Montevideo Journal: Uruguay’s Video Game Start-Ups Garner Attention

MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay — For a start-up that has a hit video game for the iPhone, the new loft-style offices of Ironhide Game Studio are exactly what one would expect — a newly hired staff labors feverishly on software updates not far from a pinball machine and custom-built monster arcade cabinet intended for letting off steam.

But the company, a success in the fiercely competitive field of video game development, stands out from other high-tech ventures in one respect: its unconventional location, which frequently confuses people abroad. “They politely ask, ‘Where is Uruguay?’ ” said Álvaro Azofra, one of the three founders of Ironhide, the company behind Kingdom Rush, a lucratively popular game in the United States that involves a cartoonish kingdom under attack by marauding yetis and ogres.

Squeezed between Brazil and Argentina and long dependent on commodities exports, Uruguay may be better known for its flocks of sheep and herds of cattle. But attention is now shifting to the country’s growing constellation of start-ups that are engineering video games for computers and hand-held devices.

Developers point to a variety of reasons that Uruguay has been able to compete with South America’s larger economies, whether the creativity of its engineers and commercial artists or its relatively relaxed immigration rules and extensive use of computers in schools.

“It’s ironic, because historically, this is a country that hates entrepreneurship, but not the culture of entrepreneurship,” said Gonzalo Frasca, a video game theorist whose company, Powerful Robot, has developed numerous games for clients in the United States, including Legends of Ooo, based on the Cartoon Network animated television series “Adventure Time.”

Mr. Frasca, 40, contrasted the skepticism that persists in relation to private enterprise in Uruguay’s cradle-to-grave welfare state, in which companies in sectors like telecommunications, casinos and even whiskey production remain under state control, with the country’s robust tradition of creativity in the arts and sciences.

“We still have strong schools for computer science,” said Mr. Frasca, who has a doctorate in video game studies from IT University of Copenhagen and is a pioneer in Uruguay’s game industry. “When people graduate, they realize they’re in a small country where they have no choice but to engage with the rest of the world.”

While ORT, Uruguay’s largest private university, offers one of the region’s first degrees in video game design, the relaxed atmosphere of seaside Montevideo — the Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano once remarked that his countrymen resembled “Argentines on Valium” — can still make it seem as if it would be an unlikely place for technology start-ups to thrive.

Other parts of Latin America are nurturing their own video game development scenes. Chile, for instance, recently drew attention when Atakama Labs, a game developer based in Santiago, was acquired by the Japanese gaming company DeNA.

Gaming studios have also emerged in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil’s two largest cities, but developers there complain of byzantine tax regulations and labor rules that make hiring employees costlier than in some rich industrialized countries. In Argentina, dozens of game-developing start-ups have been founded in Buenos Aires.

But while Argentina has traditionally had more companies in the industry, some of the momentum is seen shifting across the border to Uruguay as Argentine ventures struggle with abrupt changes in economic policy, including the tightening of currency controls that have complicated operations for exporters.

In Latin America and beyond, developers are seeking to mimic the success of Kingdom Rush, ranked in 2012 among the top-selling paid applications for the iPhone in the United States. In addition to Ironhide and Powerful Robot, an array of other game developers operates quietly.

Some, like Trojan Chicken, a developer of educational games in Spanish for schoolchildren, benefit from the heavy presence of the state across Uruguay’s economy, which avoided the privatization wave of neighboring Latin American countries in the 1990s.

Ingenio, a state-controlled incubator for start-ups, helped finance Trojan Chicken, which has created educational games including 1811, an adventure game set in colonial Uruguay, and D.E.D., a detective game in which players solve thefts of national heritage. The games are designed to be played on the inexpensive laptops distributed to schoolchildren across Uruguay.

Nearly all of the 300,000 children in Uruguay’s public schools now have their own computers, after the authorities here began embracing One Laptop per Child, the ambitious project aimed at bringing computing to children in the developing world, in 2006. Called the Plan Ceibal here, it is financed by public money.

Miguel Brechner, the director of the Plan Ceibal, said the initiative was already serving as a catalyst for Uruguayan content developers, notably gaming and animation studios. Describing Ceibal as a “digital equality plan,” he said that “reality has shown that kids get excited about games.”

Encompassing the video game companies, software development in Uruguay has evolved into a $600 million industry, making the country Latin America’s leader in per-capita software exports. But some here say that the industry may also be falling victim to its success, as salaries for developers rapidly climb and make it more expensive for start-ups to compete internationally.

Still, Uruguay’s immigration laws offer certain advantages in the competition for talented employees. Building on a history of attracting immigrants from Europe, engineers, animators and other foreign hires at start-ups can legally reside and work in Uruguay while their applications for work visas are being processed.

“Uruguay is a remarkably open place when it comes to attracting talent,” said Evan Henshaw-Plath, an American among the founders of the company that became Twitter. After moving to Uruguay in 2007, Mr. Henshaw-Plath founded a software development company that now has employees from countries like Poland and Ecuador.

Drawing a contrast between Uruguay and Brazil, he delights in telling a story about an American technology investor based in Japan who was about to embark on a business trip to South America aimed at finding start-ups in which to invest or to acquire outright.

Upon discovering that Brazil required Americans to go through a bureaucratic ordeal to obtain a visa, the investor canceled his trip there. Instead, he visited Uruguay, which has no such visa requirements, and eventually acquired Mr. Henshaw-Plath’s 20-person company, Cubox.

Mauricio Rabuffetti contributed reporting.

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Cirque Du Soleil Announces New Michael Jackson-Themed Show in Las Vegas

By Mark Gray

02/21/2013 at 09:15 PM EST

The logo

Courtesy Cirque du Soleil

The King of Pop will live in Vegas!

The long-rumored Cirque Du Soleil show based on the music of Michael Jackson was formally announced Thursday afternoon.

Premiering June 29 at Las Vegas's Mandalay Bay, the show, Michael Jackson ONE, will run 90 minutes and will feature more than 60 dancers and aerialists performing to Jackson's best known music.

Executives say the show will be different from the current Cirque Du Soleil show Immortal, which features Jackson's music.

Jackson friend and choreographer Jamie King said, "Everything [Jackson] does is with a childlike heart. For Michael, every day was fresh, every day was new, every day had to be bigger and better than the last one."

Tickets for the general public go on sale March 7.

Which Jackson song are you most excited to see performed in the show? Sound off in the comments below!

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APNewsBreak: Govs to hear Oregon health care plan

SALEM, Ore. (AP) — Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber will brief other state leaders this weekend on his plan to lower Medicaid costs, touting an overhaul that President Barack Obama highlighted in his State of the Union address for its potential to lower the deficit even as health care expenses climb.

The Oregon Democrat leaves for Washington, D.C., on Friday to pitch his plan that changes the way doctors and hospitals are paid and improves health care coordination for low income residents so that treatable medical problems don't grow in severity or expense.

Kitzhaber says his goal is to win over a handful of other governors from each party.

"I think the politics have been dialed down a couple of notches, and now people are willing to sit down and talk about how we can solve the problem" of rising health care costs, Kitzhaber told The Associated Press in a recent interview.

Kitzhaber introduced the plan in 2011 in the face of a severe state budget deficit, and he's been talking for two years about expanding the initiative beyond his state. Now, it seems he's found people ready to listen.

Hospital executives from Alabama visited Oregon last month to learn about the effort. And the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced Thursday that it's giving Oregon a $45 million grant to help spread the changes beyond the Medicaid population and share information with other states, making it one of only six states to earn a State Innovation Model grant.

Kitzhaber will address his counterparts at a meeting of the National Governors Association. His talk isn't scheduled on the official agenda, but a spokeswoman confirmed that Kitzhaber is expected to present.

"The governors love what they call stealing from one another — taking the good ideas and the successes of their colleagues and trying to figure out how to apply that in their home state," said Matt Salo, director of the National Association of Medicaid Directors.

There's been "huge interest" among other states in Oregon's health overhaul, Salo said, not because the concepts are brand new, but because the state managed to avoid pitfalls that often block health system changes.

Kitzhaber persuaded state lawmakers to redesign the system of delivering and paying for health care under Medicaid, creating incentives for providers to coordinate patient care and prevent avoidable emergency room visits. He has long complained that the current financial incentives encourage volume over quality, driving costs up without making people healthier.

Obama, in his State of the Union address this month, suggested that changes such as Oregon's could be part of a long-term strategy to lower the federal debt by reigning in the growing cost of federally funded health care.

"We'll bring down costs by changing the way our government pays for Medicare, because our medical bills shouldn't be based on the number of tests ordered or days spent in the hospital — they should be based on the quality of care that our seniors receive," Obama said.

The Obama administration has invested in the program, putting up $1.9 billion to keep Oregon's Medicaid program afloat over the next five years while providers make the transition to new business models and incorporate new staff and technology.

In exchange, though, the state has agreed to lower per-capita health care cost inflation by 2 percentage points without affecting quality.

The Medicaid system is unique in each state, and Kitzhaber isn't suggesting that other states should adopt Oregon's specific approach, said Mike Bonetto, Kitzhaber's health care policy adviser. Rather, he wants governors to buy into the broad concept that the delivery system and payment models need to change.

That's not a new theory. But Oregon has shown that under the right circumstances massive changes to deeply entrenched business models can gain wide support.

What Oregon can't yet show is proof the idea is working — that it's lowering costs without squeezing on the quality or availability of care. The state is just finishing compiling baseline data that will be used as a basis of comparison.

One factor driving the Obama administration's interest in Oregon's success is the president's health care overhaul. Under the Affordable Care Act, millions more Americans will join the Medicaid rolls after Jan. 1, and the health care system will have to be able to absorb the influx of patients in a logistically and financially sustainable way.

The federal government will pay 100 percent of the costs for those additional patients in the first three years before scaling back to 90 percent in 2020 and beyond.

"There are a lot of governors who are facing the same challenges we're facing in Oregon," Kitzhaber said. "They recognize that the cost of health care is something they're going to have to get their arms around."

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Brown may forge alliance with GOP governors on health plan

SACRAMENTO — When Gov. Jerry Brown meets with the nation's other governors this weekend in Washington, D.C., he will find common ground with some unlikely counterparts on an unlikely issue: President Obama's healthcare plan.

Among the governors now moving nearly as aggressively as Brown to implement the federal healthcare law are conservatives who have long fought to unravel it. They are finding that they cannot afford to pass up Obama's offer of billions of dollars in federal aid to cover expansion of their Medicaid programs for the poor.

Arizona's Jan Brewer, New Mexico's Susana Martinez and Nevada's Brian Sandoval — all Republicans — have bucked the GOP trend on the Obama law by opting to accept the new federal money. In Florida, where 20% of residents do not have health insurance, Gov. Rick Scott announced Wednesday that he is joining the renegade group.

They, like Brown, are struggling with healthcare systems overtaxed by large numbers of uninsured residents. At the annual Washington conference, the governors will have an opportunity to strategize on how to hold the Obama administration to its promise to pay for the initial Medicaid expansion.

Though not on the formal conference agenda, aides say the subject is likely to come up at a meeting the governors have scheduled with the president Monday and in private meetings between governors and senior administration officials.

With Congress and the White House in the midst of a fresh fiscal showdown, governors are concerned about whether Obama can keep his commitment. Western states in particular, with their high rates of uninsured residents, fear that they could be left with a crushing bill to pay.

Ironically, although many Republicans have worked to undermine Obama's policy, states with GOP governors could see the largest influx of federal dollars as a result of it. Of the 11 states with the highest percentage of uninsured residents in the country, 10 are led by a Republican executive. The exception in the group is California.

"California is perhaps the bluest state in the nation," said Anthony Wright, executive director of Health Access, a consumer advocacy organization. "But when it comes to healthcare, its issues are like those of a red state."

Like California, the Southwestern states have growing Latino populations that stand to gain from the new healthcare law more than other groups. Currently, 27% of all Latinos in the United States are covered by Medicaid, compared with 11% of the general population, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. Turning away public dollars that could help those residents could be politically risky for Republicans who have struggled to earn Latino support.

Although some Republican leaders have been behaving more like Democrats, Brown has been echoing Republican skepticism about Washington's financial commitment to helping states implement the new law.

"The federal government says they're going to pay 100% of the costs," Brown said in a December interview. But if that changes, and "they may only pay 70% or something else … that would be a huge threat to the [state's] general fund."

According to estimates from UC Berkeley, by 2019 California is expected to add about 1.4 million people to its Medicaid program, called Medi-Cal. As Brown said in his State of the State address last month: "The ultimate costs of expanding our healthcare system under the Affordable Care Act are unknown. Ignoring such known unknowns would be folly."

Like his GOP counterparts, Brown wants an escape hatch. He is pushing a reluctant Legislature, dominated by Democrats, for a bill that would cancel the healthcare expansion if Washington stopped paying at least 90% of the cost.

"Brown is somewhat unique among Democratic governors in calling for these triggers," said Judith Solomon, vice president for health policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal Washington, D.C, think tank.

Brewer vowed to voters in her State of the State address last month that Arizona's legislation would have such a clause. "Any expansion of our Medicaid program will include a circuit breaker that automatically rolls back enrollment if federal reimbursement rates decrease," she said.

That circuit breaker would be flipped if federal payments fell below 80% of the cost of the expansion. "I won't allow Obamacare to become a bait-and-switch," she said.

Other governors pushing for triggers, mostly Republicans, have yet to specify how they should be set.

Federal Medicaid costs are projected to jump from $265 billion to $572 billion over the next decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office. That has state leaders especially worried as Washington's Democrats and Republicans alike call for spending cuts.

"When times get tough, we've seen the federal government unload more and more of the burden onto the states," said Matthew Benson, Brewer's communications director. Ensuring that states are not left holding the bag "is about good government, not partisanship."

anthony.york@latimes.com

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World Briefing | Africa: Nigeria: Security Service Says It Halted Group Watching Israeli and U.S. Targets

Nigeria’s State Security Service said Wednesday that it broke up what it characterized as a terrorist group, backed by “Iranian handlers,” that wanted to gather intelligence about locations frequented by Americans and Israelis. The service said it arrested three suspects, but one remained at large. A spokeswoman, Marilyn Ogar, who was reading from a statement, identified the head of the group as Abdullahi Mustaphah Berende, a leader of a local Shiite sect. “He personally took photographs of the Israeli culture center in Ikoyi, Lagos,” she said. The group also conducted surveillance on USAID and the United States Peace Corps, she said. Ms. Ogar did not take questions.

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Baby Girl on the Way for Big Brother's Britney Haynes

Mom & Babies
Celebrity Baby Blog

02/20/2013 at 08:45 PM ET

Britney Haynes is expecting a little houseguest of her own!

“Halfway there and it’s definitely a GIRL!! She arrives in July; couldn’t be happier,” the Big Brother star Tweeted Wednesday.

Along with her tweet, Haynes, 25, posted a photo of herself holding sonogram photos of her baby girl.

The outspoken player competed as a houseguest on season 12 of the CBS reality show where she placed fourth before returning as a “coach” and eventually a player during season 14, where she placed eighth.

During season 14, Haynes often discussed missing her husband — high school sweetheart Nathan ‘Ryan’ Godwin, whom she married in between seasons in March 2012 — and expressed her desire to become a mother to fellow coach and new mom Janelle Pierzina, who’s currently expecting her second child in August.

Courtesy Britney Haynes

– Patrick Gomez

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Scientists use 3-D printing to help grow an ear

WASHINGTON (AP) — Printing out body parts? Cornell University researchers showed it's possible by creating a replacement ear using a 3-D printer and injections of living cells.

The work reported Wednesday is a first step toward one day growing customized new ears for children born with malformed ones, or people who lose one to accident or disease.

It's part of the hot field of tissue regeneration, trying to regrow all kinds of body parts. Scientists hope using 3-D printing technology might offer a speedier method with more lifelike results.

If it pans out, "this enables us to rapidly customize implants for whoever needs them," said Cornell biomedical engineer Lawrence Bonassar, who co-authored the research published online in the journal PLoS One.

This first-step work crafted a human-shaped ear that grew with cartilage from a cow, easier to obtain than human cartilage, especially the uniquely flexible kind that makes up ears. Study co-author Dr. Jason Spector of Weill Cornell Medical Center is working on the next step — how to cultivate enough of a child's remaining ear cartilage in the lab to grow an entirely new ear that could be implanted in the right spot.

Wednesday's report is "a nice advancement," said Dr. Anthony Atala, director of the Institute for Regenerative Medicine at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, who wasn't involved in the new research.

Three-dimensional printers, which gradually layer materials to form shapes, are widely used in manufacturing. For medicine, Atala said the ear work is part of broader research that shows "the technology now is at the point where we can in fact print these 3-dimensional structures and they do become functional over time."

Today, people who need a new ear often turn to prosthetics that require a rod to fasten to the head. For children, doctors sometimes fashion a new ear from the stiffer cartilage surrounding ribs, but it's a big operation. Spector said the end result seldom looks completely natural. Hence the quest to use a patient's own cells to grow a replacement ear.

The Cornell team started with a 3-D camera that rapidly rotates around a child's head for a picture of the existing ear to match. It beams the ear's geometry into a computer, without the mess of a traditional mold or the radiation if CT scans were used to measure ear anatomy.

"Kids aren't afraid of it," said Bonassar, who used his then-5-year-old twin daughters' healthy ears as models.

From that image, the 3-D printer produced a soft mold of the ear. Bonassar injected it with a special collagen gel that's full of cow cells that produce cartilage — forming a scaffolding. Over the next few weeks, cartilage grew to replace the collagen. At three months, it appeared to be a flexible and workable outer ear, the study concluded.

Now Bonassar's team can do the process even faster by using the living cells in that collagen gel as the printer's "ink." The 3-D technology directly layers the gel into just the right ear shape for cartilage to cover, without having to make a mold first.

The next step is to use a patient's own cells in the 3-D printing process. Spector, a reconstructive surgeon, is focusing on children born without a fully developed external ear, a condition called microtia. They have some ear cartilage-producing cells in that tissue, just not enough. So he's experimenting with ways to boost those cells in the lab, "so we can grow enough of them from that patient to make an ear," he explained.

That hurdle aside, cartilage may be the tissue most amenable to growing with the help of 3-D printing technology, he said. That's because cartilage doesn't need blood vessels growing inside it to survive.

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Greuel accuses Garcetti and Perry of lying about her record

The Los Angeles mayor's race took a sharp negative turn Wednesday as City Controller Wendy Greuel accused rivals Eric Garcetti and Jan Perry of lying about her record to distract from their own spending of taxpayer money on wasteful travel and perks.

Her broadside came after weeks of relentless attacks on Greuel by the two City Council members and Kevin James, a former radio talk-show host. The dynamics of the campaign — Greuel's top rivals each see pockets of opportunity among key voter groups that she is well-positioned to capture — have made her a prime target, leaving the impression at times that opponents have been ganging up on her.

Greuel fought back Wednesday in a mailer that showed a wooden Pinocchio and photos of Garcetti and Perry.

"Why are City Council politicians Eric Garcetti & Jan Perry lying about Wendy Greuel's audits?" it says.

Greuel, whose rivals scoff at her frequent statement that she uncovered $160 million in waste, fraud and abuse at City Hall, said Garcetti and Perry were "asleep at the switch" and failed to give her audits a hearing in the council.

"Garcetti and Perry's reckless disregard for the facts are meant to distract voters away from their record of waste," the mailer says. "Garcetti travels around the world on the taxpayer dime and uses a slush fund to pay his personal staff. Meanwhile, Perry votes to lay off city workers while accepting a pay raise and a free Lincoln Town Car LS paid for by taxpayers."

The attack's potency was limited by, among other things, Greuel's own travel at taxpayer expense and her longtime use of a city car and driver.

But the mailer was significant because it signaled Greuel's approach to taking down her rivals, revealing a crucial part of her campaign strategy to independent committees that are spending more than $1 million for advertising on her behalf.

The committees, formed by public employee unions and other Greuel allies, are barred from coordinating with her campaign, but have been careful to mimic her advertising in an effort to maximize its effect. Unlike the campaign, the independent committees face no limits on contributions, giving a small group of donors enormous influence on the election.

Garcetti responded to Greuel's attack by suggesting that she was a hypocrite.

"I know for a fact that she has travel that she's billed the taxpayers for," Garcetti said outside City Hall after a news conference on the council's approval of his plan to open a city office of immigrant affairs. His campaign released a list of publicly funded trips that Greuel took to New Orleans, San Jose, Sacramento and Washington during her seven years as a City Council member and nearly four years as controller.

As for his own travel, Garcetti recalled going to Washington at taxpayer expense for National League of Cities meetings. He said he took other trips as an Aspen Institute or Asia Society fellow. A spokesman said city agencies paid for Garcetti's 2002 visit to Asia on a trade mission.

Garcetti also denied slowing down the city's response to audits released by Greuel's office. At the same time, he described the audits as nearly useless.

"The truth of the matter is, on her own website, she's brought in $239,000," he said. "During that time period, she was paid $800,000 as controller. Those results speak for themselves."

Perry spokeswoman Helen Sanchez also challenged Greuel's facts. Perry and other council members took a pay cut in 2010 as the city was reeling from a budget shortfall that led to layoffs and furloughs, she said. Perry's city car was a Lincoln after she first took office in 2002, but has been a Honda Accord hybrid since 2006, according to Sanchez.

"The only thing revealing about this mailer," Perry strategist Eric Hacopian said, "is that they just confirmed to the world which candidate is in third place."

For his part, James, a former federal prosecutor, opened a new line of attack against Greuel, saying she was stonewalling in responding to a public records request for her email with campaign advisors, and with Brian D'Arcy, business manager of International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Local 18.

The union, which represents more than 8,600 Department of Water and Power employees, has put $700,000 into an independent committee backing Greuel.

"What do they have to hide?" James asked reporters outside City Hall. "Where are the documents?"

A Times review of the controller's calendars from September 2009 through June 2012 found that Greuel scheduled nine meetings with D'Arcy, 20 dinners, social events or meetings with lobbyists for his union, and two appointments with Don Attore, co-founder of the committee that the union is using to buttress her mayoral campaign.

At a morning campaign stop in Studio City, Greuel said she would need to ask her city staff whether any email between her and D'Arcy existed on her city account. But she denied stalling any response to records requests.

"We're transparent," she said.

michael.finnegan@latimes.com

Times staff writer David Zahniser contributed to this report.

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Pistorius Denies Murdering Girlfriend

Siphiwe Sibeko/Reuters

Oscar Pistorius wept at a hearing on Tuesday seeking bail.

PRETORIA, South Africa — Early on Feb. 14, Oscar Pistorius says, he heard a strange noise coming from inside his bathroom, climbed out of bed, grabbed his 9-millimeter pistol, hobbled on his stumps to the door and fired four shots.

“I fail to understand how I could be charged with murder, let alone premeditated,” Mr. Pistorius said in an affidavit read Tuesday to a packed courtroom by his defense lawyer, Barry Roux. “I had no intention to kill my girlfriend.”

Prosecutors painted a far different picture, one of a calculated killer, a world-renowned athlete who had the presence of mind and calm to strap on his prosthetic legs, walk 20 feet to the bathroom door and open fire as his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, cowered inside, behind a locked door.

“The applicant shot and killed an unarmed, innocent women,” Gerrie Nel, the chief prosecutor, said in court on Tuesday. That, Mr. Nel argued, amounted to premeditated murder, a charge that could send Mr. Pistorius to prison for life.

In court, Mr. Pistorius, a Paralympic track star who competed against able-bodied athletes at the London Olympics despite having lost both his lower legs as an infant, wept uncontrollably as Mr. Roux gave the runner’s account of the fateful early morning. At one point, Magistrate Desmond Nair called a recess to allow Mr. Pistorius, who was sobbing loudly, his face contorted, to regain his composure.

“My compassion as a human being does not allow me to just sit here,” Magistrate Nair said.

As the defense and prosecution laid out their competing versions of the shooting, some details were beyond dispute.

Mr. Pistorius and Ms. Steenkamp were alone in the house, having spent the evening there. Around 3 a.m., Mr. Pistorius shot Ms. Steenkamp through the bathroom door, fatally wounding her. He broke down the door and carried her down the stairs, where she died in the foyer of his upscale home in a highly secured compound.

The young woman, a model, was cremated Tuesday on the other side of the country in her hometown, Port Elizabeth. Her family and friends mourned her and called for the authorities to deal harshly with Mr. Pistorius.

“There’s a space missing inside all the people that she knew that can’t be filled again,” her brother, Adam Steenkamp, told reporters after the memorial service.

In court, Mr. Pistorius is seeking bail on the charge of premeditated murder, but he faces an uphill battle. Magistrate Nair ruled Tuesday that the case would be treated as the most serious kind of offense, which means bail will be granted only if the defense can prove extraordinary circumstances requiring it.

The court proceedings, though they concerned only whether Mr. Pistorius would receive bail, offered the first real glimpse into what unfolded at his home on the day of the shooting.

In his affidavit, Mr. Pistorius said that he and Ms. Steenkamp had decided to stay in for the night. He canceled plans with his friends for a night on the town in Johannesburg, while she opted against movies with one of her friends. They had a quiet evening, he said. She did yoga. He watched television. About 10 p.m., they went to sleep.

In the early morning hours, he said, he woke up to move a fan from the balcony and to close the sliding doors in the bedroom.

“I heard a noise in the bathroom and realized that someone was in the bathroom,” he said. “I felt a sense of terror rushing over me.”

He had already said in the affidavit that he feared South Africa’s rampant violent crime, and later added that he was worried because there were no bars on the window to the bathroom. Construction workers had left ladders in his garden, he said.

“I believed someone had entered my house,” he said in the affidavit. “I grabbed my 9-millimeter pistol from underneath my bed. On my way to the bathroom I screamed words to the effect for him/them to get out of my house and for Reeva to phone the police. It was pitch dark in the bedroom, and I thought Reeva was in bed.”

Walking on his stumps, he heard the sound of movement inside the toilet, a small room within the bathroom.

Alan Cowell contributed reporting from London.

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What's Next for Mindy McCready's Two Young Boys?

By Steve Helling

02/19/2013 at 07:00 PM EST

Mindy McCready's apparent suicide on Sunday has left her two young sons in custodial limbo.

The boys – Zander, 6, and Zayne, 10 months – had been in state custody since Feb. 7, when McCready called police to ask for help in making her father and stepmother leave her home. When police arrived, McCready appeared to be intoxicated, according to a Department of Human Services report.

In a subsequent petition, the singer's father, Tim McCready, asked the court to order her to undergo mental health and substance abuse evaluation and treatment, alleging that his daughter, who had recently lost her boyfriend, "hasn't had a bath in a week ... screams about everything ... [is] very verbally abusive to Zander."

After a judge granted the petition, the children were quickly removed and placed into foster care. Although McCready was released from treatment, the boys remained in state custody.

At the time, Zander's father, Billy McKnight, requested custody of his son. "My son needs me," he told PEOPLE on Feb. 8. "I'm married, working and successful. I'm on the right track and proud of it. I've been sober for years. I just want my son."

But McCready's mother and stepfather, Gayle and Michael Inge, also want custody of the children – and authorities seem to agree.

In a proposed order sent to Circuit Judge Lee Harrod, the Department of Human Services proposed that the Inges might be a better fit for the children, claiming that they have "a substantial relationship." The Inges had custody of Zander for much the past few years, during McCready’s rehab and jail stints.

With McCready's death, the judge will have to determine what is in the children's best interest. A custody hearing has been scheduled for April 5.

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