State prisons not ready to end court oversight, official says

SACRAMENTO — A court-appointed monitor said Friday that Gov. Jerry Brown's quest to end judicial oversight in state prisons is "not only premature, but a needless distraction" from improving care for mentally ill inmates.

Special Master Matthew Lopes cited dozens of suicides last year, long isolation instead of treatment and lapses in care as reasons federal oversight should continue.

Lopes' assessment, in a report filed Friday with the U.S. District Court, came after he visited two-thirds of California's prisons. He had intended to see all 33 lockups, he said, but soon determined that only Sacramento — not individual wardens — could fix the underlying problems with mental health treatment in the corrections system.

A spokeswoman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said the agency would have a full response to the 609-page report later.

Brown wants the courts to halt oversight of the mental health services and withdraw orders to reduce overcrowding. He declared last week that California has "one of the finest prison systems in the United States" and that inmates get "far better" medical care, including mental health care, in prison than those outside.

Lopes disagreed.

"Any attempt at a more abrupt conclusion to court oversight would be … not only premature but a needless distraction from the important work that is being done in the quality improvement project," he told the court.

He was especially critical of the suicide rate in California prisons.

He said there were at least 32 suicides in state prisons last year, averaging one every 11 days. Lopes said that translates to almost 24 suicides per 100,000 inmates, a 13% increase over 2011 and well above the national suicide rate of 16 deaths per 100,000 prisoners.

The state's high suicide rate prompted a 2010 court order to adopt suicide prevention practices. Lopes said the state has made progress on those steps, but fewer than one out of four prisons hold suicide prevention team meetings as required and only three prisons complied with the requirement for five-day follow-ups with inmates discharged from crisis care.

"The problem of inmate suicides … must be resolved before the remedial phase of the Coleman case can be ended," Lopes wrote, referring to the 2001 lawsuit that led to the appointment of a special master. "The gravity of this problem calls for further intervention. To do any less and to wait any longer risks further loss of lives."

Assistant Secretary of Communications Deborah Hoffman said, "We take suicides very seriously and have one of the most robust suicide prevention programs in the nation."

Lopes also said in his report that all 11 outpatient care hubs in the prison system still conduct inmate counseling sessions in public, despite the need for confidential settings, and 10 of those hubs fail to offer at least 10 hours of structured therapy per week, a provision Lopes said "should be made a priority."

A training program designed to help prison guards interact with mentally ill inmates and mental health providers showed no improvement in use-of-force incidents or missed treatment sessions, Lopes said.

He also documented instances of mentally ill inmates being housed for extended periods in isolation units. At Kern Valley State Prison, mentally ill offenders had been isolated as long as 292 days. The court compliance rate is 30 days.

Families of mentally ill inmates expressed their own frustration.

Blanca Gonzalez said her 31-year-old son's mental state has deteriorated since his incarceration. She said he was put into segregation on Thanksgiving and not moved to a psychiatric unit until last week.

"I am watching my son die in front of me and no one seems to care," Gonzalez said.

paige.stjohn@latimes.com

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How Your Great-Grandmother’s Hobby Is Transforming One Alabama Town

Natalie Chanin’s life-changing epiphany struck while standing on a New York City street corner.

For days, she had traversed throughout the city with a trash bag of her deconstructed T-shirts, seeking a manufacturer to help her make them. None of them, however, understood what kind of stitching she wanted on her creations, which had become popular in New York fashion circles after she made one on a whim and wore it to a party. Chanin was frustrated.

But then, she remembered a group of women who constructed hand-made quilts with bold stitching passed down through the generations. Chanin envisioned those stitches on her deconstructed T-shirts, She believed that those women could help her fuse the past with the present.

So, like a modern-day Scarlett O’Hara, Chanin knew where her immediate future lay, and it was back home in Florence, Ala. When Chanin returned to Florence in 2000, it was a much different place than when she left it in the 1980s. Then, the historic quaint town was the T-shirt capitol of the world, thanks to a thriving textile industry that employed thousands.

But a decade later, that industry had nearly vanished. People were unemployed in the town of 40,000 and warehouses were closed. The cotton once used for T-shirts was now shipped aboard. Chanin squarely blames NAFTA for these changes.

Public Citizen, a non-profit grassroots organization, cites that Alabama lost 118,125 manufacturing jobs from 1994 to 2012. The Bureau of Labor Statistics stated in a 1995 report that while the textile industry was seeing employment decline in the 1980s because of technology and overseas jobs, but it noted, “Future employment levels will be affected by the North America Free Trade Agreement” and that job loss would be “incremental” over the years.

NAFTA was touted as a good thing by many people because it would ease trade regulations and increased investment between the United States, Canada and Mexico. In 1993, President Bill Clinton signed the legislation, saying at the time: “NAFTA means jobs, American jobs, and good-paying American jobs. If I didn’t believe that, I wouldn’t support this agreement.”

Chanin doesn’t proclaim to be an expert on NAFTA, but the trade agreement angers her, and she blames Clinton for it.

“I often wonder if he regrets NAFTA,” Chanin says. “NAFTA helped to put a nail in the coffin of manufacturers in America. It created fear and anger, and we didn’t get the open commerce we wanted.”

The unemployment and the textile industry’s death in Florence haunted Chanin. She says she did what she knew how to do – sew – and never had a plan to become an eco-friendly fashion leader, a cheerleader for artisan seamstresses or a poster girl for Made in the USA. But that’s exactly what happened.

Chanin’s handcrafted, organic couture line – Alabama Chanin – has become emblematic of what’s possible when someone focuses on community commitment, sustainability and local traditions.

“I believe in ‘Made in America’ where at all possible,” Chanin says. “I see it almost as a matter of national security. It’s disturbing when you see that there are no steel mills in the South anymore. Food, clothing, shelter, right? Those are essential to sustaining life. Sewing was once a vital necessity for men and women.”

 Photo: Alabama Chanin

Chanin, 50, has certainly stitched her own path with a needle and thread.

On this January day, Chanin wears a black skirt, white boots and a white long-sleeve shirt with a black overlay T-shirt. Her trademark white hair frames her ageless face. Sitting at a long white table, she weaves her story like any good Southern storyteller. To fully grasp Chanin’s role in the Slow Fashion movement that promotes quality over quantity, you have to absorb Florence’s history and Chanin’s connection to it.

In the 1800s, Florence, a river town, had an abundance of water and streams that made it geographically suited as a cotton mill town. Villages soon cropped up where men, women and even children made underwear, union suits and undershirts for paltry wages. It was a rough life, dependent on soil, water and the seasons. Cotton was king, and it supported generations through the Civil War, the Great Depression and World War II.

Chanin’s Alabama roots cross many decades, and her family tree goes back seven generations in the area. Her great-grandmother knitted socks in east Florence’s Sweetwater Mill. Both of her grandmothers were avid quilters. Her parents still live around Florence and her 30-year-old son, Zachariah, moved to the town five years ago. Six years ago, Chanin’s daughter, Maggie, was born, and five months ago, her son became a father to Chanin’s first grandchild, Stella Ruth.

“There are five generations of my family alive and living here now,” she says. “It’s home, and that’s why I came back. It’s home.”

Sweet Home Alabama

When Chanin returned to Alabama, she set up shop in a three-bedroom brick house “10 miles as the crow flies” from Florence in a community known as Lovelace Crossing. “We say it like ‘loveless’,” Chanin says.

There, she began what she considered “just an art project” with the recycled, reworked T-shirts. She visited the quilting circle, and the women still met weekly, sold their completed quilts and reinvested the money into the community center – just as Chanin remembered. She told the women that she wanted to hire them for her project. But she hit a deadend.

“They said, ‘This is something we do for the community, we don’t want a job,” Chanin recalls. “They had gardens, grandchildren and they didn’t want the responsibility.”

Chanin persevered.

She placed an ad in the local newspaper seeking part-time seamstresses. Sixty people responded; she locked in 20 of them as independent contractors, creating a cottage industry that allowed women to work on their own terms and time. Many of these women lived in rural areas, had limited, if no, transportation and children to care for during the day.

The idea worked and evolved into the company Project Alabama. Eventually a few hundred stitchers sewed for her Project Alabama line. But, then the U.S. Department of Labor entered the picture in 2003 and investigated the independent contractor methods.

“We lost 90 percent of our workforce from one day to the next,” she says. “We refined the system because the Department of Labor was instrumental in showing us how the independent contractor system could work.”

The Birth of Alabama Chanin

“There are no rules; that is how art is born.” That’s the greeting on a lighted sign inside the front door of the Alabama Chanin spacious office and work space. Another handmade fabric sign states, “Waste Not Want Not.” On the back of two chairs, the words “Simplify, Simplify, Simplify” are carved into the natural wood. All of these sum up Chanin’s ethos.

Chanin left Project Alabama in 2006 amid differences about the company’s future regarding retaining jobs in her home town.

She soon started Alabama Chanin, leaving the house in Loveless and renting a 5,000-square-foot warehouse in Florence with a long history in the textile industry. The space was once part of a larger 100,000-square-feet complex that housed wall-to-wall sewing machines and workers who dyed fabric and made T-shirts.

Now a rack of Chanin’s designs – beautiful white coats with red stitching, appliqué skirts, stenciled T-shirts – has replaced the machines. Wire shelves hold Chanin’s white swatch books with hundreds of appliqué designs. Southern books, including the three she wrote, are displayed along with her examples of her jewelry and ceramic lines. Vintage Alabama quilts, which Chanin has “stabilized” with remnant fabrics and embroidery that tells stories, hang on one wall.

 Photo: Rinne Allen/Alabama Chanin

Unlike most clothing companies, Alabama Chanin doesn’t mass produce hundreds of items for retail, in an effort to maintain a policy of zero waste. Instead, each piece is a work-of-art, an item to be treasured, and like art, an Alabama Chanin garment is expensive – some range upwards of $ 5,000 and beyond. Fans often save for two or three years to own one.

Chanin uses only 100 percent organic cotton grown in Texas. It is spun into yarn in North Carolina, knitted into fabric in South Carolina and dyed in Tennessee and North Carolina. In the best case scenario, Chanin says, she attempts to use 100 percent American products, but occasionally organic domestic cotton is not available.

She no longer shows her designs at New York City Fashion Week, instead developing her brand through trunk shows, word-of-mouth and the Internet. While many designers keep their designs secret, Chanin does not. She is a zealous believer in the DIY and open-source movement. A significant part of her business is now centered on teaching workshops, writing books and her blog and selling custom sewing kits that allow others to create their own clothing and accessories.

It’s the operation of her business, however, that is most innovative.

Chanin employs only eleven people at the warehouse, but 30 seamstresses work as independent contractors. Over the years, Chanin estimates that more than 500 seamstresses in the Florence area have contributed to her design business. Her system is now similar to a cottage industry.

The concept hearkens to the Industrial Revolution when workers couldn’t travel from rural areas to urban ones. It allowed workers to have employment and also flexibility, something that is still needed in the 21st century.

“I’m just as proud of the system [we’ve developed] as for the designs that have been in Vogue,” she says. “Women are the primary caregivers whether it is a sick child or a caregiver for an elderly parent. They can work when they want, where they want and it empowers them to set their own schedule.”

A product isn’t made until a customer places an order. A bidding sheet for projects is sent to the 30 seamstresses via email and is also available at the warehouse. Seamstresses bid on projects, quoting Chanin a price that they think is fair depending on the project’s complexity with design, beading and appliqué. The bid may be in the thousands of dollars and take several months to complete as every piece is hand-sewn with not one stitch made on a machine.

 Photo: Rinne Allen/Alabama Chanin

The seamstress then invests her money into the project by purchasing the unassembled raw materials (fabric panels, thread, an Alabama Chanin label and other supplies) in person at the warehouse.

“When everyone is invested, you have a better ratio for success,” Chanin says. “They work by the project not by the time,” she explains. “We don’t ask. That’s their business. It’s totally up to them how they want to do it.”

When the project is finished, the seamstress initials the label and sells the creation back for the value she thinks it is worth. Rarely does an item fail to meet standards or a deadline. Ever conscious, Chanin tries to ensure everyone has a project during slow periods.

“We are always looking for ways to keep our artisans busy, and if we don’t, they will try to find other jobs because they have to feed their families,” she says. “These people are like our families. We care about them. We know their kids. We know who they are. We have become grandmothers together. We have broken bread together. We have prayed together. Keeping them in work is one of the responsibilities I have as a business owner.”

The Future Is Bright

Along back roads of the South, cotton fields extend for miles. The fluffy white bolls remain an integral part of the Southern economy and culture. No one knows this better than Southerners like Chanin and Florence fashion designer, Billy Reid, and his staff.

“This whole conversation sprang up about two years ago because there is an organization interested in bringing manufacturing back to the South,” Chanin says. “We were saying that it would be amazing if we could have vertical manufacturing here from growing the cotton to cutting and sewing it.”

Chanin gives credit to K.P. McNeill, who works for Billy Reid, for finding the six-acre untouched and unfarmed spot for the organic cotton experiment. From there, Chanin calls the farming adventure “a miraculous journey.”

“We found two sacks of seeds after we couldn’t find any,” she says. “We didn’t have a tractor and suddenly we had a tractor. We didn’t have a planter and then we had a planter.”

A severe drought threatened to kill the cotton crop, but amazingly, the cotton grew. Last October, Chanin closed her warehouse for the day and headed to the cotton patch to attend Alabama Chanin and Billy Reid Cotton Picking Party and Field Day. Family, friends and the community were invited to join Chanin. She hoped that people would learn about organic farming and the future possibilities that exist for Florence textile industry. While the acreage only produced a bale and half of cotton, it offered hope for the next season.

For Chanin, growing jobs was once her primary concern, but she has expanded her mission to include cultivating DIY ingenuity and, now, tackling the land. Her latest farming project should not surprise those who know and admire Chanin. After all, she believes that other businesses and designers should simply follow their heart.

“It’s about making the right decisions which aren’t always the easiest decisions,” Chanin says. “But every time I’ve made the right decision, I’ve been rewarded.”

---

Suzi Parker is an Arkansas-based political and cultural journalist whose work frequently appears in The Washington Post and The Christian Science Monitor. She is the author of two books. @SuziParker | TakePart.com 

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J.J. Abrams to produce Lance Armstrong biopic

LOS ANGELES (AP) — He's already gotten the Oprah treatment. Now Lance Armstrong is headed for the silver screen.

Paramount Pictures and J.J. Abrams' production company, Bad Robot, are planning a biopic about the disgraced cyclist, a studio spokeswoman said Friday.

They've secured the rights to New York Times reporter Juliet Macur's upcoming book "Cycle of Lies: The Fall of Lance Armstrong," due out in June. Macur covered the seven-time Tour de France winner for over a decade.

No director, writer, star or start date have been set.

Armstrong is in the midst of a two-part interview with Oprah Winfrey in which he admits to using performance-enhancing drugs to reach his historic victories, something he'd defiantly denied for years. The International Olympic Committee stripped him of his 2000 bronze medal this week.

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Business Briefing | Medicine: F.D.A. Clears Botox to Help Bladder Control

Botox, the wrinkle treatment made by Allergan, has been approved to treat adults with overactive bladders who cannot tolerate or were not helped by other drugs, the Food and Drug Administration said on Friday. Botox injected into the bladder muscle causes the bladder to relax, increasing its storage capacity. “Clinical studies have demonstrated Botox’s ability to significantly reduce the frequency of urinary incontinence,” Dr. Hylton V. Joffe, director of the F.D.A.’s reproductive and urologic products division, said in a statement. “Today’s approval provides an important additional treatment option for patients with overactive bladder, a condition that affects an estimated 33 million men and women in the United States.”

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Col Needham created IMDb

The gig: Col Needham, 45, is founder and chief executive of Internet Movie Database, the world's leading online source for information about movies and television shows and for celebrity news. Every month, the site attracts more than 160 million visitors who come to watch movie trailers, read reviews or check out the comprehensive rundown of a movie's cast and crew. Its database contains more than 100 million items, including information about more than 2 million movies and TV shows and some 4 million cast and crew members.

Lifelong movie fan: Hollywood provided the highlights of Needham's childhood. His earliest memory is of seeing Walt Disney's animated classic "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" at age 5 with his grandmother, after winning a newspaper coloring competition. "She took me in a taxi to the middle of Manchester, the town in the north of England where I grew up," Needham said. "I can remember the taxi, I can remember the movie."

The 1975 summer thriller "Jaws" kept Col — who at the time was 8 — out of the local swimming pool. The home video revolution allowed him to more thoroughly indulge his passion for film. A family friend who owned a video rental store would lend him video cassette tapes for up to two weeks. "My ridiculous claim to fame was as a 14-year-old when I saw "Alien" 14 times in 14 days," he joked.

Computer geek: An early technology enthusiast, Needham received his first computer — a do-it-yourself hobbyist kit — as a Christmas gift when he was 12. "My love of film and love of technology were kind of on a collision course for the creation of IMDb." Before long, Needham converted his paper diary of the films he'd watched into a computer database that included each movie's title, director, writers, principal cast and crew and plot summary. He would watch movies on VHS tape and faithfully record each film's credits.

Finding movie fans online: Needham graduated from Leeds University in 1988 with a computer science degree and began working in Hewlett-Packard Co.'s research lab in Bristol. Around that same time, he turned to an early type of Internet discussion group, known as the "usenet," to chat about films with other cinephiles. Invariably, talk would turn to actresses — and one member of the news group compiled a list of actresses with their credits.

Needham merged this list with his own data, then took it upon himself, in 1990, to prepare a companion list of actors, and later, of golden-age Hollywood actors and actresses who had died. At the suggestion of someone within the online group, he converted his private database to a version that could be used by any computer connected to the Internet. The IMDb was launched Oct. 17, 1990.

World Wide Web: A doctoral student at Cardiff University in Wales urged Needham to adapt IMDb in 1993 for upstart World Wide Web. At the time, he had no thought of making money with his passion project. "We were all just volunteers who cared passionately about movies, about TV shows, about personalities, and we wanted to share that love with the rest of the world," he said. But after a period of rapid growth, Needham and three others incorporated IMDb in 1996, using a credit card to cover startup expenses. Within two weeks of launch, IMDb sold its first ad. "We were able to pay off the credit card debt before it was due," he said. "I'd like to think that we became the world's first profitable Internet company."

Amazon comes calling: Needham quit his day job in the summer of '96, after IMDb sold its first movie studio ad (to promote 20th Century Fox's "Independence Day"). Within a year, Amazon.com's general counsel approached Needham to arrange a meeting with the online retailer's chief executive, Jeff Bezos, in London. Such an email should have sent Champagne corks popping, said Needham, who mistakenly believed the face-to-face session would focus on advertising. Bezos had something else in mind.

"Jeff had such a clear vision for how IMDb could fit within the Amazon family yet exist as a separate brand," Needham said. "The information on the IMDb site would be optimized for search and discovery, helping you find great things to watch. At the same time, IMDb data could be used on the Amazon website where it would create a great customer experience for buying movies. So we found ourselves saying 'yes.'" The deal was announced in April 1998.

IMDb grows up: Amazon's acquisition afforded the resources to redesign the IMDb site and update the information daily instead of weekly. It began diversifying its offerings in 2002, with the introduction of the IMDbPro subscription service for entertainment industry professionals. It developed more extensive information about television programs in 2006, providing details about individual episodes. This fueled a period of explosive growth for the site. IMDb made a pair of purchases in 2008 to augment its offerings, acquiring online box office reporting service BoxOfficeMojo and a site that streamlines the film festival submission process, Withoutabox.

Going mobile: IMDb made the leap to smartphones in 2009 and has been downloaded more than 50 million times. Mobile users make an average of 175 million visits every month. "We can see our U.S. usage very much mirrors the peak [TV viewing] time," Needham said. "So clearly people are accessing IMDb while they're watching TV shows, while they're watching movies."

Amazon's Kindle Fire tablet boasts X-Ray for Movies, a feature powered by IMDb that allows users to retrieve casting information and other details with the touch of the screen. A new version of the IMDb app for Apple Inc.'s iPad focuses on discovery and recommendations. "People suffer from overwhelming choice," Needham said. "Having IMDb there with our rich database ... combined with your own personal watch list data, we can come up with a list of things that you should see next."

All-time favorite movie? Alfred Hitchcock's "Vertigo." "It's been my favorite movie since I first saw it in November 1989.... It changed the way I view movies. Alfred Hitchcock played me like a piano."

Favorite movies of 2012? Top of the list is Ridley Scott's sci-fi thriller "Prometheus," the indie critical fave "The Perks of Being a Wallflower" and the French drama "Rust and Bone."

A credit of his own: Col Needham is listed in IMDb, for his appearance in a 2001 television documentary "Shawshank: The Redeeming Feature."

Getting personal: Needham and his wife, Karen, have twin daughters. His main hobby is watching movies, although he describes himself as an avid swimmer, "which is quite ironic given my experience of seeing 'Jaws.'"

dawn.chmielewski@latimes.com

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Colorado movie theater reopens after shooting

AURORA, Colo. — A quiet crowd gathered Thursday at what is now Century Aurora for an "evening of remembrance." Young employees offered candy, sodas and popcorn to visitors who mingled inside the complex, which had been painted soft blues, greens and yellows.

The movie theater where a gunman killed 12 people and injured dozens more last July reopened under a new name after extensive remodeling. The governor, mayor, theater officials and a few hundred victims, families and community members attended, but relatives of several who died boycotted the event.

In one aisle, a young man comforted a young woman as she cried. A small room was set up with tables and tissues for those who might need a quiet space to grieve.

Corbin Dates, 23, who said he was in the second row of Theater 9 during the rampage and escaped with a small burn from a bullet casing, called the event empowering.

"Evil doesn't have the best of me and it never will," he said.

But Scott Larimer, whose son John Larimer, 27, was killed, did not come. He was among those who called for a boycott after receiving a brief email shortly after Christmas inviting him to the ceremony and to an unspecified movie.

"They were treating it like I lost my raincoat there and not my son," he said. "I'm not sure if they're just trying to drum up support so they can just reopen their theater and make some money, or what it is."

The fate of the Century 16 theaters was the subject of much debate in the aftermath of one of the worst mass shootings in U.S. history, for which James E. Holmes, 25, has been ordered to stand trial. City officials launched an online survey to gauge public opinion and said the response was overwhelming in favor of reopening.

But earlier this month, 15 family members of nine people killed wrote a letter to Cinemark, the theater's owner, blasting the invitation to the opening and criticizing the company for showing "ZERO compassion to the families of the victims whose loved ones were killed in their theater."

One of them, Jerri Jackson, said Cinemark had never contacted her before she received the invitation, which was sent by a victims' group on Cinemark's behalf.

"I would have thought early on that they would have contacted us and offered their condolences, tried to do something for the families, but they've done nothing," she said. Her son Matt McQuinn, 27, was among the dead.

Some who came to the ceremony had a different perspective.

"We will not let this tragedy define us," Aurora Mayor Steve Hogan said during the 30-minute remembrance. "Aurora is strong, Aurora is caring, and our focus remains on the road before us."

Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper acknowledged the families who were absent but praised Cinemark and its chief executive for working closely with the community in the aftermath of the shooting.

"Everyone heals. Some slower, some in different ways. Some wanted this theater open, some didn't," Hickenlooper said. "For many here tonight, this is the path to healing."

After the ceremony, everyone was invited to stay for a screening of "The Hobbit."

Tom Sullivan, whose son Alex Sullivan, 27, died, came to the remembrance. He and other family members spent several minutes exploring the complex before taking a seat for the ceremony. He sees the theater as part of his community, which supported him after the death of his son.

"The people of Aurora decided that's what they wanted," to reopen the theater. "So I decided, 'Well, that's what we'll do,'" he said. "The people of Aurora have done everything they can to help us through this very difficult time."

paloma.esquivel@latimes.com

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Let’s Talk

Hi!

I’m Mark Atwood, and I’m the Director of Open Source Evangelism for HP Cloud Services.  I’ve been working at HPCS for several months now, getting a feel for HP and our place in the open source and OpenStack® community.

I’ve been evangelizing open source for decades, since before “Evangelist” was a technology industry job title, since I was a teenager in high school, when I first read rms’s manifesto in the printed pages of Dr Dobbs magazine. Read more about Let’s Talk »

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Robert Wagner not interviewed in new Wood inquiry

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Robert Wagner has declined to be interviewed by detectives in a renewed inquiry into the drowning death of his wife Natalie Wood three decades ago, an investigator said Thursday.

Wagner was interviewed by authorities soon after Wood's drowning in 1981, but the actor is the only person who was on the yacht the night Wood died who has not spoken to detectives as part of the latest inquiry, despite repeated requests and attempts, sheriff's Lt. John Corina said.

Blair Berk, an attorney for Wagner and his family, said the actor had cooperated with authorities since his wife died.

Detectives began re-investigating the case in November 2011. Since then investigators have interviewed more than 100 people, but Wagner has refused and Corina said the actor's representatives have not given any reason for his silence.

The detective's remarks provided new insight into the case that has remained one of Hollywood's enduring mysteries. Earlier this week, coroner's officials released an updated autopsy report that had been under a security hold. It detailed why Wood's death had been reclassified from an accidental drowning to a drowning caused by "undetermined factors."

"Mr. Wagner has fully cooperated over the last 30 years in the investigation of the accidental drowning of his wife in 1981," Berk said in a prepared statement. "Mr. Wagner has been interviewed on multiple occasions by the Los Angeles sheriff's department and answered every single question asked of him by detectives during those interviews."

After 30 years, Berk said, neither Wagner nor his daughters have any new information to add. She said the latest investigation was prompted by people seeking to exploit and sensationalize the 30th anniversary of the death.

The renewed inquiry came after the yacht's captain Dennis Davern told "48 Hours" and the "Today" show that he heard Wagner and Wood arguing the night of her disappearance and believed Wagner was to blame for her death.

Authorities have not identified any suspects in the case.

Wood, 43, was on a yacht with Wagner, Christopher Walken and the boat captain on Thanksgiving weekend of 1981 before she somehow ended up in the water.

Corina said Walken gave a prepared statement and spoke to detectives for an hour.

Detectives have also interviewed other actors who knew both Wagner and Wood to learn more about their relationship.

Corina said detectives have tried at least 10 times to interview Wagner but have been refused. He said some of the refusals have come from the actor's attorney, and that detectives at one point traveled to Colorado to try to speak with Wagner but were unsuccessful.

Corina said the latest inquiry had turned up new evidence.

"Most of the people we've talked to were never talked to 30 years ago," he said. "We've got a lot of new information."

Asked if the information might lead to criminal charges, Corina said that would be up to prosecutors if they are presented a case.

"All we can do is collect the facts," he said. "We're still trying to collect all the facts."

Corina said new people have emerged with information each time the case is in the news. Detectives would like to interview other people who haven't agreed to talk, he said.

Coroner's officials released an update autopsy report on Monday that detailed the reasons Wood's death certificate was changed last year from a drowning death to "drowning and other undetermined factors."

The updated report states the change was made in part because investigators couldn't rule out that some of the bruises and marks on Wood's body happened before she went into the water.

"Since there are unanswered questions and limited additional evidence available for evaluation, it is opined by this medical examiner that the manner of death should be left as undetermined," Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Lakshmanan Sathyavagiswaran wrote in the report completed in June.

Officials also considered that Wood wasn't wearing a life jacket, had no history of suicide attempts and didn't leave a note as reasons to amend the death certificate.

Wood was famous for roles in films such as "West Side Story" and "Rebel Without a Cause" and was nominated for three Academy Awards.

Conflicting versions of what happened on the yacht have contributed to the mystery of her death. Wood, Wagner and Walken had all been drinking heavily in the hours before the actress disappeared.

Wagner wrote in a 2008 memoir that he and Walken argued that night. He wrote that Walken went to bed and he stayed up for a while, but when he went to bed, he noticed that his wife and a dinghy that had been attached to the yacht were missing.

"Nobody knows," he wrote. "There are only two possibilities; either she was trying to get away from the argument, or she was trying to tie the dinghy. But the bottom line is that nobody knows exactly what happened."

___

Anthony McCartney can be reached at http://twitter.com/mccartneyAP

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The Neediest Cases: Medical Bills Crush Brooklyn Man’s Hope of Retiring

Andrea Mohin/The New York Times

John Concepcion and his wife, Maria, in their home in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. They are awaiting even more medical bills.

Retirement was just about a year away, or so John Concepcion thought, when a sudden health crisis put his plans in doubt.

For the past 100 years, The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund has provided direct assistance to children, families and the elderly in New York. To celebrate the 101st campaign, an article will appear daily through Jan. 25. Each profile will illustrate the difference that even a modest amount of money can make in easing the struggles of the poor.

Last year donors contributed $7,003,854, which was distributed to those in need through seven New York charities.

2012-13 Campaign

Previously recorded:

$6,865,501

Recorded Wed.:

16,711

*Total:

$6,882,212

Last year to date:

$6,118,740

*Includes $1,511,814 contributed to the Hurricane Sandy relief efforts.

“I get paralyzed, I can’t breathe,” he said of the muscle spasms he now has regularly. “It feels like something’s going to bust out of me.”

Severe abdominal pain is not the only, or even the worst, reminder of the major surgery Mr. Concepcion, 62, of Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, underwent in June. He and his wife of 36 years, Maria, are now faced with medical bills that are so high, Ms. Concepcion said she felt faint when she saw them.

Mr. Concepcion, who is superintendent of the apartment building where he lives, began having back pain last January that doctors first believed was the result of gallstones. In March, an endoscopy showed that tumors had grown throughout his digestive system. The tumors were not malignant, but an operation was required to remove them, and surgeons had to essentially reroute Mr. Concepcion’s entire digestive tract. They removed his gall bladder, as well as parts of his pancreas, bile ducts, intestines and stomach, he said.

The operation was a success, but then came the bills.

“I told my friend: are you aware that if you have a major operation, you’re going to lose your house?” Ms. Concepcion said.

The couple has since received doctors’ bills of more than $250,000, which does not include the cost of his seven-day stay at Beth Israel Medical Center in Manhattan. Mr. Concepcion has worked in the apartment building since 1993 and has been insured through his union.

The couple are in an anxious holding pattern as they wait to find out just what, depending on their policy’s limits, will be covered. Even with financial assistance from Beth Israel, which approved a 70 percent discount for the Concepcions on the hospital charges, the couple has no idea how the doctors’ and surgical fees will be covered.

“My son said, boy he saved your life, Dad, but look at the bill he sent to you,” Ms.  Concepcion said in reference to the surgeon’s statements. “You’ll be dead before you pay it off.”

When the Concepcions first acquired their insurance, they were in good health, but now both have serious medical issues — Ms. Concepcion, 54, has emphysema and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and Mr. Concepcion has diabetes. They now spend close to $800 a month on prescriptions.

Mr. Concepcion, the family’s primary wage earner, makes $866 a week at his job. The couple had planned for Mr. Concepcion to retire sometime this year, begin collecting a pension and, after getting their finances in order, leave the superintendent’s apartment, as required by the landlord, and try to find a new home. “That’s all out of the question now,” Ms. Concepcion said. Mr. Concepcion said he now planned to continue working indefinitely.

Ms. Concepcion has organized every bill and medical statement into bulging folders, and said she had spent hours on the phone trying to negotiate with providers. She is still awaiting the rest of the bills.

On one of those bills, Ms. Concepcion said, she spotted a telephone number for people seeking help with medical costs. The number was for Community Health Advocates, a health insurance consumer assistance program and a unit of Community Service Society, one of the organizations supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund. The society drew $2,120 from the fund so the Concepcions could pay some of their medical bills, and the health advocates helped them obtain the discount from the hospital.

Neither one knows what the next step will be, however, and the stress has been eating at them.

“How do we get out of this?” Mr. Concepcion asked. “There is no way out. Here I am trying to save to retire. They’re going to put me in the street.”

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Herbalife says fourth-quarter profit will exceed expectations

Herbalife Ltd. forecast that fourth-quarter earnings will come in higher than expected but said expenses could rise as the nutritional supplement distributor ramps up its fight with activist hedge-fund manager William Ackman.

The Los Angeles company said Thursday it also plans to buy back shares, a sign that management believes the stock is undervalued. It's a much-needed boost for a company that's been mired in a battle with an investor who says the company is on its way downhill.

"Herbalife is a financially strong and successful company, having created significant opportunities for distributors and positively impact the lives and health of our consumers over our history," company Chief Executive Michael Johnson said in a statement.

Herbalife said it expected fourth-quarter earnings of $1.02 to $1.05 a share, higher than Wall Street's expectation of $1.01 a share. Sales for the fourth quarter are expected to rise 19.9%, the company said, and its taxes will be lower than projected. The company plans to begin repurchasing shares Tuesday.

The company also said it expected expenses to be temporarily higher "because of recent events."

Herbalife has been battling allegations by Ackman, who said in a December presentation that the company is a glorified pyramid scheme. He's sold short about 20 million shares of the stock, expecting the company to tank. Herbalife is also reportedly being investigated by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

A week ago in Manhattan, Johnson and other Herbalife executives rebutted Ackman's points one by one, proving, they said, that Herbalife has a stable business model and is not scamming anyone. Shares of the company, which had been slumping, began rising again after Johnson's presentation.

Ackman foe Carl Icahn stepped into the controversy this week, taking a stake in Herbalife, according to reports. Icahn could not be reached for comment.

Investors showed mixed reaction to Herbalife's preliminary earnings Thursday. The stock initially shot up in morning trading but leveled off in the afternoon and closed down $1.54, or 3.4%, at $43.52.

Herbalife will release its final fourth quarter results Feb. 19.

Analysts such as Timothy Ramey, of D.A. Davidson & Co., say they're optimistic about the company's future. Ramey also adjusted his expectations of the company's earnings.

In 2013, earnings will be $4.85 a share, up from his previous estimate of $4.55, he said in a note. He also adjusted his forecast for 2012 earnings to $4.05 a share from $4.03.

Ramey said he expects Herbalife stock to thrive once it emerges from the current controversy, which he expects will happen in 2013. In five years, the stock could hit $180, he said.

"There has never been a period of greater scrutiny for Herbalife," he wrote.

alana.semuels@latimes.com

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European regulators ground the Boeing 787 Dreamliner

European regulators ordered all Boeing 787 Dreamliners grounded Thursday, following the lead of U.S. aviation safety officials. (David McNew / Getty Images / January 17, 2013)

By Henry Chu

January 17, 2013, 2:27 a.m.

LONDON – European air-safety officials followed their American counterparts’ lead Thursday by grounding Boeing 787 Dreamliner jumbo jets after a series of worrisome incidents aboard the new aircraft.

The European Aviation Safety Agency, or EASA, announced that it was adopting the Federal Aviation Administration’s directive, issued Wednesday, ordering all 787s taken out of service. Jeremie Teahan, a spokesman for the EASA, said the action was taken “to ensure the continuing airworthiness of the European fleet.”

As a practical matter, the decision by European regulators will affect only two 787s being used by the Polish airline LOT. But the move increases pressure on Boeing, which insists that its new passenger jet is safe but has promised to work with the FAA to resolve any concerns.

Doubts about the 787’s safety grew after a fire aboard a plane parked at Boston’s airport and an emergency landing by an All Nippon Airways flight whose crew reported a strange smell and noticed indications of a problem with a lithium-ion battery.

The FAA’s directive was issued less than a week after U.S. transport officials deemed the 787 safe to fly. The agency said that Boeing now had to “address a potential battery fire risk in the 787.”

Teahan said the EASA would “carefully monitor the situation and is prepared to provide any support the FAA may require in their investigation.”

ALSO:

London copter crash kills 2

FAA grounds entire fleet of Boeing 787s

Germany to bring home its gold by 2020

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You Can Use Facebook for Free Cellphone Calls Now

Wait, what?

RELATED: Facebook’s Faster iPhone App Isn’t Fast Enough

Yes, theoretically you can kis those talk-time minutes from your cellphone data plan goodbye — as long as you’re content to have all your voice conversation with other Facebook users over data or Wi-Fi by way of your Messenger app. It’s called Voice Over Internet Protocol talking, and it’s the same thing that was supposed to help Skype take over the world last decade, and it might end up being a lot more useful to the savvy consumer’s pocketbook than the Graph Search, which Mark Zuckerberg called the “third pillar” of Facebook yesterday.

RELATED: Everything There Is to Know About That Facebook Phone

To make a call, all Facebook users have to do is tap the little “i” at the top right corner of the revamped app, which leads to the screen pictured above at right. As long as the other caller has the Messenger app, U.S. users can now tap Free Call, and, well, it’s just like making a phone call, really — except that instead of ringing, a push notification pops up: “You have a call from Carly.” (Seriously! We just tried it! It was free!)

RELATED: What Can Apple’s Acquisition of Chomp Mean?

Of course, this isn’t a Facebook-branded piece of hardware, or even the full-scale cellphone OS many have been drooling over as the social network figures out its mobile future. But this software could replace the traditional way we make calls. As we’ve explained before, Facebook has a lot of things going for it in taking VoIP calls to the masses in the way the Skype never really could: Messenger’s got all the right contacts, it costs almost nothing, and it even works in areas with terrible reception. Not to mention it works over data plans for everyone and not just people with compatible phones — Apple’s FaceTime feature only works on the iPhone 4S or 5, even if it’s more available now. Still, Facebook doesn’t have video chat for Messenger. But, hey, one world dominating step at a time, right?

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Sniping, then singing as 'American Idol' returns

LOS ANGELES (AP) — There was no hair-pulling between Mariah Carey and Nicki Minaj on the season debut of "American Idol," although some viewers may have been reduced to it.

The pop divas exchanged insults worthy of middle schoolers, fellow freshman judge Keith Urban looked trapped between them, and there was a whiff of make-believe Wednesday about the show's touted feud.

"We can have accessories. I didn't know that was allowed. That's all I'm gonna say," Carey commented archly about Minaj's flashy, drum major-style hat.

The rapper took offense.

"Why'd you have to reference my hat?" Minaj said, with Carey then accusing Minaj of rudeness to her during an earlier elevator meeting.

Mercifully, a contestant arrived to break up the bickering and remind us that we tuned in to a talent show, not an episode of "Real Housewives of American Idol."

When the action resumed, Minaj demonstrated a magnificent talent for eye-rolling and upped the ante with a muttered insult.

"If she called me something that begins with a 'b' and ends with an 'itch,' I rebuke it," Carey declared.

Whether the clash is real or not, Minaj's scrappiness came off as far more entertaining than Carey's demure, even queenly manner. Carey is getting a truly royal paycheck: $18 million, to Minaj's $12 million.

The award for least self-absorbed judge goes to genial country singer Urban.

The two-hour episode opened by showcasing last year's winner, Phillip Phillips, and those alumni with established careers, including Carrie Underwood, Kelly Clarkson and Jennifer Hudson.

Then host Ryan Seacrest brought "American Idol" back down to earth and to its new judges.

"Our legacy continues as a new era begins," he said, reciting the panelists' resumes, including record sales, Grammys won and, in Carey's case, vocal range (five octaves, "the definition of diva," Seacrest said).

Cue the parade of good, bad and touching performances and biographies, with contestants facing serious challenges once again an "Idol" hallmark.

The judges, including veteran Randy Jackson, hardened their hearts and rejected a young man who had lost a leg to cancer but melted for a teenage girl whose family fosters children with medical concerns and another singer with partial hearing loss.

Forty-one people survived the New York auditions to sing another day in the Hollywood rounds, with the action moving to Chicago on Thursday's episode.

"I feel like we jell well in a weird, crazy way," Minaj declared optimistically of the panel near the episode's conclusion.

Fox certainly hopes so. Last season, "Idol" lost its status as the most-watched TV program for the first time since 2003, eclipsed by NBC's "Sunday Night Football," and pegged its lowest-rated season since it debuted in summer 2002.

___

Online:

http://www.fox.com

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Some With Autism Diagnosis Can Recover, Study Finds

Doctors have long believed that disabling autistic disorders last a lifetime, but a new study has found that some children who exhibit signature symptoms of the disorder recover completely.

The study, posted online on Wednesday by the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, is the largest to date of such extraordinary cases and is likely to alter the way that scientists and parents think and talk about autism, experts said.

Researchers on Wednesday cautioned against false hope. The findings suggest that the so-called autism spectrum contains a small but significant group who make big improvements in behavioral therapy for unknown, perhaps biological reasons, but that most children show much smaller gains. Doctors have no way to predict which children will do well.

Researchers have long known that between 1 and 20 percent of children given an autism diagnosis no longer qualify for one a few years or more later. They have suspected that in most cases the diagnosis was mistaken; the rate of autism diagnosis has ballooned over the past two decades, and some research suggests that it has been loosely applied.

The new study should put some of that skepticism to rest.

“This is the first solid science to address this question of possible recovery, and I think it has big implications,” said Sally Ozonoff of the MIND Institute at the University of California, Davis, who was not involved in the research. “I know many of us as would rather have had our tooth pulled than use the word ‘recover,’ it was so unscientific. Now we can use it, though I think we need to stress that it’s rare.”

She and other experts said the findings strongly supported the value of early diagnosis and treatment.

In the study, a team led by Deborah Fein of the University of Connecticut at Storrs recruited 34 people who had been diagnosed before the age of 5 and no longer had any symptoms. They ranged in age from 8 to 21 years old and early in their development were in the higher-than-average range of the autism spectrum. The team conducted extensive testing of its own, including interviews with parents in some cases, to gauge current social and communication skills.

The debate over whether recovery is possible has simmered for decades and peaked in 1987, when the pioneering autism researcher O. Ivar Lovaas reported that 47 percent of children with the diagnosis showed full recovery after undergoing a therapy he had devised. This therapy, a behavioral approach in which increments of learned skills garner small rewards, is the basis for the most effective approach used today; still, many were skeptical and questioned his definition of recovery.

Dr. Fein and her team used standardized, widely used measures and found no differences between the group of 34 formerly diagnosed people and a group of 34 matched control subjects who had never had a diagnosis.

“They no longer qualified for the diagnosis,” said Dr. Fein, whose co-authors include researchers from Queens University in Kingston, Ontario; Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia; the Institute of Living in Hartford; and the Child Mind Institute in New York. “I want to stress to parents that it’s a minority of kids who are able to do this, and no one should think they somehow missed the boat if they don’t get this outcome.”

On measures of social and communication skills, the recovered group scored significantly better than 44 peers who had a diagnosis of high-functioning autism or Asperger’s syndrome.

Dr. Fein emphasized the importance of behavioral therapy. “These people did not just grow out of their autism,” she said. “I have been treating children for 40 years and never seen improvements like this unless therapists and parents put in years of work.”

The team plans further research to learn more about those who are able to recover. No one knows which ingredients or therapies are most effective, if any, or if there are patterns of behavior or biological markers that predict such success.

“Some children who do well become quite independent as adults but have significant anxiety and depression and are sometimes suicidal,” said Dr. Fred Volkmar, the director of the Child Study Center at the Yale University School of Medicine. There are no studies of this group, he said.

That, because of the new study, is about to change.

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U.S. finalizes rules for financial firms to avoid foreclosures

In a major effort to heal the $10-trillion U.S. mortgage market, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has finalized rules designed to ensure financial firms offer every available option to keep delinquent borrowers in their homes.

The regulations, to be announced Thursday, address widespread complaints that loan servicers — the companies that collect mortgage payments and repossess homes — were woefully unprepared to help borrowers during the tsunami of foreclosures after the housing bust.

They are designed to complement previous settlements by major banks over allegations of widespread servicing and foreclosure abuses. But unlike earlier settlements, they will apply to all large mortgage servicers, not just banks, in all states.

Still, the rules drew immediate criticism from a prominent consumer group, which said they don't do enough to force servicers to consider easing the terms of mortgages and expressed fears that the rules might preempt stronger existing provisions.

"While the establishment of industrywide standards is important, the failure to require meaningful loan modification protections is a retreat from current safeguards under the soon-to-expire [Obama administration] loan modification program," said Alys Cohen, an attorney with the National Consumer Law Center.

The consumer bureau was created when Congress passed the sweeping Dodd-Frank financial reform act in reaction to the mortgage meltdown and the global economic crisis that ensued. The law also required lenders to ensure that they only make loans that borrowers can reasonably be expected to repay.

Last week, the bureau issued major regulations providing a "safe harbor" from lawsuits under that new requirement for lenders who make certain types of presumably sound home loans. A key requirement is that total debt payments for borrowers — including principal, interest, taxes and insurance on home loans — be no more than 43% of gross income.

The rules to be released Thursday, which take effect in a year, bar lenders from pursuing foreclosure proceedings against borrowers while applications for loan modifications are pending — the much-criticized practice of "dual tracking."

The consumer bureau said banks also must provide "direct, easy, ongoing access" to employees who are required to alert borrowers to missing information, provide status reports on modification requests and ensure documents don't get lost.

Banks also are required to inform borrowers who miss two monthly payments about options to avoid foreclosure and to wait until loans go 120 days delinquent before beginning a foreclosure — a provision that would preempt a 90-day requirement under California law.

Richard Cordray, the consumer bureau's director, said distressed borrowers had not gotten the help and support they deserved, such as "timely and accurate information about their options for saving their homes."

"Servicers failed to answer phone calls, routinely lost paperwork and mishandled accounts," Cordray said in remarks to be delivered at an industry conference Thursday.

"Communication and coordination were poor, leading many to think they were on their way to a solution, only to find that their homes had been foreclosed on and sold," he said. "At times, people arrived home to find they had been unexpectedly locked out."

The new rules don't apply to most small banks and credit unions. Bureau officials said they have had few complaints about these small institutions, which are more likely to keep loans on their books, rather than sell them, and generally devote more attention to individual customers.

Servicers often are collecting payments on behalf of loan owners, who may be the banks themselves but more often are trusts created on behalf of mortgage investors. The investors have mandated a wide range of relief programs for troubled borrowers in addition to government-sponsored programs such as the Obama administration's Home Affordable Modification Program.

In the past, servicers would sometimes not inform troubled borrowers about all the options, instead steering them into foreclosure or programs that provided the servicers with greater financial rewards, bureau officials said.

The servicers are now supposed to clearly explain all alternatives to borrowers so they can pick the best one. The new rules also establish clearer opportunities for borrowers to appeal servicers' denials of loan modifications.

In addition to worries that the bureau has not cracked down hard enough on servicers, consumer advocates expressed concern that the new rules will not take effect for a year.

"While we understand that servicers need time to implement complex procedures, we're still in the middle of a foreclosure crisis," Cohen said. "Many people will unnecessarily lose their homes if we wait a year."

scott.reckard@latimes.com

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Confession could be bad for Lance Armstrong's bank account

Now that Lance Armstrong has finally admitted to using performance-enhancing drugs during his storied athletic career, the shamed cyclist could be pulled into courtrooms around the globe for legal battles with people seeking millions of dollars.

That's one of the many downsides to the confession of a once-adored athlete who for more than a decade not only denied doping but aggressively counterattacked his accusers.

But a significant question remains about whether there is an upside to his coming clean in an interview with Oprah Winfrey scheduled to air later this week.

The confession potentially represents a first step in trying to rebuild his tarnished public image. It might also help in persuading sports officials to reduce his lifetime ban so that the 41-year-old might someday compete in sanctioned triathlons and marathons.

Armstrong faces an uphill climb.

"For him to chart a course to redemption is really complicated and would take a lot of time," said Adam Hanft, a branding and crisis communications strategist. "It's not going to be reversed with a TV appearance."

In his 21/2-hour interview at a downtown Austin, Texas, hotel, Armstrong was forthcoming about the doping allegations that dogged him during a career that included seven Tour de France victories, Winfrey told "CBS This Morning" on Tuesday.

"I don't think 'emotional' begins to describe the intensity or the difficulty he experienced in talking about some of these things," she said, declining to provide further details.

Armstrong has come under increasing pressure in the months since the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency enforced the ban and issued a 1,000-plus-page report that accused him of leading "the most sophisticated, professionalized and successful doping program that sport has ever seen."

With 11 former teammates providing depositions, he was stripped of his Tour championships and lost several big-money sponsors, including Nike, that had made him one of the sporting world's richest endorsers.

Now, Armstrong stands to lose a large chunk of his personal wealth, reported at about $100 million.

His most pressing concern appears to be a federal whistle-blower lawsuit filed by former teammate Floyd Landis, who was stripped of the 2006 Tour de France title for doping. The suit accuses Armstrong of defrauding the U.S. Postal Service, which sponsored his racing team for a number of years.

Armstrong's attorneys have met with government officials to discuss, among other things, how much the Postal Service was actually damaged by his misconduct, according to a person with knowledge of the situation who is not authorized to speak publicly.

During those talks, settlement figures were discussed, the person said.

A lengthy federal investigation into Armstrong and his team was dropped early last year without charges being brought. It remains to be seen whether the criminal statute of limitations has elapsed, but the Department of Justice could join in the civil suit.

The False Claims Act, the basis of whistle-blower suits, carries heavy penalties, including triple damages and fines, said Mike Morse, a Philadelphia-based lawyer who specializes in such cases.

"Violations of the federal False Claims Act can expose him to some really significant monetary damages," Morse said. "There could also be a whole host of private lawsuits."

Reacting to early allegations of Armstrong's doping, a Dallas-based promotional company declined to pay him a $5-million bonus for winning the 2004 Tour de France. He sued and received a $7.5-million settlement.

Now SCA Promotions plans to sue Armstrong to get its money back. "We do expect to file soon," said Jeffrey Dorough, the company's in-house counsel. "We don't know what impact the interview will have until we see it."

The government of South Australia state has said it will seek to recoup several million dollars in appearance fees paid to Armstrong for competing in the Tour Down Under from 2009 through 2011.

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Apple scoops PBS on “Downton Abbey” episodes, but PBS is cool with it

NEW YORK (TheWrap.com) – Apple is making the entire third season of “Downton Abbey” available on iTunes before every episode airs on PBS – and that’s just fine with PBS.

Fans who buy a season pass on iTunes beginning January 29 will get to see three episodes before they air on PBS. The Season 3 finale airs February 17.

But PBS CEO Paula Kerger isn’t worried that viewers will watch the show online, then tune out PBS. In fact, she says, Apple isn’t the only place Americans can see “Downton” before they can see it on her network.

“You can also buy the DVD sets. They’re being shipped at the end of January, and the DVD sets and Apple are going up at the same time,” Kerger told TheWrap. “I think that for people who are really passionate and want to have it, it’s a great thing.”

Kerger says she hopes more viewers will discover “Downton” on whatever format they like best – and then watch it on PBS next season.

“At the end of the day, my interest is just in seeing it get to the widest possible audience, and there are people that would pick it up on Apple that may not pick it up anywhere else,” she said.

The first episode of the third season premiered to a record 7.9 million viewers earlier this month. Many of those viewers, no doubt, caught up on the previous seasons online or through DVD viewing.

“Downton” airs in the U.K. in the fall but on PBS in January, which means PBS viewers must shield themselves from spoilers. That has led to some grumbling from American fans.

But Kerger said airing the show in January allows the show to get more attention domestically than it might otherwise receive in the crowded fall season.

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Chicago rapper facing jail for parole violation

CHICAGO (AP) — Chicago rapper Chief Keef has been taken into custody after a juvenile court judge decided a video of him firing a semiautomatic rifle at a New York gun range was a violation of probation.

The artist, real name Keith Cozart, was sentenced last year to 18 months' probation after his conviction on aggravated unlawful use of a weapon charges for pointing a gun at police officers.

The Chicago Sun-Times reports (http://bit.ly/VJ1YUt) Judge Carl Anthony Walker said the video showed a disregard for the court's authority. Walker scheduled a Thursday sentencing hearing for the 17-year-old Cozart.

Defense attorney Dennis Berkson told Walker his client never took the gun outside of the range and the target practice was supervised.

Chief Keef's first album, "Finally Rich," was released last year to mixed reviews.

___

Information from: Chicago Sun-Times, http://www.suntimes.com/index

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Well: Boosting Your Flu Shot Response

Phys Ed

Gretchen Reynolds on the science of fitness.

As this year’s influenza season continues to take its toll, those procrastinators now hurrying to get a flu shot might wish to know that exercise may amplify the flu vaccine’s effect. And for maximal potency, the exercise should be undertaken at the right time and involve the right dosage of sweat, according to several recent reports.

Flu shots are one of the best ways to lessen the risk of catching the disease. But they are not foolproof. By most estimates, the yearly flu vaccine blocks infection 50 to 70 percent of the time, meaning that some of those being inoculated gain little protection. The more antibodies someone develops, the better their protection against the flu, generally speaking. But for some reason, some people’s immune systems produce fewer antibodies to the influenza virus than others’ do.

Being physically fit has been found in many studies to improve immunity in general and vaccine response in particular. In one notable 2009 experiment, sedentary, elderly adults, a group whose immune systems typically respond weakly to the flu vaccine, began programs of either brisk walking or a balance and stretching routine. After 10 months, the walkers had significantly improved their aerobic fitness and, after receiving flu shots, displayed higher average influenza antibody counts 20 weeks after a flu vaccine than the group who had stretched.

But that experiment involved almost a year of dedicated exercise training, a prospect that is daunting to some people and, in practical terms, not helpful for those who have entered this flu season unfit.

So scientists have begun to wonder whether a single, well-calibrated bout of exercise might similarly strengthen the vaccine’s potency.

To find out, researchers at Iowa State University in Ames recently had young, healthy volunteers, most of them college students, head out for a moderately paced 90-minute jog or bike ride 15 minutes after receiving their flu shot. Other volunteers sat quietly for 90 minutes after their shot. Then the researchers checked for blood levels of influenza antibodies a month later.

Those volunteers who had exercised after being inoculated, it turned out, exhibited “nearly double the antibody response” of the sedentary group, said Marian Kohut, a professor of kinesiology at Iowa State who oversaw the study, which is being prepared for publication. They also had higher blood levels of certain immune system cells that help the body fight off infection.

To test how much exercise really is required, Dr. Kohut and Justus Hallam, a graduate student in her lab, subsequently repeated the study with lab mice. Some of the mice exercised for 90 minutes on a running wheel, while others ran for either half as much time (45 minutes) or twice as much (3 hours) after receiving a flu shot.

Four weeks later, those animals that, like the students, had exercised moderately for 90 minutes displayed the most robust antibody response. The animals that had run for three hours had fewer antibodies; presumably, exercising for too long can dampen the immune response. Interestingly, those that had run for 45 minutes also had a less robust response. “The 90-minute time point appears to be optimal,” Dr. Kohut says.

Unless, that is, you work out before you are inoculated, another set of studies intimates, and use a dumbbell. In those studies, undertaken at the University of Birmingham in England, healthy, adult volunteers lifted weights for 20 minutes several hours before they were scheduled to receive a flu shot, focusing on the arm that would be injected. Specifically, they completed multiple sets of biceps curls and side arm raises, employing a weight that was 85 percent of the maximum they could lift once. Another group did not exercise before their shot.

After four weeks, the researchers checked for influenza antibodies. They found that those who had exercised before the shot generally displayed higher antibody levels, although the effect was muted among the men, who, as a group, had responded to that year’s flu vaccine more robustly than the women had.

Over all, “we think that exercise can help vaccine response by activating parts of the immune system,” said Kate Edwards, now a lecturer at the University of Sydney, and co-author of the weight-training study.

With the biceps curls, she continued, the exercises probably induced inflammation in the arm muscles, which may have primed the immune response there.

As for 90 minutes of jogging or cycling after the shot, it probably sped blood circulation and pumped the vaccine away from the injection site and to other parts of the body, Dr. Kohut said. The exercise probably also goosed the body’s overall immune system, she said, which, in turn, helped exaggerate the vaccine’s effect.

But, she cautions, data about exercise and flu vaccines is incomplete. It is not clear, for instance, whether there is any advantage to exercising before the shot instead of afterward, or vice versa; or whether doing both might provoke the greatest response – or, alternatively, be too much and weaken response.

So for now, she says, the best course of action is to get a flu shot, since any degree of protection is better than none, and, if you can, also schedule a visit to the gym that same day. If nothing else, spending 90 minutes on a stationary bike will make any small twinges in your arm from the shot itself seem pretty insignificant.

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All Boeing 787 Dreamliner jets in Japan grounded

All 24 of Japan's Boeing 787 Dreamliner passenger jets were grounded for safety checks after one of the planes operated by All Nippon Airways made an emergency landing in western Japan.

Details of the problem were still being checked, ANA spokesman Takuya Taniguchi said Wednesday after the flight to Tokyo from Ube landed at the Takamatsu airport, where NTV television reported passengers had used emergency slides to exit the jet. The airport was temporarily closed.

The plane landed after a cockpit message showed battery problems. It was the latest of a series of problems including a battery fire and a fuel leak on ANA Dreamliners parked at Logan International Airport in Boston last week. No one has been seriously injured in any of the incidents.

Japan's Transport Ministry said the airlines that operate Dreamliners had grounded the planes voluntarily. ANA operates 17 of the jets and Japan Airlines has seven. The Japanese planes represent almost half of the 50 Dreamliners being flown commercially worldwide.

After the Boston incidents, the Federal Aviation Administration launched an unusual "comprehensive safety review of Boeing 787 critical systems," including a sweeping evaluation of the way that Boeing designs, manufactures and assembles the aircraft.

Boeing said it would participate in the review with the FAA and believed the process would bolster the public's confidence in the reliability of the aircraft.

The move came despite an "unprecedented" certification process for the 787 in which FAA technical experts logged 200,000 hours of work over nearly two years and flew on numerous test flights, FAA Administrator Michael Huerta said. There were more than a dozen new special conditions developed during the certification because of the Dreamliner's innovative design.

Certification of the Dreamliner was completed Aug. 25, 2011, and the first plane was delivered to All Nippon Airways a month later. It was more than three years late because of design problems and supplier issues.

The Dreamliner, a twin-aisle aircraft that can seat 210 to 290 passengers, is the first large commercial jet with more than half its structure made of composite materials (carbon fibers meshed together with epoxy) rather than aluminum sheets. Another innovative application is the change from hydraulically actuated systems typically found on passenger jets to electrically powered systems involving lithium ion batteries.

Times staff writers W.J. Hennigan in Los Angeles and David Pierson in Shanghai contributed to this report.

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SoCal Edison destroyed downed poles before inspection

A state probe into the widespread power outages caused by a furious 2011 windstorm was unable to determine whether toppled utility poles met safety standards because Southern California Edison destroyed most of them before they could be inspected.

The winds that roared through the San Gabriel Valley knocked down hundreds of utility poles, snapped cables and uprooted scores of trees, leaving nearly a quarter of a million Edison customers without power, some for a full week.

In a report released Monday, the California Public Utilities Commission found that at least 21 poles were unstable because of termite destruction, dry rot or other damage before tumbling over in wind gusts of up to 120 mph on Nov. 30 and Dec. 1, 2011.

But more than 75% of the 248 Edison poles that were knocked down in the storm were destroyed by the utility before they could be inspected, a violation of commission rules.

"At the onset of [power] restoration efforts, preservation of failed poles was not made a priority by Southern California Edison," the report says.

Of the 248 poles that failed, partial segments of only about 60 poles were collected and delivered for analysis by commission engineers — the remaining poles were "discarded by SCE staff," according to the report.

Efforts to reconstruct downed poles, many of them sliced into segments smaller than 10 inches, "were immensely hindered by the nature of SCE's collection and cataloging methodology," investigators reported.

Edison workers scattered small pole segments in various collection bins, "making it nearly impossible to determine which failed pole they belonged to," according to investigators.

A spokesman for the utility declined to comment on the report, saying the utility was in the process of formulating a statement.

Commission investigators also found that at least 17 wire pole support systems did not meet safety standards.

The report calls on Edison to update its emergency response procedures and test them on a yearly basis.

Officials will consider formal enforcement actions, including financial penalties, if Edison does not comply.

In a statement Monday, U.S. Rep. Judy Chu (D-Monterey Park) — who represents Pasadena, South Pasadena, San Marino and other San Gabriel Valley cities — called for "immediate action" to ensure the issues raised in the report would not recur.

"This report confirms that by following such regulations and by asking for mutual assistance, power could have been restored more quickly," Chu said.

Former Assemblyman Anthony Portantino, who until recently represented part of the affected area, said the report "confirms what everyone who lived through the windstorm knew from personal experience, that Edison was not prepared and public safety and consumers suffered as a result."

State Sen. Carol Liu (D-La Cañada Flintridge) said the report raises fears that Edison equipment might sustain similar damage in future disasters.

"I am concerned that service and safety doesn't seem to be their priority," said Liu, who is married to California Public Utilities Commission President Michael Peevey.

The report comes less than a year after an Edison-commission study determined the utility had inadequate plans in place for emergencies and communicating with the public. The study, by Maryland-based Davies Consulting, also said the utility could have shortened power restoration time by one day or more by doing a better job of tracking and preparing for bad weather.

At the same time, the consultant commended Edison for having adequate staffing and managing a response that left no workers or customers injured.

joe.piasecki@latimes.com

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