villaraigosa's LAPD hiring goals. "The mayor really wanted to get to 10,000 one way or the other before he left office, and this was the way he could do it under the current budget constraints."

Los Angeles experienced a 10.5% decrease in gang crime and an 8.2% drop in violent crime last year, compared with 2011. The city had the lowest number of violent crimes per capita of any major city, including New York and Chicago, Villaraigosa said.

The mayor attributed those numbers — and a decade-long decline in crime — in large part to the expansion of the police force.

Villaraigosa originally promised to add 1,000 new officers to the department during the 2005 election campaign, criticizing then-Mayor James K. Hahn for failing to do so. Since then, he has succeeded in adding 800 officers, Sanders said. On Monday, Villaraigosa suggested that the addition of the final 200 will not be achieved until after June 30, when he leaves office.

"I would hope that the next mayor would, as we get out of this economic crisis, increase our Police Department to that 1,000," he said.

While Villaraigosa has been pushing for continued hiring at the LAPD, Beck has warned in recent weeks that the LAPD would lose 500 officers if voters fail to approve Proposition A, a half-cent sales tax measure on the March 5 ballot. That would represent more than half of the LAPD buildup accomplished by Villaraigosa.

Despite Beck's warnings, Villaraigosa said he is not ready to endorse Proposition A until the council makes a series of cost-cutting moves, such as turning over operation of the city zoo to a private entity.

Since Villaraigosa took office, homicides have decreased 38% and gang crime has dropped by a similar amount. The number of slayings has stayed largely the same over the last three years, with 297 homicides in 2010, 297 in 2011 and 298 last year. Overall crime dropped 1.4% last year. Property crimes, which are more numerous than violent crimes, increased for the first time in several years — driven in part by a 30% increase in cell phone thefts, officials said.

With little money to pay officers for overtime, the department has been compensating them with time off. The resulting staffing loss has been the equivalent of about 450 officers at any given time, according to department figures — a hit that has complicated crime-fighting strategies.

Preserving LAPD funding has become increasingly challenging for council members. For nine months they have debated whether to lay off dozens of civilian LAPD employees while continuing to hire enough police officers to maintain current staffing levels.

Councilman Paul Koretz, who opposed the layoffs, said the movement of the 60 building patrol officers to the LAPD was "a little smoke and mirrors." He questioned whether the LAPD buildup in the Villaraigosa era was financially sustainable.

"It just seems like we really never did the analysis to see if we could afford it," he said.

A defeat of the sales tax increase, which is projected to generate roughly $215 million in new revenue, would leave council members no choice but to roll back the size of the LAPD, Koretz said.

But Villaraigosa warned that would be dangerous, saying other California cities have seen upticks in crime after cutting back on officers.

"I know some people think that 10,000 cops is a magical illusion, a meaningless number, that more officers don't necessarily lead to a reduction in crime," said the mayor, adding: "Those critics talk a lot, but they're just plain wrong."

david.zahniser@latimes.com

richard.winton@latimes.com

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2nd Winehouse inquest confirms alcohol death

LONDON (AP) — Amy Winehouse died from accidental alcohol poisoning when she resumed drinking after a period of abstinence, a second coroner's inquest confirmed Tuesday.

Coroner Shirley Radcliffe ruled that the 27-year-old soul singer "died as a result of alcohol toxicity" and recorded a verdict of death by misadventure. She said there were no suspicious circumstances.

She said that Winehouse "voluntarily consumed alcohol — a deliberate act that took an unexpected turn and led to her death."

The Grammy-winning singer, who fought a very public battle with drug and alcohol abuse for years, was found dead at her London home on July 23, 2011, with empty vodka bottles scattered around her.

Radcliffe said a postmortem had found that Winehouse had a blood alcohol level five times the legal driving limit, and above a level that can prove fatal.

She said that that much alcohol could affect the central nervous system so much that a patient could "fall asleep and not wake up."

Pathologist Michael Sheaff told the inquest that Winehouse had likely suffered a respiratory arrest after consuming so much alcohol. The level in her blood was 416 milligrams per 100 milliliters, a blood alcohol level of 0.4 percent. The British legal driving limit is 0.08 percent.

Winehouse's family did not attend the 45-minute inquest, which was held after the original coroner was found to lack the proper qualifications for the job.

That coroner later resigned after her qualifications were questioned. She had been hired by her husband, the senior coroner for inner north London. But she had not been a registered lawyer in Britain for five years as required.

In Britain, inquests are held to determine the facts whenever someone dies unexpectedly, violently or in disputed circumstances.

Tuesday's verdict was the same as that produced by the first inquest in 2011.

The beehive-haired Winehouse shot to global fame with her 2006 album "Back to Black," which won five Grammys. But her erratic public behavior, turbulent private life and frequent health problems — which included seizures, emphysema and bulimia — often overshadowed her talent.

Tuesday's second inquest re-heard testimony from witnesses and experts including the bodyguard who found Winehouse dead, the police officer who investigated and a doctor who treated the singer as she tried to quit drugs and alcohol.

The doctor, Christina Romete, said Winehouse was "a highly intelligent individual, very determined and willful," who did not easily follow doctors' orders and resisted suggestions she seek psychological help.

She said the singer had successfully given up drugs after a period taking heroin, crack cocaine and marijuana, but had struggled to stop drinking, going through periods of abstinence followed by booze binges.

She started drinking a few days before her death, after being dry for almost two weeks.

"She said she started drinking again because she felt bored," said Romete, who saw Winehouse the day before she died.

"I asked Amy if she was going to stop drinking that evening, and she said she did not know," the doctor said.

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The New Old Age Blog: Who Should Receive Organ Transplants?

Joe Gammalo had been contending with pulmonary fibrosis, a scarring of the lungs, for more than a decade when he came to the Cleveland Clinic in 2008 seeking a lung transplant.

“It had gotten to the point where I was on oxygen all the time and in a wheelchair,” he told me in an interview. “I didn’t expect to live.”

Lung transplants are a dicey proposition, involving a huge surgical procedure, arduous follow-up, the lifelong use of potent immunosuppressive drugs and high rates of serious side effects. “It’s not like taking out an appendix,” said Dr. Marie Budev, the medical director of the clinic’s lung transplant program.

Only 50 to 57 percent of all recipients live for five years, she noted, and they will still die of their disease. But there’s no other treatment for pulmonary fibrosis.

Some medical centers would have turned Mr. Gammalo away. Because survival rates are even lower for older patients, guidelines from the International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation caution against lung transplants for those over 65, though they set no age limit.

But “we are known as an aggressive, high-risk center,” said Dr. Budev. So Mr. Gammalo was 66 when he received a lung; his newly found buddy, Clyde Conn, who received the other lung from the same donor, was 69.

You can’t mistake the trend: A graying population and revised policies determining who gets priority for donated organs, have led to a rising proportion of older adults receiving transplants.

My colleague Judith Graham has reported on the increase in heart transplants, but the pattern extends to other organs, too.

The number of kidney transplants performed annually on adults over 65 tripled between 1998 and last year, according to data from the Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients. In 2001, 7.4 percent of liver transplant recipients were over 65; last year, that rose to 13 percent.

The rise in elderly lung transplant candidates is particularly dramatic because, since 2005, a “lung allocation score” puts those at the highest mortality risk, rather than those who’ve waited longest, at the top of the list.

In 2001, about 3 percent of those on the wait list and of those transplanted were over 65; last year, older patients represented almost 18 percent of wait-listed candidates and more than a quarter of transplant recipients. (Medicare pays for the surgery, though patients face co-pays and considerable out-of-pocket costs, including for drugs and travel.)

The debate has grown, too: When the number of adults awaiting transplants keeps growing, but organ donations stay flat, is it desirable or even ethical that an increasing proportion of recipients are elderly?

Dr. Budev, who estimated that a third of her program’s patients are over 65, votes yes. As long as a program selects candidates carefully, “how can you deny them a therapy?” she asked. So the Cleveland Clinic has no age limit. “We feel that everyone should have a chance.”

At the University of Michigan, by contrast, the age limit remains 65, though Dr. Kevin Chan, the transplant program’s medical director, acknowledged that some fit older patients get transplanted.

“You can talk about this all day — it’s a tough one,” Dr. Chan said. Younger recipients have greater physiologic reserve to aid in the arduous recovery; older ones face higher risk of subsequent kidney failure, stroke, diabetes and other diseases, and, of course, their lifespans are shorter to begin with.

Donated lungs, fragile and prone to injury, are a particularly scarce commodity. Last year, surgeons performed 16,055 kidney transplants, 5,805 liver transplants and 1,949 heart transplants. Only1,830 patients received lung transplants.

“What if there’s a 35-year-old on a ventilator who needs the lung just as much?” Dr. Chan said. “Why should a 72-year-old possibly take away a lung from a 35-year-old?” Yet, he acknowledged, “it’s easy to look at the statistics and say, ‘Give the lungs to younger patients.’ At the bedside, when you meet this patient and family, it’s a lot different.”

These questions about who deserves scarce resources — those most likely to die without them? or those most likely to live longer with them? — will persist as the population ages. They’re also likely to arise when the International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation begins working towards revised guidelines this spring. (I’d also like to hear your take, below.)

Lots of 65- and 75-year-olds are very healthy. Yet transplants themselves can cause harm and there’s no backup, like dialysis. Without the transplant, they die. But when the transplant goes wrong, they also die.

More than four years post-transplant, the Cleveland Clinic’s “lung brothers” are success stories. Mr. Conn, who lives near Dayton, Ohio, can’t walk very far or lift more than 10 pounds, but he works part time as a real-estate appraiser and enjoys cruises with his wife.

Mr. Gammalo, a onetime musician, has developed diabetes, like nearly half of all lung recipients. But he went onstage a few weeks back to sing “Don’t Be Cruel” with his son’s rock band, “a highlight of both our lives,” he said.

Yet when I asked Mr. Conn, now 73, how he felt about having priority over a younger but healthier person, he paused. “It’s a good question,” he said, to which he had no answer.

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Paula Span is the author of “When the Time Comes: Families With Aging Parents Share Their Struggles and Solutions.”

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'Zero Dark Thirty' renews pressure on CIA over torture claims

WASHINGTON — Nearly a decade after the last Al Qaeda detainee was waterboarded, Americans still know little about what the CIA did to its prisoners, or whether it worked.

President Obama decided against an investigation to hold accountable George W. Bush administration and CIA officials who conceived and carried out what he and others believed were acts of torture. And a criminal investigation ended last year with no charges and no public report.

But now, a Hollywood movie has put renewed pressure on CIA officials to reveal whether simulated drowning and other harsh techniques elicited valuable intelligence, as the agency has long contended.

"Zero Dark Thirty," made by Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal after extensive consultation with CIA officers, is sparking a new quest for answers, in part because it suggests that torture by CIA officers was instrumental in pinpointing Osama bin Laden's hide-out in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

A senior CIA official on the short list to be the agency's next head, acting Director Michael Morell, has been caught in the maelstrom in a way that could complicate his bid for the job.

On Thursday, senators on the Intelligence Committee sent Morell a sharply worded letter demanding he explain his assertion in a Dec. 21 message to CIA employees that "some information" leading to the Al Qaeda chief "came from detainees subjected to enhanced techniques."

Democrats on the committee, who produced their own 6,000-page, still-secret report on the CIA interrogation program, contend the agency's records don't support that conclusion.

CIA officials and Washington politicians care so deeply about the movie's depiction because "Zero Dark Thirty" will influence how people understand the Bin Laden operation, said Tricia Jenkins, an assistant professor at Texas Christian University and author of "The CIA in Hollywood," an examination of the agency's role in shaping its image through film.

"The CIA has long said that most people in the general public get their information about the CIA and its activities from film and television," she said. "The film will be a key shaper of public opinion and historical memory about this event."

Both critics and defenders with knowledge of the CIA program say the movie's torture scenes are grossly inaccurate — a cartoonish depiction that bears little resemblance to reality.

But defenders endorse the film's suggestion that harsh techniques, such as waterboarding, sleep deprivation and slapping, yielded clues that helped the CIA find Bin Laden. They say detainees subject to duress offered information that helped the CIA track down Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, the Al Qaeda courier who was helping hide Bin Laden.

Senate Intelligence Committee Democrats, however, contend that no significant information about the courier came from detainees after they were subject to coercive techniques.

Morell was among several senior agency officials who consulted closely with Boal, the screenwriter, as he researched the project. He met with Boal for 40 minutes at CIA headquarters, records show. One email from a CIA public affairs officer says Boal "agreed to share scripts and details about the movie with us so we're absolutely comfortable with what he will be showing."

Yet CIA officials were troubled by some scenes in the movie, prompting Morell's message to employees that the film "takes significant artistic license." In the message, Morell repeated what has been the CIA line since Bin Laden was killed in May 2011 — that "enhanced interrogations" weren't key to finding the terrorist leader. But he also said the CIA learned about the courier in part from detainees who were roughed up.

In their letter, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), chairwoman of the Intelligence Committee, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) demand that Morell explain exactly what he meant. But Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, the panel's ranking Republican, said in a statement that he was perplexed by his colleagues' concerns. "It is entertainment, not a documentary," he said. "What's next — a Senate inquiry of the Bourne trilogy or '24'?"

If Morell wants to be CIA director, however, he will need the support of the Intelligence Committee — particularly Feinstein. "This could really hurt his nomination process," said a congressional aide familiar with the matter who asked not to be identified to talk about internal discussions.

Morell is in a tough spot. He does not want to repudiate coercive interrogations entirely, because "it's a tool that you might want to use and you don't want to give it away," a former CIA officer said. And he doesn't want to impugn CIA employees who were involved.

Republicans on the committee believe coercive interrogations worked, a GOP aide said, and Morell might lose their support should he say otherwise.

What's not much in dispute is that, despite the aspirations of "Zero Dark Thirty" to accuracy, it gets the interrogation scenes wrong. Boal has responded that the film is not a documentary.

The film shows CIA officers in a Hollywood idea of a tough interrogation, beating a detainee in a decrepit building, making him wear a dog collar and, on the spur of the moment, deciding to waterboard him.

According to a 2004 CIA inspector general report and other sources, the program was more methodical, which is not to say any less brutal. Each harsh technique was approved by Justice Department lawyers and briefed at the highest levels of President Bush's White House.

Three detainees were waterboarded in 2002 and 2003. They were strapped to gurneys and their medical conditions monitored. No dog collars were used, former officers say.

The movie also errs when it shows a detainee who had been waterboarded giving information about Al-Kuwaiti. One of the three waterboarded, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the purported mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, discussed the courier, U.S. officials have said. He denied Al-Kuwaiti was an Al Qaeda member. CIA officers found this telling because other detainees said he had an important role.

Feinstein, McCain and Levin say the detainee who provided crucial information about the courier in 2004, identified by U.S. officials as Hassan Ghul, did so before he was subjected to coercive interrogation techniques. He was never waterboarded, officials have said.

Jameel Jaffer, deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, suggested one way to get at the truth would be for Senate Intelligence Committee Democrats to release their report.

"False claims about the interrogation program are dangerous," he said, "in large part because there is a vacuum where there ought to be a public record."

ken.dilanian@latimes.com

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‘Facebook Dead’: How to ‘Kill’ Your Friends

Rusty Foster discovered he was dead last week, at least according to Facebook. He had been locked out of his account, which had been turned into a “memorial page,” because someone had reported the Maine man as deceased to the social media site.

He tweeted Thursday, “Facebook thinks I’m dead. I’m tempted to just let it,” then “Did you know that you can report any of your Facebook friends dead & Facebook will lock them out of their account with no evidence needed?”

As one of Foster’s friends discovered, it doesn’t take much to convince Facebook that somebody is dead. By simply going to the ” Memorialization Request” page and filling out a form, including a link to an obituary, anybody can take someone else off Facebook.

The obituary needs to have the same name (or at least a close name), but doesn’t need to match any other details on the profile. The obituary Foster’s friend used to prove Foster’s death was for a man who was born in 1924 and died in 2011 in a different state than the one Foster lists on Facebook as his home state.

Foster, 36, said he never got any notification his account was going to be locked, and only discovered it when he attempted to log in. He filled out a form to report the error, and received a response that began with “We are very sorry to hear about your loss.”

More than a full day later, Foster’s account still hadn’t been unlocked. Buzzfeed, tipped off by Foster, posted an article in which one editor “killed” another editor, John Herrman, on Facebook. According to the article, about an hour after Herrman reported the error to Facebook, his profile was reactivated. About an hour after that, 27 hours after Foster first reported his erroneous death, he was “resurrected” by Facebook and allowed back into his account.

Foster does not know the total amount of time he was “Facebook dead.” He told ABC that nothing was different with his account when he logged back in, only that some of his friends had a little fun with his status.

“The only thing that happened was some of my friends posted little mock-eulogies for me, because word got around that I was locked out, due to a temporary case of death,” Foster wrote in an email with the subject line, “Rusty, the Facebook zombie.”

When pages are memorialized, they are removed from sidebars, timelines and friend suggestions and searches. This is likely to prevent people from seeing their friends who have died pop up on their newsfeed, and to prevent people from hacking into the accounts of dead people.

Foster said he understands the position Facebook is in when it comes to the death of one of its users, but believes there are better options for the social media site.

“There ought to be an email sent to the account’s email address informing it that the account has been reported dead and providing a link or something to dispute the report before any action is taken,” Foster wrote.

Foster said the most frustrating part was not being able to get into his account to “click the ‘I’m not dead’ button that should also be there.”

This has apparently been the same “memorialization” process since at least 2009, when another user took to his personal blog to write about his experience of being “Facebook dead.” In his case, the obituary his friend used to have him declared dead wasn’t even close to his real name. Instead, the man who performed the funeral services had a similar name.

In a statement to ABC News, Facebook said the system is in place in order to respect the privacy of the deceased.

“We have designed the memorialization process to be effective for grieving families and friends, while still providing precautions to protect against either erroneous or malicious efforts to memorialize the account of someone who is not deceased,” the statement reads. “We also provide an appeals process for the rare instances in which accounts are mistakenly reported or inadvertently memorialized.”

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Brad Pitt tweets to Chinese that he's coming

BEIJING (AP) — Brad Pitt is now on China's version of Twitter, and his mysterious first tweet has drawn thousands of comments.

The actor's verified Sina Weibo account sent the message Monday: "It is the truth. Yup, I'm coming." That was forwarded more than 31,000 times and netted over 14,000 comments, many expressing surprise. He gathered more than 100,000 followers.

The IMDb.com movie website says Pitt was banned from ever entering China because of his role in the 1997 "Seven Years in Tibet." The government was upset about the film's portrayal of harsh Chinese rule in Tibet. His later film "Mr. & Mrs. Smith" with Angelina Jolie was popular in China.

Former NBA star Stephon Marbury who now plays for China's professional basketball league is prolific on Weibo and has over 779,000 followers.

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