Deasy wants 30% of teacher evaluations based on test scores









L.A. schools Supt. John Deasy announced Friday that as much as 30% of a teacher's evaluation will be based on student test scores, setting off more contention in the nation's second-largest school system in the weeks before a critical Board of Education election.


Leaders of the teachers union have insisted that there should be no fixed percentage or expectation for how much standardized tests should count — and that test results should serve almost entirely as just one measure to improve instruction. Deasy, in contrast, has insisted that test scores should play a significant role in a teacher's evaluation and that poor scores could contribute directly to dismissal.


In a Friday memo explaining the evaluation process, Deasy set 30% as the goal and the maximum for how much test scores and other data should count.





In an interview, he emphasized that the underlying thrust is to develop an evaluation that improves the teaching corps and that data is part of the effort.


"The public has been demanding a better evaluation system for at least a decade. And teachers have repeatedly said to me what they need is a balanced way forward to help them get better and help them be accountable," Deasy said. "We do this for students every day. Now it's time to do this for teachers."


Deasy also reiterated that test scores would not be a "primary or controlling" factor in an evaluation, in keeping with the language of an agreement reached in December between L.A. Unified and its teachers union. Classroom observations and other factors also are part of the evaluation process.


But United Teachers Los Angeles President Warren Fletcher expressed immediate concern about Deasy's move. During negotiations, he said, the superintendent had proposed allotting 30% to test scores but the union rejected the plan. Deasy then pulled the idea off the table, which allowed the two sides to come to an agreement, Fletcher said. Teachers approved the pact last month.


"To see this percentage now being floated again is unacceptable," the union said in a statement.


Fletcher described the pact as allowing flexibility for principals, in collaboration with teachers, first to set individual goals and then to look at various measures to determine student achievement and overall teacher performance.


"The superintendent doesn't get to sign binding agreements and then pretend they're not binding," Fletcher said.


When Deasy settled on 30%, his decision was in line with research findings of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which has examined teacher quality issues across the country. Some experts have challenged that work.


The test score component would include a rating for the school based on an analysis of all students' standardized test scores. Those "value-added" formulas, known within L.A. Unified as Academic Growth Over Time, can be used to rate a school or a teacher's effectiveness by comparing students' test scores with past performance. The method takes into account such factors as family income and ethnicity.


After an aggressive push by the Obama administration, individual value-added ratings for teachers have been added to reviews in many districts. They make up 40% of evaluations in Washington, D.C., 35% in Tennessee and 30% in Chicago.


But Los Angeles will use a different approach. The district will rely on raw test scores. A teacher's evaluation also may incorporate pass rates on the high school exit exam and graduation, attendance and suspension data.


Deasy's action was met Friday with reactions ranging from guarded to enthusiastic approval within a coalition of outside groups that have pushed for a new evaluation system. This coalition also has sought to counter union influence.


Elise Buik, chief executive of the United Way of Greater Los Angeles, said weighing test scores 30% "is a reasonable number that everyone can be happy with."


The union and the district were under pressure to include student test data in evaluations after L.A. County Superior Court Judge James C. Chalfant ruled last year that the system was violating state law by not using test scores in teacher performance reviews.


A lawsuit to enforce the law was brought by parents in Los Angeles, with support from the Sacramento-based EdVoice advocacy organization.


If the "actual progress" of students is taken into account under Deasy's plan, "it's a historic day for LAUSD," said Bill Lucia, the group's chief executive.


All of this is playing out against the backdrop of the upcoming March 5 election. The campaign for three school board seats has turned substantially into a contest between candidates who strongly back Deasy's policies and those more sympathetic toward the teachers union. Deasy supporters praise the superintendent for measures they say will improve the quality of teaching. The union has faulted Deasy for limiting job protections and said he has imposed unwise or unproven reforms.


In the upcoming election, the union and pro-Deasy forces are matched head to head in District 4, with several employee unions behind incumbent Steve Zimmer and a coalition of donors behind challenger Kate Anderson.


Anderson had high praise for Deasy's directive, saying it struck the right balance and that teachers and students would benefit.


Zimmer said that although he understands that principals need guidance, "I worry about anything that would cause resistance or delay in going forward. I hope this use of a percentage won't disrupt what had been a collaborative process."


howard.blume@latimes.com



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Judge sets May trial date for Kardashian divorce


LOS ANGELES (AP) — Kim Kardashian has a due date for her baby and now a trial date for her divorce from NBA player Kris Humphries.


A judge on Friday set a May 6 trial for the reality TV star who wants to end her marriage before July, when her child with Kanye West is due.


Kardashian filed for divorce on Oct. 31, 2011, after she and Humphries had been married just 72 days. Their lavish, star-studded nuptials were recorded and broadcast by E! Entertainment Television.


The trial is expected to last three to five days and could reveal details about Kardashian's reality show empire, which includes "Keeping Up With the Kardashians" and several spinoffs.


Two judges determined Friday that Humphries' lawyers had adequate time to prepare for the trial.


Humphries wants the marriage annulled based on his claim that Kardashian only married him for the sake of her show.


She denies that allegation and says the case should be resolved through what would be her second divorce.


Humphries' attorney Marshall Waller asked for a delay until basketball season is over.


But Superior Court Judge Scott Gordon refused, saying firefighters, police officers, truck drivers and others have to miss work for trials, and Humphries must do the same if necessary.


Waller filed paperwork Thursday to withdraw from the case but didn't mention that development in court and refused to answer any questions about the document on Friday.


Waller said he was still hoping to obtain and review 13,000 hours of footage from Kardashian's reality shows to try to prove the fraud claim but noted he does not yet have an agreement to receive the footage.


Kardashian's lawyer said her client was ready for trial.


"Let's get this case dispensed with," attorney Laura Wasser said.


Humphries has provided a deposition in the case, as have West and Kardashian family matriarch Kris Jenner.


___


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


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Livestrong Tattoos as Reminder of Personal Connections, Not Tarnished Brand





As Jax Mariash went under the tattoo needle to have “Livestrong” emblazoned on her wrist in bold black letters, she did not think about Lance Armstrong or doping allegations, but rather the 10 people affected by cancer she wanted to commemorate in ink. It was Jan. 22, 2010, exactly a year since the disease had taken the life of her stepfather. After years of wearing yellow Livestrong wristbands, she wanted something permanent.




A lifelong runner, Mariash got the tattoo to mark her 10-10-10 goal to run the Chicago Marathon on Oct. 10, 2010, and fund-raising efforts for Livestrong. Less than three years later, antidoping officials laid out their case against Armstrong — a lengthy account of his practice of doping and bullying. He did not contest the charges and was barred for life from competing in Olympic sports.


“It’s heartbreaking,” Mariash, of Wilson, Wyo., said of the antidoping officials’ report, released in October, and Armstrong’s subsequent confession to Oprah Winfrey. “When I look at the tattoo now, I just think of living strong, and it’s more connected to the cancer fight and optimal health than Lance.”


Mariash is among those dealing with the fallout from Armstrong’s descent. She is not alone in having Livestrong permanently emblazoned on her skin.


Now the tattoos are a complicated, internationally recognized symbol of both an epic crusade against cancer and a cyclist who stood defiant in the face of accusations for years but ultimately admitted to lying.


The Internet abounds with epidermal reminders of the power of the Armstrong and Livestrong brands: the iconic yellow bracelet permanently wrapped around a wrist; block letters stretching along a rib cage; a heart on a foot bearing the word Livestrong; a mural on a back depicting Armstrong with the years of his now-stripped seven Tour de France victories and the phrase “ride with pride.”


While history has provided numerous examples of ill-fated tattoos to commemorate lovers, sports teams, gang membership and bands that break up, the Livestrong image is a complex one, said Michael Atkinson, a sociologist at the University of Toronto who has studied tattoos.


“People often regret the pop culture tattoos, the mass commodified tattoos,” said Atkinson, who has a Guns N’ Roses tattoo as a marker of his younger days. “A lot of people can’t divorce the movement from Lance Armstrong, and the Livestrong movement is a social movement. It’s very real and visceral and embodied in narrative survivorship. But we’re still not at a place where we look at a tattoo on the body and say that it’s a meaningful thing to someone.”


Geoff Livingston, a 40-year-old marketing professional in Washington, D.C., said that since Armstrong’s confession to Winfrey, he has received taunts on Twitter and inquiries at the gym regarding the yellow Livestrong armband tattoo that curls around his right bicep.


“People see it and go, ‘Wow,’ ” he said, “But I’m not going to get rid of it, and I’m not going to stop wearing short sleeves because of it. It’s about my family, not Lance Armstrong.”


Livingston got the tattoo in 2010 to commemorate his brother-in-law, who was told he had cancer and embarked on a fund-raising campaign for the charity. If he could raise $5,000, he agreed to get a tattoo. Within four days, the goal was exceeded, and Livingston went to a tattoo parlor to get his seventh tattoo.


“It’s actually grown in emotional significance for me,” Livingston said of the tattoo. “It brought me closer to my sister. It was a big statement of support.”


For Eddie Bonds, co-owner of Rabbit Bicycle in Hill City, S.D., getting a Livestrong tattoo was also a reflection of the growth of the sport of cycling. His wife, Joey, operates a tattoo parlor in front of their store, and in 2006 she designed a yellow Livestrong band that wraps around his right calf, topped off with a series of small cyclists.


“He kept breaking the Livestrong bands,” Joey Bonds said. “So it made more sense to tattoo it on him.”


“It’s about the cancer, not Lance,” Eddie Bonds said.


That was also the case for Jeremy Nienhouse, a 37-year old in Denver, Colo., who used a Livestrong tattoo to commemorate his own triumph over testicular cancer.


Given the diagnosis in 2004, Nienhouse had three rounds of chemotherapy, which ended on March 15, 2005, the date he had tattooed on his left arm the day after his five-year anniversary of being cancer free in 2010. It reads: “3-15-05” and “LIVESTRONG” on the image of a yellow band.


Nienhouse said he had heard about Livestrong and Armstrong’s own battle with the cancer around the time he learned he had cancer, which alerted him to the fact that even though he was young and healthy, he, too, could have cancer.


“On a personal level,” Nienhouse said, “he sounds like kind of a jerk. But if he hadn’t been in the public eye, I don’t know if I would have been diagnosed when I had been.”


Nienhouse said he had no plans to have the tattoo removed.


As for Mariash, she said she read every page of the antidoping officials’ report. She soon donated her Livestrong shirts, shorts and running gear. She watched Armstrong’s confession to Winfrey and wondered if his apology was an effort to reduce his ban from the sport or a genuine appeal to those who showed their support to him and now wear a visible sign of it.


“People called me ‘Miss Livestrong,’ ” Mariash said. “It was part of my identity.”


She also said she did not plan to have her tattoo removed.


“I wanted to show it’s forever,” she said. “Cancer isn’t something that just goes away from people. I wanted to show this is permanent and keep people remembering the fight.”


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Andrew Meieran has ambitious vision for Clifton's Cafeteria









The gig: Real estate developer and moviemaker Andrew Meieran, 46, is staking his reputation and millions of dollars on an attempt to revive one of the most beloved restaurants in Los Angeles history — Clifton's Cafeteria on Broadway.


Known for its Disney-like forest theme, Clifton's Brookdale Cafeteria served an estimated 170 million meals starting in 1935 but lost traction in recent decades as the city's historic core fell out of favor.


Meieran took it over in 2010 and closed it the following year to begin its renovation.





As longtime fans of the cafeteria wait, Meieran is laboring on a $5-million makeover that he hopes will make Clifton's an elaborate dining and drinking establishment unlike any other in the city and bring back crowds.


The vision: Plans call for Clifton's to have multiple bars and restaurants in markedly divergent styles throughout the four-story building. Each is to be crafted with the sophisticated attention to detail that Meieran brought to the nearby Edison, the Jules Verne-like subterranean nightclub he created deep under a century-old building on 2nd Street.


How to stand out: A memorable bar or restaurant must stay intriguing even on repeat visits, he said. "If you come back, I want you to notice more," Meieran said. "If we don't get the details right, we have a huge potential to miss the mark with our audience."


Comfort food: Meieran aims to restore and improve the forest-themed dining hall that generations of Angelenos associate with Clifton's and continue to serve such traditional cafeteria comfort food as pot roast, mashed potatoes and Jell-O.


Defined spaces: There will be distinct venues throughout the building, much of it rarely visited by the public in years past. The basement will house a bar full of historic local relics intended to transport visitors back in time. The ground floor and mezzanine-like second floor will remain a forest-themed cafeteria, with added details such as an old-fashioned soda fountain.


The third floor, which most recently held Gay '90s-themed banquet rooms, is being turned into a sit-down restaurant with classic food, Meieran said, but "not fine dining." It will also house a museum that he would not describe other than to call it "a cabinet of curiosities."


The fourth floor — Clifton's old offices — will get a Polynesian-themed restaurant and bar called South Seas, named after a Clifton's cafeteria on Olive Street that was popular in the 1940s and 1950s.


Also on that floor will be a second historic-themed bar and restaurant, this one Art Deco style. It's intended to be an upscale yet casual joint where diners can get a steak or chili.


Speed bumps: Renovation of the building, which opened in 1915 as a Boos Brothers cafeteria, has been far more costly and time-consuming than anticipated. At first, Meieran hoped to keep Clifton's open during construction. Then he closed it in fall 2011 for what he hoped would be a $3-million rehabilitation lasting three to six months.


Now he aims to finally reopen by Halloween, and even then some of the venues won't be complete. He's trying to keep the final tab under $5 million.


"Everything takes longer and costs four times more than you expect," he said. "What can go wrong will go wrong. My feeling is that there is just so much incredible potential in this project that it would be a disservice to not do it right."


Early years: Meieran was born and raised in the Bay Area and educated at UC Berkeley. As a young developer he bought a former Roman Catholic church in San Francisco and turned it into a live-work space.


In 1988 church leaders asked him to evaluate the real estate potential of St. Vibiana's, a Los Angeles landmark dating to the 1870s.


Meieran stayed in L.A. to help rehabilitate the adjacent abandoned Higgins Building office tower into housing and created the Edison in its basement.


Domestic front: Meieran and his wife, Christy, renovated and live in Charlie Chaplin's former home in the Hollywood Hills. They have two daughters, Amelie and Natasha.


Hollywood connection: Meieran produced and directed the upcoming "Highland Park," which stars Parker Posey and Danny Glover. Scheduled for release March 20, the movie, set in Detroit, is about the revitalization of a neighborhood.


Like Clifton's, he said, the movie "reflects my philosophy about taking responsibility and doing what you can personally to inspire pride and hope in one's community."


roger.vincent@latimes.com





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Former Bell official says he voted for pay raise out of fear









One of the former Bell city leaders accused of plundering the town's treasury by taking oversized salaries testified Thursday that the fat paychecks and other extraordinary benefits that came with the job were all but forced on him.


George Cole, a former steelworker, returned to the witness stand for a second day and testified that he voted for a 12% annual pay raise for a City Council board in 2008 only because he feared retribution from then-City Manager Robert Rizzo.


"He had shown himself to be very vindictive if you crossed him at that time," Cole said. "I was worried that if I didn't vote for this, if I voted against it, he would do whatever he could to destroy the work that was important to me and the community. I knew that was his character."





Cole said it was the most difficult decision he ever made while on the council but was in the best interest of Bell — a city, he said, where he had devoted decades to advocating for new schools and programs for at-risk youths and senior citizens.


Cole, along with Luis Artiga, Victor Bello, Oscar Hernandez, Teresa Jacobo and George Mirabal, is accused of drawing an inflated salary from boards and authorities that rarely met and did little work.


The pay increases for the authorities were placed on the consent calendar — a place for routine and non-controversial items that are voted on without discussion. Cole defended the practice and said the agendas, minutes and staff reports were always available to the public at City Hall and at the library.


"I never tried to hide what we were doing," Cole said.


He also testified that the minutes did not reflect work done for those authorities.


Cole justified his vote for previous City Council pay raises to allow for a more diverse pool of council candidates who could use the money. And when he voted for a council salary increase in 2005, Cole noted that Bell was in a "very strong financial position."


The 63-year-old also told jurors that when he discovered $15,500 had been deposited into a 401(k)-style account for him, he complained. Cole said Rizzo refused to remove the money.


Initially, Cole said, Rizzo was a first-rate city administrator, making improvements such as repairing and keeping streets clean and erecting a protective fence around the city's largest park.


"From the time he started, he was able to accomplish things other managers previous to him said couldn't be done or were unable to do," Cole said.


Cole said the two would sometimes meet for breakfast to discuss city matters. "It was business," he said. "It wasn't two chums getting together."


But when Cole decided to give up his salary during his last year in office, he said it fractured his relationship with Rizzo. When he learned about Rizzo's near-$800,000 salary from a story published in The Times in 2010, he said he felt sick.


"I just felt like the dumbest person in the world that this guy had just pulled one of the biggest cons I've ever seen on, not just me, but on the city of Bell," Cole testified.


Rizzo faces 69 felony corruption charges. He and his former assistant, Angela Spaccia, are expected to go on trial later this year.


Cole's top annual salary was $67,000, his attorney said. At the time, he was earning nearly $95,000 a year as chief executive of the Steelworkers Old Timers Foundation.


In 2004, the city paid the state pension system $36,648 to buy Cole an additional five years of service time. Cole was one of 11 Bell administrators for whom the city bought service time.


CalPERS — the state's largest public pension program — has disallowed the service time the city bought, saying the buy-ins were not council-approved and that a municipality cannot pay for them.


Cole also was among the 40 or so Bell employees who were scheduled to receive additional payments through Bell's own supplemental retirement plan, established in 2003. In combination with the CalPERS pension, the payout was among the best retirement plans for non-safety employees in the state. The council never approved the plan.


jeff.gottlieb@latimes.com


corina.knoll@latimes.com





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Kim Kardashian makes another bid to end marriage


LOS ANGELES (AP) — Kim Kardashian's divorce case is returning to court Friday with her attorney urging a speedy end to her marriage to NBA player Kris Humphries.


Lawyers for the pregnant reality star and the Brooklyn Nets power forward disagree over a timetable for a trial to end the marriage, which Humphries wants annulled.


Kardashian is asking a judge to order a trial as soon as possible. Humphries wants the case to remain on hold until the basketball season ends.


Setting a trial date may be complicated by a filing Thursday by one of Humphries' attorneys to leave the case, citing "irreconcilable differences" with Humphries. The attorney, Marshall Waller, had stated in recent court filings that he was still seeking evidence from several companies that produce Kardashian's reality shows to try to prove their fraud claims.


Kardashian's attorney Laura Wasser has repeatedly sought a trial date so that the marriage can be ended and denies that the couple's televised marriage was based on false pretenses.


The model is due to give birth in July to a child conceived with her boyfriend Kanye West. Each side accuses the other of trying to use Kardashian's pregnancy for a legal advantage.


"It appears from (Kardashisan's) moving papers that what is really going on here is that an 'urgency' in the form of an apparently unplanned pregnancy ... is perceived by (Kardashian) as an opportunity to gain a litigation advantage by trying to force this court to prematurely set this matter for trial," Waller wrote in a court filing earlier this month.


"(Humphries) to his great discredit thinks that because (Kardashian) is now pregnant he can exert some leverage over (her) knowing that she wants to be divorced," Wasser wrote.


Kardashian filed for divorce on Dec. 31, 2011 after 72 days of marriage. The pair was married in a star-studded ceremony that was televised by E! Entertainment Television.


The case has already drawn in West, the producers of "Keeping Up With the Kardashians," and Kardashian family matriarch Kris Jenner.


Superior Court Judge Stephen Moloney will determine Friday how the case will proceed. He has previously said the case should be ready for trial early this year.


___


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


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Well: Ask Well: Swimming to Ease Back Pain

Many people find that recreational swimming helps ease back pain, and there is research to back that up. But some strokes may be better than others.

An advantage to exercising in a pool is that the buoyancy of the water takes stress off the joints. At the same time, swimming and other aquatic exercises can strengthen back and core muscles.

That said, it does not mean that everyone with a case of back pain should jump in a pool, said Dr. Scott A. Rodeo, a team physician for U.S.A. Olympic Swimming at the last three Olympic Games. Back pain can have a number of potential causes, some that require more caution than others. So the first thing to do is to get a careful evaluation and diagnosis. A doctor might recommend working with a physical therapist and starting off with standing exercises in the pool that involve bands and balls to strengthen the core and lower back muscles.

If you are cleared to swim, and just starting for the first time, pay close attention to your technique. Work with a coach or trainer if necessary. It may also be a good idea to start with the breaststroke, because the butterfly and freestyle strokes involve more trunk rotation. The backstroke is another good option, said Dr. Rodeo, who is co-chief of the sports medicine and shoulder service at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York.

“With all the other strokes, you have the potential for some spine hyperextension,” Dr. Rodeo said. “With the backstroke, being on your back, you don’t have as much hyperextension.”

Like any activity, begin gradually, swimming perhaps twice a week at first and then progressing slowly over four to six weeks, he said. In one study, Japanese researchers looked at 35 people with low back pain who were enrolled in an aquatic exercise program, which included swimming and walking in a pool. Almost all of the patients showed improvements after six months, but the researchers found that those who participated at least twice weekly showed more significant improvements than those who went only once a week. “The improvement in physical score was independent of the initial ability in swimming,” they wrote.

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Carl Icahn buys nearly 13% stake in Herbalife as battle heats up









NEW YORK — It's no longer just a war of words.


Corporate raider Carl Icahn has thrown $214 million behind Herbalife Ltd., the Los Angeles-based maker of health foods and nutritional supplements accused of being a pyramid scheme by Icahn's foe, fellow Wall Street tycoon Bill Ackman.


Documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday reveal that Icahn purchased more than 14 million shares and options in Herbalife, a nearly 13% stake that would make him the company's second-largest investor. Icahn said he would pursue talks with executives about possibly recapitalizing the company or even taking it private.





Icahn and Ackman have been engaged in a rare public battle for the last month, hurling insults at each other about past dealings and their respective positions in Herbalife. The two foes have bad blood stemming from a business dispute.


Ackman launched his assault on the company Dec. 20 by unveiling a $1-billion short position, or bet, against Herbalife. That same day, Icahn began snapping up the company's stock, according to the SEC filing.


"It's pretty obvious Icahn really wants to turn the screws on Ackman," said Chris Stuart, chief executive of Shortzilla, a Boston-area research firm. "He's put his money where his mouth is, for sure."


Investors saw Icahn's disclosure as reassuring that Herbalife was not going to collapse, as Ackman has predicted. Its shares surged more than 24% in after-hours trading after closing up $1.87, or 5.1%, at $38.27 on Thursday.


"I think he is definitely trying to hammer his good buddy Ackman, but he could also make a lot of money in this," said Timothy Ramey, an analyst with D.A. Davidson & Co. "It's an undervalued stock."


Ackman, who heads the hedge fund Pershing Square Capital Management, says that Herbalife defrauds its low-income distributors. His wager against the company pays off if its stock falls.


Herbalife hit back by saying the hedge fund manager was misinformed about the company and made an irresponsible bet with his investors' money. The company pointed to its 32 years in business as evidence that it is not a pyramid scheme.


Icahn sees Herbalife as undervalued and believes that the company has a "legitimate business model, with favorable long-term opportunities for growth," the filing says.


This is just the latest chapter in a long history of Icahn trying to exert influence on companies and their boards of directors in hopes of either motivating a merger or having his stake bought out at a premium.


In the 1980s, he famously took over airline TWA and immediately liquidated most of its assets. Since then, he's taken big stakes or controlling positions in companies including RJR Nabisco, Viacom, Marvel Comics, Blockbuster and Netflix.


Neither Icahn nor Ackman responded to requests for comment. Herbalife also declined to comment.


The battle over Herbalife is becoming a Wall Street spectacle, with money managers supporting either team Ackman or team Icahn.


Robert L. Chapman Jr., managing member of Chapman Capital in Manhattan Beach, who said he has invested in Herbalife, wrote in an email: "Carl Icahn just delivered Bill Ackman a Valentine he'll never forget."


andrew.tangel@latimes.com,


stuart.pfeifer@latimes.com





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Vintage piano given Valentine's Day deadline









HALF MOON BAY, Calif. — The piano was delivered to its bluff-top perch under cover of fog nearly two weeks ago. It is scheduled to leave this coastal enclave in a burst of flames on Sunday.


In between the fog and the fire, musician and sculptor Mauro Ffortissimo has been treating his neighbors to an illicit outdoor concert series grandly dubbed Sunset Piano. Chopin, Debussy, a tango or two. The performances are timed to end the moment the sun sinks below the horizon.


He plays to cyclists and dog walkers, babies in strollers, his landlady in a folding chair, the charmed, the perplexed. Every night the battered baby grand has sounded just a little bit worse as the elements erode the aging, al fresco instrument. Every night, the audience has grown.





Ffortissimo (not his real name, but you probably figured that out already) had hoped to serenade the residents of Half Moon Bay for a month. But it didn't take long for reality to intrude on the 50-year-old artist's well-laid plans.


Two days after Ffortissimo and friends rolled the piano out to a scenic spit of city land, a code enforcement officer sent a warning via email. Someone had complained.


No permit, no piano.


The 90-year-old Estey "appears to be an unauthorized encroachment onto public property," wrote Lamonte Mack. If you can't prove the installation is authorized, he told Ffortissimo, "please remove the piano — and platform — within 10 (ten) days."


That made the deadline Valentine's Day, an occasion to celebrate love, if not misplaced musical instruments.


The artist legally known as Mauro Dinucci has taken the bad news in stride. Asked about the end of the piano during Tuesday night's crowded concert, he crowed: "Woo, hoo! Valentine's Day! Bring chocolate!" and promised that "before we burn this baby, we give it one last boat ride."


Thursday will be the piano's last scheduled bluff-side concert along the Coastside Trail at the end of Kelly Avenue. Friday, Ffortissimo said, he has been invited to play the instrument at the Half Moon Bay Yacht Club.


Saturday he'll give a sunset performance on the water, a nod to the piano's earlier owners who once sent it from California to Panama and back by sea. Sunday he plans to set the piano ablaze in the flower-strewn field behind his studio.


"The idea of the burning," Ffortissimo said, "is a cremation, to liberate the piano from its physical form … I just hope it won't be a 'Spare the Air' day."


Not everyone is as happy as Ffortissimo about the piano's upcoming freedom.


Mayor Rick Kowalczyk, who has yet to hear the Sunset Piano himself, said he was trying to "see if I can't get something done in the short term to allow Mauro to stay." Kicking the Estey off of the bluff, he said, "feels a little bit like a child has a lemonade stand and the city shuts it down."


On Tuesday evening, more than 100 music lovers gathered round as the sun — and the temperature — dropped. Two women danced together on the grass. Wine was sipped and beer chugged. Children ate cold pizza. Shorebirds glided by.


Far away from Half Moon Bay, President Obama was preparing to give his State of the Union address. Christopher Dorner was thought to be shooting it out with police.


But here on a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean, Susan Swanson of Redwood City poured white wine from a blue metal flask as Ffortissimo played Albinoni's "Adagio in G Minor." She'd read about the piano performance in the local newspaper, she said, "and it's the kind of news I like to read — good news.


"This to me is everything," said the trying-to-retire office manager. "It's a perfect moment. Once in a lifetime maybe. It's so odd, isn't it?"


maria.laganga@latimes.com





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Epic to pull song with offending Lil Wayne lyric


NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Epic Records is going to "great efforts" to take down a new Future remix leaked over the weekend with a vulgar Lil Wayne lyric that has offended the family of Emmett Till.


The New Orleans rapper made a sexual reference to the beating death of Till, a 14-year-old Chicago boy tortured and shot in Mississippi in 1955 for whistling at a white woman. Till's family objected and the Rev. Jesse Jackson reached out to his management, The Blueprint Group, on the family's behalf.


The label issued a statement Wednesday night apologizing for the release of the song.


"We regret the unauthorized remix version of Future's 'Karate Chop,' which was leaked online and contained hurtful lyrics," the statement said. "Out of respect for the legacy of Emmett Till and his family and the support of the Reverend Jesse L. Jackson, Sr. ... we are going through great efforts to take down the unauthorized version."


Epic will release an official version of the song that "will not include such references."


Neither Jackson nor members of Till's family could be reached late Wednesday. A publicist says Lil Wayne has had no comment so far.


He appears briefly on the song, alluding to the black teenager's beating in a way too vulgar to print.


Till, a native of Chicago, was in Mississippi visiting family in 1955 when he was killed. He was beaten, had his eyes gouged out and was shot in the head before his assailants tied a cotton gin fan to his body with barbed wire and tossed his body into the Tallahatchie River. Two white men, including the woman's husband, were acquitted of the killing by an all-white jury.


Till's body was recovered and returned to Chicago where his mother, Mamie Till, insisted on having an open casket at his funeral. The pictures of his battered body helped push civil rights into the cultural conversation in the U.S.


Bob Dylan wrote a song about it: "The Death of Emmett Till."


A Facebook posting on the Mamie Till Mobley Memorial Foundation page Wednesday night said Epic Records Chairman and CEO LA Reid had reached out to the family to personally apologize.


___


Follow AP Music Writer Chris Talbott: http://twitter.com/Chris_Talbott


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The New Old Age Blog: A New Commission: Time to Cheer or Yawn?

The fate of the Class Act, which would have established the nation’s first voluntary public long-term care insurance program, was sealed in 2011 when the Obama administration shut it down, essentially calling it unworkable.

As long as the language remained part of the Affordable Care Act, supporters allowed themselves to hope, or perhaps fantasize, that the administration might return to the subject. How to care for an aging population, and who pays for that and how, are questions that won’t go away.

But Congress quietly administered the coup de grâce last month, during the fiscal cliff negotiations. The budget deal stripped the Class Act language from the Affordable Care Act. R.I.P.

In its place — thanks to the intervention of Senator Jay Rockefeller, Democrat of West Virginia — the negotiators created a Commission on Long-Term Care, charged with developing plans for “a comprehensive, coordinated and high-quality system” ensuring long-term care for older adults and people with disabilities.

Its 15 members — three picks each for the president, the Senate majority and minority leaders, and the House speaker and minority leader — face a tight deadline. Within six months, they are supposed to recommend legislative or administrative actions, including actual legislative language. Then bills are to be introduced in both houses of Congress on the very next day they are in session.

Which sounds like urgency, but is it? Even Connie Garner, the longtime Kennedy staff member who directs the advocacy group called Advance Class, was skeptical. “What can you really do in six months?” she said. Actuaries and policy types had been working on the Class plan for 19 months before the plug was pulled. “And so what if you introduce a bill?” she went on. “You can introduce stuff and nothing happens.”

So when Advance Class held its monthly board meeting a few days after the Class Act officially bit the dust, Ms. Garner figured this push for a national long-term care approach was dead, along with her organization. She had prepared a valedictory, praising the group for at least putting the issue on the national agenda.

“But they said, ‘No, we’re going to keep Advance Class going; we’re going to fight the long fight,’ ” she recalled. So on we go.

Discouragingly, the commission has already hit delays: Its members were to be named within 30 days of the budget deal’s enactment, but only the Congressional Democrats have made appointments.

Senator Harry Reid, the majority leader, nominated a veteran health policy scholar, Judy Feder, who is now at the Georgetown University Public Policy Institute; the labor executive Laphonza Butler, who heads California’s United Long-Term Care Workers Union; and Javaid Anwar, a Nevada internist.

Representative Nancy Pelosi, the House minority leader, appointed Bruce Chernof, chief executive of the SCAN Foundation, which promotes quality care for the elderly; Judith Stein, founder of the Center for Medicare Advocacy; and George Vrandenburg, a retired corporate lawyer who has put his philanthropic muscle behind Alzheimer’s causes.

We have heard nothing yet from the White House or the Republican Congressional leadership.

Maybe that barely matters. “I can’t imagine anything coming out of this commission that won’t be totally forgotten a year from now,” said Jesse Slome, executive director of the American Association for Long-Term Care Insurance. “How many commissions have there been?”

Yet one thing that he and the proponents at Advance Class can agree on — maybe the only thing — is that this issue demands attention.

Otherwise, Mr. Slome says, we are stuck with what we have when it comes to older people who might need expensive care for 30 years, and disabled people who might need care for even longer. And what we have, he said, amounts to “a little here, a little there, a little Medicare, a lot of Medicaid, a little long-term care insurance and a lot of unpaid family caregiving.” (I would say very little long-term care insurance, and a vast amount of unpaid family care.)

Discussing the future of Medicare and Medicaid without including long-term care is pointless, Mr. Slome added. Ms. Garner notes that she meets frequently with Republicans and that they never dismiss the issue as unimportant.

Well, there’s a start.


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

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European Union and U.S. to pursue transatlantic free-trade deal









WASHINGTON — The European Union and the United States announced that they will pursue talks aimed at achieving an overarching transatlantic free-trade deal.


The 27-country EU said Wednesday that such an agreement, first announced in the State of the Union address by President Obama, would be the biggest bilateral trade deal ever negotiated. Any agreement could boost economic output in the EU by 0.5% and in the U.S. by 0.7%, according to some estimates. That would be a highly desirable outcome when the EU and the U.S. are both struggling with slow growth, high unemployment and high levels of debt.


"Both of us need growth," said Jose Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission, the EU's executive arm. "And both of us have budgetary problems."





In a joint statement issued simultaneously in Washington and Brussels, Obama, European Council President Herman Van Rompuy and Barroso said they were "committed to making this relationship an even stronger driver of our prosperity".


"Through this negotiation, the United States and the European Union will have the opportunity not only to expand trade and investment across the Atlantic, but also to contribute to the development of global rules that can strengthen the multilateral trading system," they said.


Trade between the U.S. and the EU is already huge, reaching $2.69 billion a day, EU Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht said.


Gary Hufbauer, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, estimates that a comprehensive agreement could boost U.S. output by about 0.7 percentage points.


A high-level U.S.-EU working group on jobs and growth said the goals of the agreement would include removing import tariffs, which average 4%, and getting rid of other barriers to trade such as the approval processes that businesses have to go through in order to sell products on both sides of the Atlantic.


Beyond that, De Gucht said, "There seems to be a consensus that the cost of a product contains about 10% of red tape. If you can largely make away with that, you will have the same product for a lower price without anybody paying for it."


One example of where the two economies could benefit from the talks is automaking. If each side recognized the other's car safety standards — or if the standards were harmonized — an auto manufacturer would not have to satisfy two sets of requirements. But there are other areas, such as agriculture, that will prove to be more difficult to negotiate.


U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk said Wednesday that the U.S. plans to push the EU to relax its ban on genetically modified crops. That's also a top goal of Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) and Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), two leading members of Congress on trade issues.





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Charred human remains found in burned cabin




Sb-sheriff-pio-cindy-bachma
Charred human remains
have been found in the burned cabin where police believe fugitive ex-cop
Christopher Dorner was holed up after trading gunfire with law enforcement, authorities
said.


If the body is identified
to be Dorner’s, the standoff would end a weeklong manhunt for the ex-LAPD
officer and Navy reserve lieutenant, who is accused of going on a
revenge-fueled spree following his firing by the Los Angeles Police Department several
years ago. Four people have died allegedly at Dorner’s hands.


The last burst of
gunfire Tuesday came after the suspect, attempting to flee law enforcement
officials, shot to death one San Bernardino County sheriff’s deputy and
seriously injured another. He then barricaded himself in a wooden cabin outside
Big Bear, not far from ski resorts in the snow-capped San Bernardino Mountains
east of Los Angeles, according to police.


PHOTOS: Manhunt for ex-LAPD officer


Just before 5 p.m., authorities smashed the cabin's windows, pumped in tear
gas and called for the suspect to surrender. They got no response. Then, using
a demolition vehicle, they tore down the cabin's walls one by one. When they
reached the last wall, they heard a gunshot. Then the cabin burst into flames.


Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck said he would not consider the manhunt
over until a body was identified as Dorner.






TIMELINE: Manhunt for ex-LAPD officer

"It is a bittersweet night," said Beck as he drove to the hospital
where the injured deputy was located. He is expected to survive, but is expected to need several surgeries. "This could have ended
much better, it could have ended worse. I feel for the family of the deputy who
lost his life."


According to a manifesto Dorner allegedly posted on Facebook, he felt the LAPD
unjustly fired him several years ago, when a disciplinary panel determined that he lied
in accusing his training officer of kicking a mentally ill man during an
arrest. Beck has promised to review the case.


INTERACTIVE MAP: Searching for suspected shooter


Dorner, 33, vowed to wage "unconventional and asymmetrical
warfare" against law enforcement officers and their families, the
manifesto said. "Self-preservation is no longer important to me. do not
fear death as I died long ago."


Last week, authorities had tracked Dorner to a wooded area near Big Bear
Lake. They found his torched gray Nissan Titan with several weapons inside. The
only trace of Dorner was a short trail of footprints in newly fallen snow.


On Tuesday morning two maids entered a cabin in the 1200 block of Club View
Drive and ran into a man who they said resembled the fugitive, a law
enforcement official said. The cabin was not far from where Dorner's singed
truck had been found and where police had been holding press conferences about
the manhunt.


FULL COVERAGE: Sweeping manhunt for ex-cop


The man tied up the maids, and he took off in a purple Nissan parked near
the cabin. About 12:20 p.m., one of the maids broke free and called police.


Nearly half an hour later, officers with the California Department of Fish
and Wildlife spotted the stolen vehicle and called for backup. The suspect
turned down a side road in an attempt to elude the officers but crashed the
vehicle, police said.


A short time later, authorities said the suspect carjacked a light-colored
pickup truck. Allan Laframboise said the truck belonged to his friend Rick
Heltebrake, who works at a nearby Boy Scout camp.


Heltebrake was driving on Glass Road with his Dalmatian, Suni, when a
hulking African American man stepped into the road, Laframboise said.
Heltebrake stopped. The man told him to get out of the truck.


DOCUMENT: Read the manifesto


"Can I take my dog?" Heltebrake asked, according to his friend.


"You can leave and you can take your dog," the man said. He then
sped off in the Dodge extended-cab pickup — and quickly encountered two
Department of Fish and Wildlife trucks.


As the suspect zoomed past the officers, he rolled down his window and fired
about 15 to 20 rounds. One of the officers jumped out and shot a high-powered
rifle at the fleeing pickup. The suspect abandoned the vehicle and took off on
foot.


Police said he ended up at the Seven Oaks Mountain Cabins, a cluster of
wood-frame buildings about halfway between Big Bear Lake and Yucaipa. The
suspect exchanged gunfire with San Bernardino County sheriff's deputies as he
fled into a cabin that locals described as a single-story, multi-room
structure.


The suspect fired from the cabin, striking one deputy, law enforcement
sources said. Then he ducked out the back of the cabin, deployed a smoke bomb
and opened fire again, hitting a second deputy. Neither deputy was identified
by authorities. The suspect retreated back into the cabin.


The gun battle was captured on TV by KCAL-TV Channel 9 reporter Carter Evans, who said
he was about 200 feet from the cabin. As Evans described on air how deputies
were approaching the structure, he was interrupted by 10 seconds of gunfire.


Deputies drew their weapons and sprinted toward Evans. Someone yelled for
him to move — then about 20 more seconds of shooting erupted.


"Hey! Get … out of here, pal," someone shouted. Evans was
unharmed.


The gunfire gave way to a tense standoff. Mountain residents locked their
doors and hunkered down.


Holly Haas, 52, who lives about a mile from where the shootout unfolded,
said she heard helicopters buzzing on and off until about 3:30. One dipped so
close to her home, she said, "I could throw a rock and hit it."


Others watched the standoff unfold on television. At her home, Candy Martin
sat down to watch TV when, to her surprise, she spotted her rental cabin
on-screen — where the suspect was believed to be holed up.


She contacted police and told them that the furnished, 85-year-old cabin had
no cable, telephone or Internet service. No one had booked it for Monday.


"There should have been nobody," she recalled saying. "Nobody
in any way."


Within hours, authorities moved in on the cabin. The fire broke out, setting
off ammunition that had apparently been inside. On TV, viewers saw only the
orange flames and curls of black smoke.


LAPD Chief Beck said his officers have been providing
around-the-clock protection for more than 50 people thought to be Dorner's
targets since the manifesto was discovered.


Police say Dorner's first victims were the daughter of the retired LAPD
official who represented him at his disciplinary hearing and her fiance. Monica Quan and Keith Lawrence were
found shot to death Feb. 3 in their car in their condo complex's parking structure.


Days later, Dorner allegedly attempted to steal a boat in San Diego in a
failed bid to escape to Mexico. By Feb. 7, authorities said, he had fled to the
Inland Empire. In Corona, police said, he fired at an LAPD officer searching
for him at a gas station. About half an later, he allegedly opened fire on two
Riverside officers, killing Michael Crain, 34, and injuring his partner.


Early on in the manhunt, officers mistakenly fired on three people in the
Torrance area — two Latina women and a white man — while searching for Dorner,
who is 6 feet tall and 270 pounds.


After his truck was found in Big Bear, authorities swarmed the area, where
many cabins sit empty during the winter.


At the height of the search, more than 200 officers scoured the mountain,
while others sifted through more than 1,000 tips that poured in after officials
offered a $1-million reward.


Just as some officials began to speculate that the former cop had failed to
survive in the wilderness, Dorner apparently surfaced.


ALSO:


Dorner manhunt: Wounded deputy will need several surgeries


Dorner manhunt: Fish and Wildlife officers make the big break


Dorner manhunt: Maids stumbled on suspect, were tied up, then called 911


--- Andrew Blankstein, Joel Rubin and Ashley
Powers; with Phil Willon, Louis Sahagun, Adolfo
Flores, and Ruben Vives in San Bernardino County and Julie Cart, Matt Stevens, Kate Mather, Wesley Lowery, Samantha Schaefer, Frank Shyong and Rong-Gong Lin II


Photo: San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department public information officer Cindy Bachman updates reporters after a standoff and a shootout with
a man suspected to be former Los Angeles Police Department officer Christopher Dorner. Credit: Kevork Djansezian / Getty Images


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Beyonce hopes her documentary inspires Blue Ivy


NEW YORK (AP) — Beyonce is hoping that her ultra-revealing documentary will someday provide inspiration for Blue Ivy, the year-old daughter she and husband Jay-Z have.


"I hope that she will see all of the beautiful times (and) all the tough times that led up to her being here," the singer said Tuesday night at the New York premiere of her upcoming HBO documentary, "Life is But a Dream."


She added: "I'm hoping that ... it can comfort her and inspire her in her life when she needs it."


The autobiographical film takes a no-holds-barred look at the entertainer. It stems from personal conversations the 31-year old singer made using the video camera on her computer over the past couple of years. It also includes home movies of the Grammy-winning singer and her two sisters.


In the film, Beyonce candidly discusses personal matters like her miscarriage, reports of faking her pregnancy, and firing her father as her manager.


She claims the process of talking into a camera to get all her thoughts out was therapeutic.


"I really grew so much," she says of the process. "This movie has really been my therapy. I've healed from so many wounds and I've been able to understand why some of the things I've been through, why I went through, so feel really proud, and hopefully I can inspire other people."


The singer has been private about her life in the past. But she felt the time was right to let people know how she felt.


"I felt that after 16 years of being a public singer, people didn't know who I was," she admitted. But then she added: "I will always keep certain things to myself because it's only natural."


Oprah Winfrey made a surprise visit to the premiere, and posed with Beyonce on the red carpet. Before going into the Ziegfeld Theatre, Winfrey, known for her tough, results-driven interview style, was asked if this was the kind of story she would have done on Beyonce.


She said Beyonce did a "much better job" of telling her own story. "I wouldn't have been in the bedroom and in the closet and in the car and on vacation," she said.


Beyonce acted as the film's executive producer and co-directed it with Ed Burke. He previously worked on some of her video projects. "Life is But a Dream" airs Saturday on HBO.


_____


Online:


http://www.hbo.com


___


John Carucci covers entertainment for The Associated Press. Follow him at — http://www.twitter.com/jcarucci_ap


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Well: Getting the Right Dose of Exercise

Phys Ed

Gretchen Reynolds on the science of fitness.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Health insurer WellPoint picks Joseph Swedish as its new CEO









INDIANAPOLIS — Health insurance giant WellPoint Inc., parent of Anthem Blue Cross, is picking a veteran hospital executive who has never run a public company to become its next chief executive.


The Indianapolis insurer says Trinity Health CEO Joseph Swedish will take over March 25, replacing interim CEO John Cannon.


WellPoint, the nation's second-largest health insurance company, has been searching for a new leader since Angela Braly resigned in August amid investor frustration over disappointing financial results.








The company runs Blue Cross Blue Shield plans in 14 states, including Anthem — the largest for-profit insurer in California. It also runs CareMore clinics in California and other states.


Swedish, 61, has been CEO at Trinity Health in Livonia, Mich., since December 2004. Under his leadership, revenue at the nonprofit Catholic healthcare system increased from $5.7 billion in 2005 to $8.9 billion in 2012, and total assets increased from $7.5 billion to $11.7 billion. The organization's community benefit ministry, which includes care for the poor and community heath activity, increased from $265 million in 2005 to $615 million in 2012.


Swedish's resume includes work with HCA, the nation's largest hospital chain. He also has served as a director for another insurer, Coventry Health Care.


In his new job, Swedish's tasks will include helping WellPoint prepare for coverage expansions that start next year under the federal healthcare overhaul.





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Ex-Bell officials defend themselves as honorable public servants









Less than three years ago, they were handcuffed and taken away in a case alleged to be so extensive that the district attorney called it "corruption on steroids."


But on Monday, two of the six former Bell council members accused of misappropriating money from the small, mostly immigrant town took to the witness stand and defended themselves as honorable public servants who earned their near-$100,000 salaries by working long hours behind the scenes.


During her three days on the stand, Teresa Jacobo said she responded to constituents who called her cell and home phone at all hours. She put in time at the city's food bank, organized breast cancer awareness marches, sometimes paid for hotel rooms for the homeless and was a staunch advocate for education.





"I was working very hard to improve the lives of the citizens of Bell," she said. "I was bringing in programs and working with them to build leadership and good families, strong families."


Jacobo, 60, said she didn't question the appropriateness of her salary, which made her one of the highest-paid part-time council members in the state.


Former Councilman George Mirabal said he too worked a long, irregular schedule when it came to city affairs.


"I keep hearing time frames over and over again, but there's no clock when you're working on the council," he said Monday. "You're working on the circumstances that are facing you. If a family calls … you don't say, '4 o'clock, work's over.' "


Mirabal, 65, said he often reached out to low-income residents who didn't make it to council meetings, attended workshops to learn how to improve civic affairs and once even made a trip to a San Diego high school to research opening a similar tech charter school in Bell.


"Do you believe you gave everything you could to the citizens of Bell?" asked his attorney, Alex Kessel.


"I'd give more," Mirabal replied.


Both Mirabal and Jacobo testified that not only did they perceive their salaries to be reasonable, but they believed them to be lawful because they were drawn up by the city manager and voted on in open session with the city attorney present.


Mirabal, who once served as Bell's city clerk, even went so far as to say that he was still a firm supporter of the city charter that passed in 2005, viewing it as Bell's "constitution." In a taped interview with authorities, one of Mirabal's council colleagues — Victor Bello — said the city manager told him the charter cleared the way for higher council salaries.


Prosecutors have depicted the defendants as salary gluttons who put their city on a path toward bankruptcy. Mirabal and Jacobo, along with Bello, Luis Artiga, George Cole and Oscar Hernandez, are accused of drawing those paychecks from boards that seldom met and did little work. All face potential prison terms if convicted.


Prosecutors have cited the city's Solid Waste and Recycling Authority as a phantom committee, created only as a device for increasing the council's pay. But defense attorneys said the authority had a very real function, even in a city that contracted with an outside trash company.


Jacobo testified that she understood the introduction of that authority to be merely a legal process and that its purpose was to discuss how Bell might start its own city-run trash service.


A former contract manager for Consolidated Disposal Service testified that Bell officials had been unhappy with the response time to bulky item pickups, terminating their contract about 2005, but that it took about six years to finalize because of an agreement that automatically renewed every year.


Deputy Dist. Atty. Edward Miller questioned Mirabal about the day shortly after his 2010 arrest that he voluntarily told prosecutors that no work was done on authorities outside of meetings.


Mirabal said that if he had made such a statement, it was incorrect. He said he couldn't remember what was said back then and "might have heed and hawed."


"So it's easy to remember now?" Miller asked.


"Yes, actually."


"More than two years after charges have been filed, it's easier for you to remember now that you did work outside of the meetings for the Public Finance Authority?"


"Yes, sir."


Miller later asked Mirabal to explain a paragraph included on City Council agendas that began with the phrase, "City Council members are like you."


After some clarification of the question, Mirabal answered: "That everybody is equal and that if they look into themselves, they would see us."


corina.knoll@latimes.com





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Young Afghan musicians in NY for date at Carnegie


SCARSDALE, N.Y. (AP) — For these young people from Afghanistan, it's the perfect trip to America. They get to scarf down New York pizza, go ice skating — and take the stage at Carnegie Hall.


The Afghan Youth Orchestra, many of whose members are not far removed from eking out a living on the streets of Kabul, is on the New York leg of a U.S. tour that melds Western classics with traditional Afghan music.


About 50 players held a joint rehearsal Monday with 25 members of the Scarsdale High School orchestra, which meant that young musicians from a war-torn country where music was banned for several years by the Taliban were playing alongside those from one of New York's toniest suburbs.


"This is all providing a model for the future of Afghanistan," said William Harvey, the Afghan orchestra's American conductor and arranger. "The recomposed music, taking the best from both worlds, and the cooperation between the Afghan kids and the Scarsdale kids, shows what has to happen for Afghanistan."


Among the pieces rehearsed in advance of Tuesday night's Carnegie program were adaptations of Vivaldi's "Four Seasons" and Ravel's "Bolero," both incorporating Afghan instruments and rhythms.


A handful of people in the Scarsdale auditorium got to hear familiar melodies perked up with such instruments as the sitar, dilruba and ghichak. Some of the Afghan musicians were barefoot.


"I love the 'Bolero,'" said Milad Yousofi, 18, a pianist from Kabul who, like the rest of the orchestra, attends the Afghanistan National Institute of Music, which was founded just three years ago.


Yousofi is hoping the orchestra's U.S. visit — it played in Washington last week and is headed for Boston — will help him find a way to continue his musical education in America.


"I'm very excited and amazed that we are going to Carnegie Hall," he said. "New York is my dream city. I want to come here as soon as possible. But then I want to go back to Afghanistan and teach."


Hojat Hameed, 21, a violinist who also plays electric guitar in a rock band, said he became interested in music when he heard a Celine Dion recording.


"That made me want to become a musician," he said. "I could feel I wanted to come home to music."


Some of the Afghans may have been saved from desperate lives by the music school.


"One of my violinists used to sell chewing gum on the street," said Harvey, who spoke to the musicians in English and Dari, one of Afghanistan's two main languages. "She had to. The Taliban had beaten her father paralyzed and he couldn't work."


"The return of music to Afghanistan is a victory of the human spirit," Harvey said.


Ahmad Sarmast, who founded the school, said hearing the orchestra play was "a touching experience."


"The Taliban deprived children of their music," he said. "It was like a genocide of music. Now this is an incredible way of showing pride in our people, our youth, our school, our country."


He said the school, which is funded by the World Bank and others, is free and provides enough of a stipend to keep the musicians off the streets. And it accepts boys and girls, another reversal of Taliban orders.


Amedee Williams, who heads the Scarsdale music program, said he heard last year that the Afghan school was trying to raise funds for a tour. He contacted the school and suggested their orchestra members could save on New York hotels by staying with Scarsdale families. That turned out not to be necessary, but it forged a partnership that resulted in the Scarsdale orchestra joining the Afghans at Carnegie Hall.


Before the joint orchestra rehearsed on Sunday, he said, all the youngsters had pizza. Afterward, they went ice skating, which was a new activity for the Afghans "and some of the Scarsdale kids," Williams said.


"There was a lot of hand-holding, supporting each other," he said. "It was good to see."


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Domino's hopes customers flock to 'pizza theater'









A pair of mustachioed pizza makers in blue aprons — visible from behind a glass display at a new Domino's store in Seattle — tossed dough into the air as a handful of corporate executives looked on.


Domino's calls the concept "pizza theater" because customers now can come in and watch their orders being made.


The new look is part of a four-year effort to freshen the pizza chain's image and boost its growing ranks of carryout customers.








The open-kitchen format includes seating for a dozen or so people, a chalkboard where customers can leave comments, and a refrigerated section for grab-and-go items such as salads and milk.


"This is the way we always made our pizzas. A lot of people just had no idea," said Domino's Chief Executive Patrick Doyle, who was in Seattle last week to see the new store. "It was sort of one of those lightning-bolt moments where we said, 'Gee, maybe we should show them.' "


Founded in 1960, Domino's long has been known for inexpensive pizza delivered to your doorstep. Its 30-minute guarantee helped make it the world's largest pizza-delivery company in the 1980s (though it later had to drop the pledge amid charges that it led to reckless driving).


Today, the Ann Arbor, Mich., company holds a 22% share of the U.S. pizza-delivery market and ranks No. 2 overall among U.S. pizza chains.


More than two-thirds of U.S. consumers buy carryout pizza at least once a month, making carryout the most popular pizza format, according to research firm Technomic Inc. Nearly half of all pizza orders are for carryout, while a third are for delivery and a fifth are for eat-in.


Experts say that if a Domino's store is nearby, many consumers prefer to pick up their orders and save a few dollars that otherwise would go to a delivery fee and tip.


Domino's jumped on the trend last year when it began offering a weekday pickup promotion of a large three-topping pizza for $7.99. It also redesigned its logo, dropping the word "pizza" to reflect a larger menu, including sandwiches, pasta and chocolate "lava" cakes.


Doyle said the plan is to redo the greater Seattle area's 74 franchised locations by midyear, which would make Seattle the first market to be completely overhauled.


Doyle said Domino's also is setting out to hire 800 new full-time and part-time employees in that area — something he attributed to new store openings, as well as solid sales growth.


Domino's has about 4,500 U.S. franchised stores, as well as 390 company-owned stores. Its U.S. sales at stores open at least a year rose 3.3% in the third quarter, and its stock has been trading at the upper end of a 52-week range of $28.17 to $47.91. Its shares rose 8 cents Monday to $46.81.


Pizza Hut is the largest U.S. pizza chain, with an 18% market share, followed by Domino's, at 11%, and Papa John's, at 7%, according to Technomic.


In late 2009, Domino's rolled out a new recipe promising a garlic-seasoned crust, bolder tomato sauce and tastier cheese. The new store format builds on that push to be more transparent, Doyle said.


"Consumers want to see what they're eating," he said. "We've always been known as delivery experts, but a third or more of our orders now are for carryout. We're proud of these pizzas, and we want people to see it."


Seattle resident James Johnson, 28, a longtime Domino's customer, said he welcomes the changes. Johnson stopped by the revamped Domino's on his way home from work last week to pick up dinner.


"You can watch the pizza being made from beginning to end," he said. "It's kind of cool to see, depending on whether you're engaged and not on your cellphone."


Martinez writes for the Seattle Times.





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Grammys 2013: Fun., Mumford, Gotye lead a newer generation









Grammy Awards voters gave their top honor to British roots music band Mumford & Sons for their album "Babel" on Sunday at the 55th awards ceremony. Other top honors were distributed to a broad array of younger acts, including indie trio Fun., electronic pop artist Gotye, rapper-R&B singer Frank Ocean and rock group the Black Keys.


"We figured we weren't going to win because the Black Keys have been sweeping up all day — and deservedly so," Mumford & Sons front man Marcus Mumford said after he and his band members strode to the stage at Staples Center in Los Angeles to collect the award from last year's winner, R&B-soul singer Adele.


Pop culture historians may look back at 2013, however, as the year the Grammy Awards gave up its long fight against new forms of music dissemination, embracing songs and videos that consumers soaked up by way of YouTube and other Internet outlets as opposed to purchasing them.








PHOTOS: 2013 Grammy Award winners


"Somebody That I Used to Know," the wildly popular collaboration between Gotye and New Zealand pop singer Kimbra, took the top award presented for a single recording upon being named record of the year, which recognizes performance and record production.


"Somebody…" not only was one of the biggest-selling singles of 2012 but also has notched nearly 400 million views on YouTube, powerfully demonstrating the increasingly vital role of the "broadcast yourself" video Internet phenomenon. Different YouTube posts of Ocean's "Thinking About You" single have totaled nearly 60 million views.


New York indie rock trio Fun. was named best new artist, an acknowledgment of the good-time music the group brought to listeners and viewers last summer largely through its runaway hit single "We Are Young," which has racked up nearly 200 million YouTube views. It also was named song of the year, bringing awards for the group's songwriters, Jack Antonoff, Andrew Dost and Nate Ruess, and collaborator Jeff Bhasker.


GRAMMYS 2013: Full coverage | Pre-show winners | Winners | Ballot


"Everyone can see our faces, and we are not very young — we've been doing this for 12 years," Ruess said as they collected the award.


The song's title could also serve as a theme for the evening, which was dominated by other relatively young acts in the most prestigious Grammy categories.


Singer, rapper and songwriter Ocean emerged the victor in the one category that pitted him directly against real-life rival Chris Brown, as his critically acclaimed solo debut album, "Channel Orange," won the urban contemporary album award. A few minutes later Ocean got a second Grammy with Kanye West, Jay-Z and the Dream in the rap-sung collaboration category for their single "No Church in the Wild."


GRAMMYS 2013: Winners list | Best & WorstRed carpet | Timeline | Fashion | Highlights


Ocean's tuxedo covered all but his hands, but it appeared as he picked up the urban album award that his left arm remained in a wrist brace he'd exhibited Thursday at rehearsals for this year's broadcast, a remnant of his scuffle last month with Brown over a parking space at a recording studio. Los Angeles Police Department investigators said Ocean informed them that he would not press charges against Brown.


It was the Black Keys' Dan Auerbach who quickly built up steam as the front-runner to dominate this year's awards, taking several statuettes barely an hour into the show, including producer of the year for himself and three with his group including rock performance, rock song and rock album for "El Camino."


The Black Keys homed in on the fundamentals of rock 'n' roll — big guitar riffs, lustful lyrics and a bevy of musical hooks on "El Camino," one of the best reviewed albums of the group's career.


FULL COVERAGE: Grammy Awards 2013


Auerbach picked up another award as producer of the blues album winner, Dr. John's "Locked Down."


Carrie Underwood grabbed the country solo performance Grammy for the title track from her album "Blown Away," which also won the country song award for writers Josh Kear and Chris Tompkins earlier during the pre-telecast ceremony at Nokia Theatre, across the street from Staples Center.


The Zac Brown Band added to its growing place as a new-generation country powerhouse with a win of the country album trophy for its "Uncaged," built on muscular Southern rock guitar riffs, elaborate multipart vocal harmonies and jam-band instrumental excursions.


Last year's big winner, Adele, collected the first statuette of the night for her single "Set Fire to the Rain" in the pop solo performance category.


The show got off to an eye-popping start with a Cirque du Soleil-inspired performance by Taylor Swift of her nominated single "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together."


The preponderance of youthful acts not broadly known to mainstream TV audiences heightened the use of cross-generational pairings. Rising songwriter and singer Ed Sheeran shared the stage early with veteran Grammy darling Elton John, while Bruno Mars teamed with Sting and Rihanna in a Bob Marley tribute later in the show. Several members of Americana acts, including Alabama Shakes and Mumford & Sons, sang alongside veterans John, Mavis Staples and T Bone Burnett in a salute to drummer Levon Helm of the Band.


But it was the young guns to whom the evening — and perhaps the future — of the Grammy Awards belonged.


The Grammys are determined by about 13,000 voting members of the Recording Academy. The eligibility period for nominated recordings was Oct. 1, 2011, to Sept. 30, 2012. The show aired on CBS live except on the West Coast, which gets a tape delay.


randy.lewis@latimes.com


Twitter: @RandyLewis2






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Producers: 'Chicago' cast to join Oscar performers


LOS ANGELES (AP) — Academy Awards producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron have run out of rehearsal space. Dressing rooms, too.


The award-winning production duo is planning the most performance-filled Oscar show ever. They promise a "wow moment" in each of its 13 acts, so the show demands a more dynamic stage and more dressing rooms and rehearsal time than previous Oscar productions.


"I don't think any Oscars have been as performance-based," Meron said.


It's no surprise, given the pair's hit-filled history: They produced 2003's best picture, "Chicago," and count TV's "Smash" and the recent Broadway revival of "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying" among their credits.


Running out of space for their Oscar production's A-list roster of performers — including Barbra Streisand, Adele and Norah Jones — is what Zadan calls a "great problem."


"When you do an Oscar show, you don't have a dressing room problem. The presenters don't get dressing rooms. And how many people perform on the Oscars, like one or two?" he said. "We have a staggering amount of performers, and each of them needs a dressing room... We're measuring the magnitude of how big the show is by the fact that we don't have (enough) dressing rooms."


Just added to the list of stars who may need spots? The cast of "Chicago."


The producers announced Monday that Renee Zellweger, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Queen Latifah and Richard Gere will reunite on the stage where "Chicago" won its Oscar 10 years ago.


"In a night of celebration of the music of the movies, we find it very appropriate," Meron said.


So will the musical cast sing?


"We can't talk about what they're going to do!" Zadan said.


Here's what they will talk about:


— Expect a dynamic, screen-filled set to accommodate the movie-focused numbers: "We're using a lot of cutting-edge technology with new LED screens of different sizes, shapes and configurations... It's kind of thrilling what we're doing with screens," Zadan said. "There will be, too, the regular screen that you have to use each year... but then we have all kinds of other screens that we're using in the show that are completely unique and different and allow us to do stuff with cinema, so it's not a concert thing where somebody comes out and sings a song. It's all integrated into movies."


— Look for a lot of host Seth MacFarlane: "He's going to be very present as a host, as a host should," Meron said.


— And expect to hear him show off his chops: "Seth will sing. He's got a great voice," Zadan said.


"Seth really does understand and have great reverence for the music of the movies," Meron added. "He loves it."


— And about those "wow moments?" Among them will be a celebration of the James Bond film franchise, a tribute to movie musicals, Streisand, Adele, a "special appearance" by Daniel Radcliffe, Charlize Theron, Channing Tatum and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and maybe something from the cast of "Chicago."


"We think seeing the cast of 'The Avengers' is pretty wow," Meron said.


Better book them a dressing room.


___


Contact Sandy Cohen at www.twitter.com/APSandy.


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Well: Getting the Right Addiction Treatment

“Treatment is not a prerequisite to surviving addiction.” This bold statement opens the treatment chapter in a helpful new book, “Now What? An Insider’s Guide to Addiction and Recovery,” by William Cope Moyers, a man who nonetheless needed “four intense treatment experiences over five years” before he broke free of alcohol and drugs.

As the son of Judith and Bill Moyers, successful parents who watched helplessly during a 15-year pursuit of oblivion through alcohol and drugs, William Moyers said his near-fatal battle with addiction demonstrates that this “illness of the mind, body and spirit” has no respect for status or opportunity.

“My parents raised me to become anything I wanted, but when it came to this chronic incurable illness, I couldn’t get on top of it by myself,” he said in an interview.

He finally emerged from his drug-induced nadir when he gave up “trying to do it my way” and instead listened to professional therapists and assumed responsibility for his behavior. For the last “18 years and four months, one day at a time,” he said, he has lived drug-free.

“Treatment is not the end, it’s the beginning,” he said. “My problem was not drinking or drugs. My problem was learning how to live life without drinking or drugs.”

Mr. Moyers acknowledges that treatment is not a magic bullet. Even after a monthlong stay at a highly reputable treatment center like Hazelden in Center City, Minn., where Mr. Moyers is a vice president of public affairs and community relations, the probability of remaining sober and clean a year later is only about 55 percent.

“Be wary of any program that claims a 100 percent success rate,” Mr. Moyers warned. “There is no such thing.”

“Treatment works to make recovery possible. But recovery is also possible without treatment,” Mr. Moyers said. “There’s no one-size-fits-all approach. What I needed and what worked for me isn’t necessarily what you or your loved one require.”

As with many smokers who must make multiple attempts to quit before finally overcoming an addiction to nicotine, people hooked on alcohol or drugs often must try and try again.

Nor does treatment have as good a chance at succeeding if it is forced upon a person who is not ready to recover. “Treatment does work, but only if the person wants it to,” Mr. Moyers said.

Routes to Success

For those who need a structured program, Mr. Moyers described what to consider to maximize the chances of overcoming addiction to alcohol or drugs.

Most important is to get a thorough assessment before deciding where to go for help. Do you or your loved one meet the criteria for substance dependence? Are there “co-occurring mental illnesses, traumatic or physical disabilities, socioeconomic influences, cultural issues, or family dynamics” that may be complicating the addiction and that can sabotage treatment success?

While most reputable treatment centers do a full assessment before admitting someone, it is important to know if the center or clinic provides the services of professionals who can address any underlying issues revealed by the assessment. For example, if needed, is a psychiatrist or other medical doctor available who could provide therapy and prescribe medication?

Is there a social worker on staff to address challenging family, occupational or other living problems? If a recovering addict goes home to the same problems that precipitated the dependence on alcohol or drugs, the chances of remaining sober or drug-free are greatly reduced.

Is there a program for family members who can participate with the addict in learning the essentials of recovery and how to prepare for the return home once treatment ends?

Finally, does the program offer aftercare and follow-up services? Addiction is now recognized to be a chronic illness that lurks indefinitely within an addict in recovery. As with other chronic ailments, like diabetes or hypertension, lasting control requires hard work and diligence. One slip need not result in a return to abuse, and a good program will help addicts who have completed treatment cope effectively with future challenges to their recovery.

How Families Can Help

“Addiction is a family illness,” Mr. Moyers wrote. Families suffer when someone they love descends into the purgatory of addiction. But contrary to the belief that families should cut off contact with addicts and allow them to reach “rock-bottom” before they can begin recovery, Mr. Moyers said that the bottom is sometimes death.

“It is a dangerous, though popular, misconception that a sick addict can only quit using and start to get well when he ‘hits bottom,’ that is, reaches a point at which he is desperate enough to willingly accept help,” Mr. Moyers wrote.

Rather, he urged families to remain engaged, to keep open the lines of communication and regularly remind the addict of their love and willingness to help if and when help is wanted. But, he added, families must also set firm boundaries — no money, no car, nothing that can be quickly converted into the substance of abuse.

Whether or not the addict ever gets well, Mr. Moyers said, “families have to take care of themselves. They can’t let the addict walk over their lives.”

Sometimes families or friends of an addict decide to do an intervention, confronting the addict with what they see happening and urging the person to seek help, often providing possible therapeutic contacts.

“An intervention can be the key that interrupts the process and enables the addict to recognize the extent of their illness and the need to take responsibility for their behavior,”Mr. Moyers said.

But for an intervention to work, Mr. Moyers said, “the sick person should not be belittled or demeaned.” He also cautioned families to “avoid threats.” He noted that the mind of “the desperate, fearful addict” is subsumed by drugs and alcohol that strip it of logic, empathy and understanding. It “can’t process your threat any better than it can a tearful, emotional plea.”

Resource Network

Mr. Moyer’s book lists nearly two dozen sources of help for addicts and their families. Among them:

Alcoholics Anonymous World Services www.aa.org;

Narcotics Anonymous World Services www.na.org;

Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration treatment finder www.samhsa.gov/treatment/;

Al-Anon Family Groups www.Al-anon.alateen.org;

Nar-Anon Family Groups www.nar-anon.org;

Co-Dependents Anonymous World Fellowship www.coda.org.


This is the second of two articles on addiction treatment. The first can be found here.

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