Egypt Court Orders Block on YouTube Over Anti-Islam Video

CAIRO (AP) — A Cairo court on Saturday ordered the government to block access to the video-sharing Web site YouTube for 30 days for carrying an anti-Islam film that set off deadly riots last year, but the ruling can be appealed and, based on precedent, may not be enforced.

Judge Hassouna Tawfiq described the video as “offensive to Islam” and to the Prophet Muhammad. The first protests against the film erupted in Cairo last September, before spreading to more than 20 countries, leaving more than 50 people dead.

The 14-minute video, said to be a trailer for a movie called “Innocence of Muslims,” portrays Muhammad as a religious fraud, a womanizer and a pedophile. It was produced in the United States by an Egyptian-born Christian who is now a United States citizen.

Egypt’s new Constitution includes a ban on insulting “religious messengers and prophets.” Broadly worded blasphemy laws also were in effect under President Hosni Mubarak, who was ousted in a popular revolt two years ago.

Similar orders to censor pornographic Web sites have not been enforced because of the high costs associated with technical applications, although blocking YouTube may be easier.

YouTube’s parent company, Google, last year declined requests to remove the video from the Web site, but restricted access to it in certain countries, including Egypt, Libya and Indonesia, because it said the video broke laws in those countries. At the height of the protests in September, YouTube was ordered blocked in several countries, including Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Saudi Arabia issued an order blocking all Web sites with access to the film.

Mohammed Hamid Salim, a lawyer who filed the lawsuit in Cairo, charged that the film constituted a threat to Egypt’s security. When the video was released, protesters in Cairo scaled the American Embassy’s walls and brought down the flag.

Some liberal and secular Egyptians fear that Egypt’s new Islamist leaders will try to curb freedoms related to religion. An Egyptian court last year convicted in absentia seven Egyptian Coptic Christians and an American pastor based in Florida, sentencing them to death on charges linked to the film. The case was seen as largely symbolic because the defendants, most of whom live in the United States, were unlikely to ever face the sentence.

In a related case, a Cairo court convicted a Coptic Christian blogger who shared the film online. The blogger was sentenced to three years in prison, but was released on bail.

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Katy Perry (Sort Of) Steals Spotlight at Bruce Springsteen Pre-Grammy Tribute

By Patrick Gomez and Marisa Laudadio

02/09/2013 at 11:45 AM EST

Katy Perry at the MusiCares Person of the Year gala

Lester Cohen/WireImage

It may have been a tribute to Bruce Springsteen but Katy Perry seemed to be the main attraction for some at Friday's MusiCares Person of the Year tribute at the Los Angeles Convention Center before Sunday's Grammy Awards.

The singer, who arrived at the charity event which raises money for musicians in need sans beau John Mayer, was interrupted by two young fans who asked to take a picture with her as she was talking to director J.J. Abrams. But that wasn't all: the pop star, who later hung out with Elton John, was approached by even more fans in the lobby at the show.

Other MusiCares attendees included Faith Hill and Tim McGraw, who arrived hand-in-hand before the dinner began. (McGraw and Hill later performed "Tougher Than the Rest" during the concert.)

As for the man of the hour, when the auction slowed The Boss offered up the ultimate prize: himself.

While composer David Foster urged the crowd to bid on a guitar signed live by many of the music stars in attendance, Springsteen grabbed the mic himself and threw in a few very personal extras to amp up the bidding.

First, he offered a one-hour guitar lesson and a ride in the sidecar of his Harley Davidson. Next, he added eight tickets to an E Street Band show of the bidder's choice, plus backstage passes and a backstage tour he promised to conduct personally.

"So dig in you one-percenters," he urged the audience with a smile. Springsteen raised the winning bid to a whopping $250,000 by making it a family affair, promising to also include "a lasagna made by my mother!"

Auction winner Tracey Powell, a "full-time mom," was so thrilled that she ran to Springsteen and kissed him on the lips – twice!

"I'm a Jersey girl and that's why I did it," Powell, who now lives in California, tells PEOPLE of her generous bid. "He's an amazing musician and I've followed him for years. Plus it was for an amazing cause that I'm so happy to support."

Jon Stewart hosted the evening's entertainment, a the Springsteen tribute concert that featured artists Elton John, Mumford & Sons, Sting, Neil Young (who sang "Born in the USA"), John Legend, Natalie Maines, Ben Harper, Emmylou Harris, Kenny Chesney and others, who performed some of Springsteen's classics.

John Legend performing at the MusiCares pre-Grammy tribute to Bruce Springsteen

For more behind-the-scenes photos of your favorite stars, follow @peoplemag on Instagram.

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After early start, worst of flu season may be over

NEW YORK (AP) — The worst of the flu season appears to be over.

The number of states reporting intense or widespread illnesses dropped again last week, and in a few states there was very little flu going around, U.S. health officials said Friday.

The season started earlier than normal, first in the Southeast and then spreading. But now, by some measures, flu activity has been ebbing for at least four weeks in much of the country. Flu and pneumonia deaths also dropped the last two weeks, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported.

"It's likely that the worst of the current flu season is over," CDC spokesman Tom Skinner said.

But flu is hard to predict, he and others stressed, and there have been spikes late in the season in the past.

For now, states like Georgia and New York — where doctor's offices were jammed a few weeks ago — are reporting low flu activity. The hot spots are now the West Coast and the Southwest.

Among the places that have seen a drop: Lehigh Valley Hospital-Cedar Crest in Allentown, Pa., which put up a tent outside its emergency room last month to help deal with the steady stream of patients. There were about 100 patients each day back then. Now it's down to 25 and the hospital may pack up its tent next week, said Terry Burger, director of infection control and prevention for the hospital.

"There's no question that we're seeing a decline," she said.

In early December, CDC officials announced flu season had arrived, a month earlier than usual. They were worried, saying it had been nine years since a winter flu season started like this one. That was 2003-04 — one of the deadliest seasons in the past 35 years, with more than 48,000 deaths.

Like this year, the major flu strain was one that tends to make people sicker, especially the elderly, who are most vulnerable to flu and its complications

But back then, that year's flu vaccine wasn't made to protect against that bug, and fewer people got flu shots. The vaccine is reformulated almost every year, and the CDC has said this year's vaccine is a good match to the types that are circulating. A preliminary CDC study showed it is about 60 percent effective, which is close to the average.

So far, the season has been labeled moderately severe.

Like others, Lehigh Valley's Burger was cautious about making predictions. "I'm not certain we're completely out of the woods," with more wintry weather ahead and people likely to be packed indoors where flu can spread around, she said.

The government does not keep a running tally of flu-related deaths in adults, but has received reports of 59 deaths in children. The most — nine — were in Texas, where flu activity was still high last week. Roughly 100 children die in an average flu season, the CDC says

On average, about 24,000 Americans die each flu season, according to the CDC.

According to the CDC report, the number of states with intense activity is down to 19, from 24 the previous week, and flu is widespread in 38 states, down from 42.

Flu is now minimal in Florida, Kentucky, Maine, Montana, New Hampshire and South Carolina.

___

Online:

CDC: http://www.cdc.gov/flu/

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State fires contractor on tech project

SACRAMENTO – The state has fired the contractor on one of its biggest and most troubled technology projects after deep problems with the system were revealed.

The decision to terminate the contract Friday stalls the costly effort to overhaul an outdated and unstable computer network that issues paychecks and handles medical benefits for 240,000 state employees. The $371-million upgrade, known as the 21st Century Project, has fallen years behind schedule and tripled in cost.

The state has already spent at least $254 million on the project, paying more than $50 million of that to the contractor, SAP Public Services. The company was hired three years ago after the job sputtered in the hands of a previous contractor, BearingPoint.

But when SAP's program was tested last summer, it made errors at more than 100 times the rate of the aging system the state has been struggling to replace, according to state officials.

"It would be totally irresponsible to move forward," said Jacob Roper, a spokesman for the California controller.

The Times highlighted problems with the state's 21st Century Project in December, soon after officials sent a letter to SAP saying the overhaul was "in danger of collapsing."

During a trial run involving 1,300 employees, Roper said, some paychecks went to the wrong person for the wrong amount. The system canceled some medical coverage and sent child-support payments to the wrong beneficiaries.

Roper said the state also had to pay $50,000 in penalties because money was sent to retirement accounts incorrectly.

"State employees and their families were in harm's way," he said. "Taxpayers were in harm's way."

The controller's office, which oversees the upgrade, will try to recoup the money paid to SAP, Roper said. Meanwhile, officials will conduct an autopsy on the system to determine what can be salvaged.

And Senate leader Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) called for a hearing to examine how so much money could be spent on the project with "apparently little to show for it."

A spokesman for SAP, Andy Kendzie, said the company was "extremely disappointed" that the controller terminated the contract.

"SAP stands behind our software and actions," Kendzie said in a statement. "SAP also believes we have satisfied all contractual obligations in this project."

Kendzie did not directly address the controller's concerns about errors during testing, nor did he say whether the company would fight any state effort to recover the $50 million.

Other California entities have struggled with SAP's work.

A $95-million plan to upgrade the Los Angeles Unified School District's payroll system with SAP software became a disaster in 2007, when some teachers were paid too much and others weren't paid at all.

More recently, Marin County officials decided to scrap their SAP-developed computer system, saying it never worked right and cost too much to maintain.

Both of those projects were managed by Deloitte Consulting.

chris.megerian@latimes.com

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India Ink: Online Abuse of Teen Girls in Kashmir Leads to Arrests

SRINAGAR —Online abuse and a fatwa aimed at a rock band of Muslim teenage girls in Kashmir have led to arrests and a threat of a lawsuit.

Three men were arrested this week for posting threatening messages on the Facebook page of Praagaash, an amateur rock band in Indian-occupied Kashmir made of up Muslim girls. “The investigation is ongoing,” said Manoj Pandita, spokesman for the Jammu and Kashmir police, indicating that more arrests may follow.

The three men were charged under Section 66A of the Information Technology Act, which applies to “offensive” messages being sent through communication services, and Section 506 of the Ranbir Penal Code, which applies to criminal intimidation. Mr. Pandita said that it had been easy to track the I.P. addresses of the Facebook users.

A prominent human rights lawyer, Parvez Imroz of the Jammu and Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society, is planning to sue the top religious leader in Kashmir, who called for the fatwa, for “demonizing Kashmir before the international community” and for “running a parallel judicial system in the valley.”

Mr. Imroz told India Ink that human rights organizations like his needed support from the international community to highlight their concerns, and such fatwas reflected badly on the Kashmiri society. “He is diverting attention away from real issues of human rights to nonissues like music and purdah,” Mr. Imroz said.

The fatwa against the band was issued by the Grand Mufti Bashiruddin Ahmad.

In his fatwa, Mr. Ahmad advised women to only sing inside the house to other female members of the family, and wear a veil whenever they left the house. “They must stay within limits,” he said.

Following the band’s first live performance in December, Aneeqa Khalid, Noma Nazir and Farah Deeba, 10th-grade students who are 15 and 16 years old, became the target of abuse and threats on Facebook by people who accused them of being un-Islamic because they had performed in public, especially before men. Some commenters called them “sluts” and “prostitutes;” others suggested that they should be raped.

The band Praagaash, which means “darkness into light,” disbanded following a national controversy surrounding these threatening messages. The threats were condemned by many, including the state’s chief minister.

To many Kashmiris, both the fatwa and the arrests by the government are unnecessary. Some say that the controversy erupted after the state’s chief minister, Omar Abdullah, got involved by expressing his support for the band on Twitter and then calling for investigation against those writing the threatening messages.

“Nobody here had a problem with the rock band,” said Aala Fazili, a doctorate student at Kashmir University, pointing out that the band’s performance in December had not led to any protests or physical threats against them.

Mr. Fazili, 32, added that people shouldn’t be arrested for writing abusive posts on Facebook. “You cannot call an abuse a threat,” he said.

Mr. Pandita, the Kashmir police spokesman, said the investigators were making a distinction between a threat and abuse on the basis of “gravity.”

Pranesh Prakash, from the Center for Internet and Society in Bangalore, asked whether people who hold protests calling for the death of the author Salman Rushdie should also be arrested for making threats.

“I would hold that no expression of violent thoughts, online or offline, should be made criminal, even if it is repugnantly misogynistic, unless it takes the form of a credible threat that causes harm, or is harassment that constitutes harm,” he said.

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Manhunt Escalates for Former L.A. Cop Christopher Dorner

By Stephen M. Silverman

02/08/2013 at 12:40 PM EST

Undated photo of Christopher Dorner

LAPD/AP

A massive manhunt continues Friday in Southern California for Christopher Dorner, a rage-filled former Los Angeles police officer on a self-confessed vendetta that left one policemen dead, another seriously wounded and another two people dead.

San Bernadino County Sheriffs confirmed in a Friday morning news conference that cabins are being scoured in the snowy mountains surrounding Big Bear, where Dorner, a former LAPD officer with military training, has a cabin of his own.

Police earlier found Dorner's burned-out pickup truck and tracks leading away from the vehicle off a wooded road near Big Bear. Authorities say Dorner's alleged wave of violence was retribution for having been fired in 2008 after making false statements.

Dorner said he would stop the killing when the LAPD publicly proclaimed his innocence and restored his reputation. "The department has not changed since the Rampart and Rodney King days. It has gotten worse," Dorner wrote in a document that he called his "Manifesto."

He continued: "I know I will be vilified by the LAPD and the media. Unfortunately, this is a necessary evil that I do not enjoy but must partake and complete for substantial change to occur within the LAPD and reclaim my name."

Police departments throughout the sprawling Los Angeles area continue to help try and capture Dorner, who is said to be armed with assault rifles and multiple other weapons.

Dorner's alleged victims are said to be two Riverside, Calif., police officers, ages 35 and 27, who were parked in their squad car. The elder officer, an 11-year-veteran of the force, was killed, and his partner seriously wounded. In addiiton, Monica Quan and her fiancé, Keith Lawrence, were found shot to death in their car Sunday night, according to Irvine Police Chief David L. Maggard.

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Southern diet, fried foods, may raise stroke risk

Deep-fried foods may be causing trouble in the Deep South. People whose diets are heavy on them and sugary drinks like sweet tea and soda were more likely to suffer a stroke, a new study finds.

It's the first big look at diet and strokes, and researchers say it might help explain why blacks in the Southeast — the nation's "stroke belt" — suffer more of them.

Blacks were five times more likely than whites to have the Southern dietary pattern linked with the highest stroke risk. And blacks and whites who live in the South were more likely to eat this way than people in other parts of the country were. Diet might explain as much as two-thirds of the excess stroke risk seen in blacks versus whites, researchers concluded.

"We're talking about fried foods, french fries, hamburgers, processed meats, hot dogs," bacon, ham, liver, gizzards and sugary drinks, said the study's leader, Suzanne Judd of the University of Alabama in Birmingham.

People who ate about six meals a week featuring these sorts of foods had a 41 percent higher stroke risk than people who ate that way about once a month, researchers found.

In contrast, people whose diets were high in fruits, vegetables, whole grains and fish had a 29 percent lower stroke risk.

"It's a very big difference," Judd said. "The message for people in the middle is there's a graded risk" — the likelihood of suffering a stroke rises in proportion to each Southern meal in a week.

Results were reported Thursday at an American Stroke Association conference in Honolulu.

The federally funded study was launched in 2002 to explore regional variations in stroke risks and reasons for them. More than 20,000 people 45 or older — half of them black — from all 48 mainland states filled out food surveys and were sorted into one of five diet styles:

—Southern: Fried foods, processed meats (lunchmeat, jerky), red meat, eggs, sweet drinks and whole milk.

—Convenience: Mexican and Chinese food, pizza, pasta.

—Plant-based: Fruits, vegetables, juice, cereal, fish, poultry, yogurt, nuts and whole-grain bread.

—Sweets: Added fats, breads, chocolate, desserts, sweet breakfast foods.

—Alcohol: Beer, wine, liquor, green leafy vegetables, salad dressings, nuts and seeds, coffee.

"They're not mutually exclusive" — for example, hamburgers fall into both convenience and Southern diets, Judd said. Each person got a score for each diet, depending on how many meals leaned that way.

Over more than five years of follow-up, nearly 500 strokes occurred. Researchers saw clear patterns with the Southern and plant-based diets; the other three didn't seem to affect stroke risk.

There were 138 strokes among the 4,977 who ate the most Southern food, compared to 109 strokes among the 5,156 people eating the least of it.

There were 122 strokes among the 5,076 who ate the most plant-based meals, compared to 135 strokes among the 5,056 people who seldom ate that way.

The trends held up after researchers took into account other factors such as age, income, smoking, education, exercise and total calories consumed.

Fried foods tend to be eaten with lots of salt, which raises blood pressure — a known stroke risk factor, Judd said. And sweet drinks can contribute to diabetes, the disease that celebrity chef Paula Deen — the queen of Southern cuisine — revealed she had a year ago.

The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, drugmaker Amgen Inc. and General Mills Inc. funded the study.

"This study does strongly suggest that food does have an influence and people should be trying to avoid these kinds of fatty foods and high sugar content," said an independent expert, Dr. Brian Silver, a Brown University neurologist and stroke center director at Rhode Island Hospital.

"I don't mean to sound like an ogre. I know when I'm in New Orleans I certainly enjoy the food there. But you don't have to make a regular habit of eating all this stuff."

___

Marilynn Marchione can be followed at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP

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Bar trivia is more than just fun and games

The door to the bar in Palms swung open, and strains of the theme from "Rocky III" burst into the street: "It's the eye of the tiger / It's the thrill of the fight!"

It was the call to arms for the Tuesday trivia night at the Irish Times pub.

A tall man stood among the Irish flags and faux-antique Guinness etchings and shot off the first question: "An NFL broadcaster who earned a law degree." Regulars nursing craft brews and munching on mozzarella sticks at the bar ignored him. But in the corner, John Verran and his trivia team worked intently on the correct answer.

"It's very competitive," said Verran, 27, a geographical information systems graduate student.

Bar trivia in Los Angeles is no trifling matter. Building on the runaway popularity of the game Trivial Pursuit in the 1980s, the pub quiz phenomenon exploded in British and Irish watering holes, spread to the East Coast and arrived in Southern California in earnest five years ago. As many as 70 local bars put on trivia nights, with more joining every day, said Andy Roth, owner of Action Trivia, one of the larger promoters.

"It's Manifest Destiny, man," said Roth, talking of the trend's momentum after hosting a pub quiz Wednesday at Michael's Bar & Grill in Burbank. "The hipsters love this."

The Irish Times game is highly organized — printed answer forms, weighted categories, intricate scoring. Some promoters hire staff members to research questions; others rely on hosts and players for suggestions. Prizes are usually nominal: a free dinner, or cash off the bar tab.

It's a know-it-all's paradise, and I should know. My childhood nickname was "Mrs. Dictionary." Does anyone else remember the Knowledge Bowl at the Balboa Fun Zone?

The players are Type-Aers whose idea of relaxation is a savage intellectual dogfight. All in good fun, of course. The top teams skew young, 20-somethings who spend all day online and are hungry for human contact. Structured play is safe ground for a generation raised in day care with their off-hours strictly regimented, and who suffer from early-onset nostalgia — Teletubbies, '90s pop.

Verran's team, Deliveries in the Rear ("It seemed amusing at the time," he said), formed around a nucleus of classmates from USC law school. They've been playing trivia at Irish Times for four years, returning week after week to face familiar rivals.

Verran was captain of his high school's championship Quizbowl team in Huntington Beach and is a lifelong trivia buff. "My mind just works that way," he said. Avi Schwartz, a patent lawyer with a chemistry degree, is the science nerd. Kristen Sales, who writes about movies for a film website, just likes games. "I grew up playing games," Sales said. "Me at 25 and me at 12 are basically the same person."

Some teams study on their own time, or enlist ringers to shore up their weak areas. Players size each other up in competition, then come together to form superteams.

"There are even headhunters out there recruiting," said entertainment attorney and Deliveries member Vanessa Flanders.

Greg Beron of Dreambuilders Multi-Media was the evening's host. A former lawyer, he runs a home brewing supply store in Culver City and does trivia on the side.

The Irish Times game is tough, he conceded. His musical interludes are sometimes clues to the answers, but not always. Beron doesn't want me to say which were which, and was touchy about my printing answers to any of his questions; he's saving the game for another pub quiz.

"We're not there to make it easy for people," Beron said.

Early in the first round, Deliveries faced their first big challenge, a four-part bonus question: Name double-word song titles performed by musicians David Bowie, Billy Idol, Paula Abdul and Run DMC.

A thrill of excitement ran through me when I heard it: "Rebel Rebel!" I cried. Bowie, my era!

Deliveries also got the Bowie tune and Idol's "Mony Mony" ("Spelling counts on this one," Beron said.) But Run DMC's "Mary, Mary" and Abdul's "Rush Rush" eluded the team.

"We almost had it — we put 'Hush Hush,' " Verran said of fluffing the Abdul answer.

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IHT Rendezvous: Stark Numbers Reveal the Scale of Elephant Killings

HONG KONG — The past couple of years has seen a stream of news about elephant killings and increasingly massive ivory seizures, a stream so relentless that it has become numbing.

A study released on Wednesday, however, still has the power to shock. Over the past eight years or so, according to the study, 11,000 elephants have been killed by poachers in the western African state of Gabon, where the Minkébé National Park once held the continent’s largest forest elephant population. Two-thirds of the park’s elephant population has been wiped out since 2004.

“The situation is out of control. We are witnessing the systematic slaughter of the world’s largest land mammal,” said Bas Huijbregts, head of the Central African strand of WWF’s global campaign against illegal wildlife trade, Wildlife Conservation Society, which conducted the study with the WWF and the Gabonese National Parks Agency, said the data represented trends across all remaining forest elephant strongholds in the region, and pointed to a “regional crisis.”

The Democratic Republic of the Congo, in central Africa, is believed to have between 7,000 and 10,000 elephants — less than 10 percent of its population 20 years ago.

In the Central African Republic, which had as many as 80,000 elephants in the mid-1980s, the numbers are now down to just a few thousand as poachers are taking advantage of the political instability in the country to hunt the creatures.

And last year, hundreds of elephants were killed for their tusks in Cameroon, another western African nation.

Moreover, the Gabon slaughter has taken place in a country that had been thought to be less badly hit by poaching than other parts of Africa.

As my colleague Jeffrey Gettleman reported last year, Gabon’s government, blessed with billions of dollars of oil money, has made many of the right moves to protect its animals, setting aside chunks of land for national parks, and even lighting a pyramid of 10,000 pounds of ivory on fire to make the point that the trade was reprehensible.

As I wrote last year, demand for ivory from China is the leading driver behind the illegal trade, compounded by improved transport, trade links and a rise in the presence of Chinese nationals in Africa. And although the Chinese authorities are helping with awareness campaigns, what is really needed is on-the-ground enforcement, to help trace and combat the activities of Chinese middlemen in the illicit trade, experts have said.

For the crisis to be comprehensively addressed, Mr. Huijbregts of the WWF commented Wednesday, “the international intelligence community needs to get involved in this fight as soon as possible, in order to identify, track and put out of business these global criminal networks, which corrupt governments, erode national security and hamper economic development prospects.”

Unless the governments of the region and demand countries treat this issue as an international emergency, he said, “we cannot rule out that, in our lifetime, there will no longer be any viable elephant populations in Central Africa.”

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Rihanna & Chris Brown Go from the Courthouse to the Studio Together

By Maggie Coughlan

02/07/2013 at 12:15 PM EST

Chris Brown (far left) and Rihanna (right) at Brown's court hearing

Splash News Online

That's one way to stand by your man.

Rihanna attended boyfriend Chris Brown's court hearing in Los Angeles on Wednesday – and later stepped out with him after a late night in the studio.

Brown, 23, was charged with failing to complete his community service after domestically abusing Rihanna, 24, in 2009. Joined by Brown's mother, Joyce Hawkins, and two other women, Rihanna sat stoically as the judge discussed Brown's case.

Then, hours later, the couple was photographed leaving a recording studio together in Brown's Porsche around 4:30 a.m., after having spent five hours together inside.

Following the assault in 2009, the couple parted ways. But in a recent issue of Rolling Stone, the "Diamonds" singer revealed they rekindled their romance.

"Even if it's a mistake, it's my mistake. After being tormented for so many years, being angry and dark, I'd rather just live my truth and take the backlash. I can handle it," she said.

But Rihanna insists that things are "different now."

"We don't have those types of arguments anymore. We have each other. We know exactly what we have now, and we don't want to lose that," she told the magazine.

Rihanna and Chris Brown

RACHPOOT / XPOSUREPHOTOS.COM

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Southern diet, fried foods, may raise stroke risk

Deep-fried foods may be causing trouble in the Deep South. People whose diets are heavy on them and sugary drinks like sweet tea and soda were more likely to suffer a stroke, a new study finds.

It's the first big look at diet and strokes, and researchers say it might help explain why blacks in the Southeast — the nation's "stroke belt" — suffer more of them.

Blacks were five times more likely than whites to have the Southern dietary pattern linked with the highest stroke risk. And blacks and whites who live in the South were more likely to eat this way than people in other parts of the country were. Diet might explain as much as two-thirds of the excess stroke risk seen in blacks versus whites, researchers concluded.

"We're talking about fried foods, french fries, hamburgers, processed meats, hot dogs," bacon, ham, liver, gizzards and sugary drinks, said the study's leader, Suzanne Judd of the University of Alabama in Birmingham.

People who ate about six meals a week featuring these sorts of foods had a 41 percent higher stroke risk than people who ate that way about once a month, researchers found.

In contrast, people whose diets were high in fruits, vegetables, whole grains and fish had a 29 percent lower stroke risk.

"It's a very big difference," Judd said. "The message for people in the middle is there's a graded risk" — the likelihood of suffering a stroke rises in proportion to each Southern meal in a week.

Results were reported Thursday at an American Stroke Association conference in Honolulu.

The federally funded study was launched in 2002 to explore regional variations in stroke risks and reasons for them. More than 20,000 people 45 or older — half of them black — from all 48 mainland states filled out food surveys and were sorted into one of five diet styles:

—Southern: Fried foods, processed meats (lunchmeat, jerky), red meat, eggs, sweet drinks and whole milk.

—Convenience: Mexican and Chinese food, pizza, pasta.

—Plant-based: Fruits, vegetables, juice, cereal, fish, poultry, yogurt, nuts and whole-grain bread.

—Sweets: Added fats, breads, chocolate, desserts, sweet breakfast foods.

—Alcohol: Beer, wine, liquor, green leafy vegetables, salad dressings, nuts and seeds, coffee.

"They're not mutually exclusive" — for example, hamburgers fall into both convenience and Southern diets, Judd said. Each person got a score for each diet, depending on how many meals leaned that way.

Over more than five years of follow-up, nearly 500 strokes occurred. Researchers saw clear patterns with the Southern and plant-based diets; the other three didn't seem to affect stroke risk.

There were 138 strokes among the 4,977 who ate the most Southern food, compared to 109 strokes among the 5,156 people eating the least of it.

There were 122 strokes among the 5,076 who ate the most plant-based meals, compared to 135 strokes among the 5,056 people who seldom ate that way.

The trends held up after researchers took into account other factors such as age, income, smoking, education, exercise and total calories consumed.

Fried foods tend to be eaten with lots of salt, which raises blood pressure — a known stroke risk factor, Judd said. And sweet drinks can contribute to diabetes, the disease that celebrity chef Paula Deen — the queen of Southern cuisine — revealed she had a year ago.

The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, drugmaker Amgen Inc. and General Mills Inc. funded the study.

"This study does strongly suggest that food does have an influence and people should be trying to avoid these kinds of fatty foods and high sugar content," said an independent expert, Dr. Brian Silver, a Brown University neurologist and stroke center director at Rhode Island Hospital.

"I don't mean to sound like an ogre. I know when I'm in New Orleans I certainly enjoy the food there. But you don't have to make a regular habit of eating all this stuff."

___

Marilynn Marchione can be followed at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP

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Police on high alert after ex-LAPD cop's alleged serial shootings

Authorities across Southern California were on high alert Thursday morning as a massive manhunt was underway for an ex-Los Angeles police officer sought in connection with a double homicide and the shootings of three police officers, one of whom was killed.

Local, state and federal authorities are involved in the search for Christoper Jordan Dorner, 33, who threatened "unconventional
and asymmetrical warfare" against police in an manifesto posted on his Facebook page.

Dorner also threatened more than two dozen people -- including police officials -- in his manifesto. Officers from around Southern California have been deployed
to protect those people. In some cases, police said, those at risk have relocated for their safety.

PHOTOS: Manhunt for ex-LAPD officer

 LAPD Chief Charlie Beck is expected to hold a news conference at
10 a.m.

When asked if police felt they were under attack, Riverside Police Lt. Guy Toussaint said: “Based on the circumstances of the
shooting, yes I do.”

Hours after authorities announced they were looking for Dorner in connection with a double homicide in Orange County, the search intensified after three police officers were shot in Riverside County and Dorner was identified as a possible suspect.

Ex-LAPD cop tried to steal boat, flee to Mexico, authorities say

Freeway signs urged motorists to call 911 if they saw the suspect's vehicle as officers patrolled the streets near one of the Riverside County crime scenes with rifles at the ready. Los Angeles was put on a citywide tactical alert and California Highway Patrol issued a "blue alert" for nine Southern California counties warning Dorner was considered "armed and extremely dangerous."

The first shooting occurred about 1:30 a.m. Thursday in Corona, where two Los
Angeles Police Department officers providing protection for
someone mentioned in Dorner's manifesto, officials said. One
officer suffered a graze wound to the head during a shootout and Dorner fled
the scene, police said.

A short time later, two Riverside officers were shot at the corner of Magnolia Avenue and Arlington
Avenue in
Riverside. Toussaint said the officers were
sitting at a red light when they were ambushed. One was killed, the
other was still in surgery Thursday morning.

Ex-LAPD officer threatened to kill in online manifesto

There was no indication the officers were "actively seeking Dorner," Toussaint said.

“Our
officers were stopped at an intersection at a red light when they were
ambushed," he said. "Because of the close proximity to the timeline, we believe there is a
strong likelihood that former LAPD Officer Christopher Dorner was involved in
our incident.”

In the online manifesto, Dorner specifically named the father of
Monica Quan, the Cal State Fullerton assistant basketball coach who was
found dead Sunday in Irvine along with her fiance, Keith Lawrence.

Randy Quan, a retired LAPD captain, was involved in the review
process that ultimately led to Dorner’s dismissal. A former U.S. Navy
reservist, Dorner was fired in 2009 for allegedly making false
statements about his training officer. In the manifesto, he complained that Randy Quan and others did not fairly represent him at the review hearing.

“The violence of action will be high .... I will bring unconventional
and asymmetrical warfare to those in LAPD uniform whether on or off
duty," Dorner wrote.

As authorities swarmed the area, two officer-involved shootings occurred in Torrance after police came across vehicles they thought might be Dorner's.

The first Torrance incident occurred about 5:20 a.m. in the 19500
block of Redbeam Avenue in Torrance, Lt. Devin Chase said. That incident involved
Los Angeles police detectives from the Hollywood division, sources said.

Two people were struck by gunfire and transported to an area hospital with unknown injuries, Chase said. No officers were injured.

The second incident, which involved Torrance police officers,
occurred at Flagler Lane and Beryl Street about 5:45 a.m. No injuries
were reported in that incident.

Chase said both incidents involved vehicles matching the description of the one sought in connection with Dorner.

"Now it appears neither of them are directly related," Chase said. "In both of them, officers believed they were at the time."

Authorities said they believe Dorner attempted to steal a boat from an elderly man about 10:30 p.m. Wednesday
at the Point Loma Yacht Club in San Diego, hours before the shootings in
Riverside County.

The boat owner reported being accosted by a burly man who tied him up, threatened
him with a gun and said he wanted the boat to flee to Mexico.

PHOTOS: Manhunt for ex-LAPD officer

But while they were trying to get underway, a rope became entangled
in the propeller and the boat was inoperable, authorities said.

The suspect fled the scene and the boat owner was unharmed.

About 2 a.m., a citizen reported finding property belonging to Dorner
on a street near Lindbergh Field, not far from the scene of the
attempted boat theft. The property included a briefcase and Dorner's
LAPD badge.

ALSO:

Riverside police 'ambushed' by shooter, official says

Police shoot two in Torrance in search for ex-LAPD cop

Manhunt underway for ex-LAPD officer suspected of shooting 3 cops

— Andrew Blankstein, Kate Mather, Phil Willon and Tony Perry

Read More..

Clashes Erupt in Damascus, Shattering Lull, as Prospects for Talks Dim

Goran Tomasevic/Reuters

A building in the Damascus suburb of Zamalka was hit by a mortar shell fired by the Syrian Army on Wednesday.

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Syrian insurgents attacked military checkpoints and other targets in parts of central Damascus on Wednesday, antigovernment activist groups reported. The fighting shattered a lull there as prospects for any talks between the antagonists appeared to dim, a week after the opposition coalition leader first proposed the surprise idea of a dialogue aimed at ending the war.

Some antigovernment activists described the resumption of fighting, which had lapsed for the past few weeks, as part of a renewed effort by rebels to seize control of central Damascus, the Syrian capital, although that depiction seemed highly exaggerated. Witness accounts said many people were going about their business, while others noted that previous rebel claims of territorial gains in Damascus had almost always turned out to be embellished or unfounded.

Representatives of the Military Council of Damascus, an insurgent group, said that at least 33 members of President Bashar al-Assad’s security forces in Damascus had surrendered, while others had fled central Al Abasiyeen Square, and that other forces had erected roadblocks on all access streets to the area to thwart the movement of rebel fighters.

Salam Mohammed, an activist in Damascus, described Al Abasiyeen Square as “on fire,” and a video clip uploaded on YouTube showed a thick column of black smoke spiraling over the area while the sound of shelling could be heard. A voice is heard saying the shelling had started a fire. The Local Coordination Committees, an anti-Assad activist network in Syria, also reported gunfire in nearby streets.

Firas al-Horani, a military council spokesman, said fighters of the Free Syrian Army, the main armed opposition group, were in control of Al Abasiyeen Square. He also said, “The capital, Damascus, is in a state of paralysis at the moment, and clashes are in full force in the streets.”

It was impossible to confirm Mr. Horani’s assertions or the extent of the fighting because of Syrian government restrictions on foreign news organizations. But Syria’s state-run media said insurgent claims of combat success in Damascus were false. “Those are miserable attempts to raise the morale of terrorists who are fleeing our valiant armed forces,” said SANA, the official news agency.

Deadly violence also was reported in the Homs Province town of Palmyra, the site of a notorious prison where Mr. Assad’s father, Hafez, ordered the summary execution of about 1,000 prisoners during an uprising against his family’s grip on power in the 1980s.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based group with a network of contacts inside Syria, said two booby-trapped cars exploded near the military intelligence and state security branches, killing at least 12 members of the security forces and wounding more than 20. The observatory said government forces deployed throughout Palmyra afterward, engaging in gun battles with insurgents that left at least eight civilians wounded in the cross-fire.

SANA also reported an attack but said it was caused by two suicide bombers who had targeted a residential part of the town, killing an unspecified number of civilians.

The new mayhem came as discord appeared to grow within the National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, the umbrella anti-Assad group, over a proposal made on Jan. 30 by Sheik Ahmad Moaz al-Khatib, its leader, to engage in talks with Mr. Assad’s government aimed at ending the nearly two-year-old conflict, which has left more than 60,000 people dead. Although Sheik Khatib’s proposal contained a number of conditions, it broke a longstanding principle that Mr. Assad must relinquish power before any talks can begin.

Many of Sheik Khatib’s colleagues grudgingly agreed to go along with the proposal after it had been made, but critical voices have been rising, especially among the coalition’s more militant elements.

In a new video uploaded on YouTube, a cleric from the Nusra Front, an anti-Assad Islamist militant group that the Obama administration has classified as a terrorist organization, said in a prayer speech that brute force against Mr. Assad and his disciples was the only solution.

“We will cut their heads, we swear to kill them all, and they will see our worst war,” said the cleric, who spoke in Libyan-accented Arabic at a mosque in the contested northern city of Aleppo, holding a sword in his right hand. “No for the negotiations, no for the talks, no retreat in a jihad for God’s sake.”

Hania Mourtada reported from Beirut, and Rick Gladstone from New York. Karam Shoumali contributed reporting from Antakya, Turkey.

Read More..

Leighton Meester Is Dating Adam Brody

By Julie Jordan

02/06/2013 at 12:45 PM EST

Adam Brody and Leighton Meeste

Henry S. Dziekan III/Wireimage

It looks like Leighton Meester is getting a taste of Orange County, Calif.

The former Gossip Girl star, 26, who has been an N.Y.C. staple, is dating former The O.C. star Adam Brody, 33, sources confirm to PEOPLE.

Reps for the actors have not commented, and both have kept their private lives out of the spotlight over the years.

In 2010, Meester briefly addressed her "really hard" split from Sebastian Stan, saying, "I was really sad when it ended, but that's what taught me a lot about myself and love and life – and that's good."

Brody most famously dated O.C. costar Rachel Bilson. They split in 2006, and the actor most recently publicly courted screenwriter Lorene Scafaria in 2011.

Meester and Brody reportedly became close after costarring in the film The Oranges.

Read More..

Critics seek to delay NYC sugary drinks size limit

NEW YORK (AP) — Opponents are pressing to delay enforcement of the city's novel plan to crack down on supersized, sugary drinks, saying businesses shouldn't have to spend millions of dollars to comply until a court rules on whether the measure is legal.

With the rule set to take effect March 12, beverage industry, restaurant and other business groups have asked a judge to put it on hold at least until there's a ruling on their lawsuit seeking to block it altogether. The measure would bar many eateries from selling high-sugar drinks in cups or containers bigger than 16 ounces.

"It would be a tremendous waste of expense, time, and effort for our members to incur all of the harm and costs associated with the ban if this court decides that the ban is illegal," Chong Sik Le, president of the New York Korean-American Grocers Association, said in court papers filed Friday.

City lawyers are fighting the lawsuit and oppose postponing the restriction, which the city Board of Health approved in September. They said Tuesday they expect to prevail.

"The obesity epidemic kills nearly 6,000 New Yorkers each year. We see no reason to delay the Board of Health's reasonable and legal actions to combat this major, growing problem," Mark Muschenheim, a city attorney, said in a statement.

Another city lawyer, Thomas Merrill, has said officials believe businesses have had enough time to get ready for the new rule. He has noted that the city doesn't plan to seek fines until June.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg and other city officials see the first-of-its-kind limit as a coup for public health. The city's obesity rate is rising, and studies have linked sugary drinks to weight gain, they note.

"This is the biggest step a city has taken to curb obesity," Bloomberg said when the measure passed.

Soda makers and other critics view the rule as an unwarranted intrusion into people's dietary choices and an unfair, uneven burden on business. The restriction won't apply at supermarkets and many convenience stores because the city doesn't regulate them.

While the dispute plays out in court, "the impacted businesses would like some more certainty on when and how they might need to adjust operations," American Beverage Industry spokesman Christopher Gindlesperger said Tuesday.

Those adjustments are expected to cost the association's members about $600,000 in labeling and other expenses for bottles, Vice President Mike Redman said in court papers. Reconfiguring "16-ounce" cups that are actually made slightly bigger, to leave room at the top, is expected to take cup manufacturers three months to a year and cost them anywhere from more than $100,000 to several millions of dollars, Foodservice Packaging Institute President Lynn Dyer said in court documents.

Movie theaters, meanwhile, are concerned because beverages account for more than 20 percent of their overall profits and about 98 percent of soda sales are in containers greater than 16 ounces, according to Robert Sunshine, executive director of the National Association of Theatre Owners of New York State.

___

Follow Jennifer Peltz at http://twitter.com/jennpeltz

Read More..

Woman drugged girl, use her in hard-core porn, police allege

This post has been corrected. Please see below for details.

A North Hills woman who authorities allege plied a young girl with crack cocaine and photographed her having sex with an older man was indicted Tuesday on federal charges of producing child pornography and child sex trafficking.

Letha Montemayor Tucker was named Tuesday in a four-count indictment returned by a federal grand jury. If convicted of all the charges, Tucker would face a mandatory minimum federal prison sentence of 10 years and could get up to life in prison, authorities said.

The charges come a month after authorities sought the public's help in the investigation by releasing photographs of a man and woman depicted in a set of widely circulated child pornography photos. 

Tips started pouring in immediately after the photos were released, investigators said.

Tucker, who goes by the name Butterfly, was located about 10 hours after the release of the photos and taken into custody, said Claude Arnold, special agent in charge for Homeland Security Investigations in Los Angeles, a division of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The alleged victim, who was about 12 years old when the photos were taken, was located within a week of the case going public, Arnold said. She is an adult now and is cooperating with authorities, he said. In addition to photographing the girl having sex with the man, authorities say, Tucker also committed sex acts with the victim.

Authorities are still trying to identify the man in the photographs.  

The photos were part of a child pornography collection known as the "Jen Series." The 40-some photos were first discovered by investigators in the Chicago area in 2007. Investigators say images in the series have been reported about 300 times and have been found on computers across the country.

The victim "didn't even know these images were out there," Arnold said.

An arraignment for Tucker is scheduled Feb. 13.

For the record, 6:06 p.m.: A previous version of this post gave the incorrect job title for Arnold.

ALSO:

Chris Brown case raises tough questions for Virginia authorities

L.A. supervisors approve task force to examine 'maternity hotels'

Amid molestation scandal, archdiocese mulls over $200-million fund-raiser

-- Hailey Branson-Potts

Photo: Letha Montemayor Tucker, 52, of North Hills is led away by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents after her arrest on suspicion of child pornography Jan. 3. Credit: Associated Press

Read More..

China Issues Plan to Narrow Income Gap

HONG KONG — The Chinese government on Tuesday issued a long-awaited plan to narrow the gulf between rich and poor, offering broad vows to lift the incomes of workers and farmers and choke off corrupt wealth but few specific goals to rein in the nation’s wide inequality.

The proposal was mired for months in an internal dispute about whether to aggressively scale back the rising salaries and benefits of some officials working for state-owned business and banks. The document that emerged from the discussions is filled with commitments to deal with that issue and other sources of public concern about the gap between the incomes of residents of dirt-poor villages and those living in privileged urban enclaves.

“There are some stark problems in income distribution that need urgent solving,” said the plan, which was issued on the central government’s Web site. “Chiefly, there remain quite large disparities in urban-rural development and incomes, income allocation is poorly ordered, and there are quite serious problems with invisible and unlawful sources of income.” The document was drafted by the National Development and Reform Commission and other central agencies.

The income distribution plan was one of the initiatives promised by the departing Chinese prime minister, Wen Jiabao, who leaves office in March. But it also underscores the extent to which the country’s new generation of leaders under Xi Jinping has also promised to expand state spending on health care, education and social welfare.

Mr. Xi, who was appointed Communist Party chief in November and is set to become state president in March, has said he wants to accelerate economic changes in the spirit of Deng Xiaoping, who began the process of transforming China into a more modern economy after decades of rule by Mao Zedong. But in the process of introducing market forces in China, such changes have starkly widened income disparities.

Since Mr. Xi took office, Chinese news media have reported on a succession of officials who have been accused of siphoning bribes and public money into their pockets. The income plan, however, does not offer specific new initiatives to reduce corruption.

Beyond a general commitment to eliminate sources of illegal income, the plan says that officials must abide by already announced rules to report earnings and assets to superiors. Many experts, however, have said such rules are ineffective without public disclosure as well.

Average disposable annual income for Chinese urban residents in 2012 was the equivalent of about $4,000, an increase of 9.6 percent after taking inflation into account. Average rural net income was just under $1,300 per person, a rise of 10.7 percent after adjusting for inflation, the Chinese National Bureau of Statistics announced in January.

The bureau also said that in 2012 China’s Gini Coefficient, a widely used index of income inequality, was 0.474, slightly higher than levels of inequality in the United States, where income disparity has widened sharply in recent decades and now stands as one of the highest among advanced industrial nations. But some economists have said China’s measure is actually much higher, when illicit and poorly reported sources of wealth are taken into account.

“Deepening reform of the income distribution system is an extremely arduous and complex task of systemic engineering,” the new plan says. “It cannot be achieved in one step.”

Read More..

Bridget Jones Is Back: Helen Fielding to Release New Novel in November

02/05/2013 at 12:30 PM EST

Renée Zellweger in Bridget Jones's Diary

Everett

Bridget's back – and better than ever?

It's been 14 years since readers last heard from frumpy, lovelorn, calorie-counting Bridget Jones, memorably played on film by Renée Zellweger.

Now author Helen Fielding is readying a brand-new Jones novel, but don't expect her lovable protagonist to be exactly the same this time around.

According to a press release about the book obtained by the New York Times, the book will take place in present day London and "represents a totally new phase in Bridget's life."

Considered by some to be a possible Fielding alter-ego, the author explains: "My life has moved on and Bridget's will move on, too."

The new, currently untitled book will be released by Alfred A. Knopf in November, and it's the follow up to 1996's Bridget Jones's Diary and 1999's Bridget Jones: the Edge of Reason.

What do you think Bridget has been up to in the years that passed? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Read More..

Bullying study: It does get better for gay teens

CHICAGO (AP) — It really does get better for gay and bisexual teens when it comes to being bullied, although young gay men have it worse than their lesbian peers, according to the first long-term scientific evidence on how the problem changes over time.

The seven-year study involved more than 4,000 teens in England who were questioned yearly through 2010, until they were 19 and 20 years old. At the start, just over half of the 187 gay, lesbian and bisexual teens said they had been bullied; by 2010 that dropped to 9 percent of gay and bisexual boys and 6 percent of lesbian and bisexual girls.

The researchers said the same results likely would be found in the United States.

In both countries, a "sea change" in cultural acceptance of gays and growing intolerance for bullying occurred during the study years, which partly explains the results, said study co-author Ian Rivers, a psychologist and professor of human development at Brunel University in London.

That includes a government mandate in England that schools work to prevent bullying, and changes in the United States permitting same-sex marriage in several states.

In 2010, syndicated columnist Dan Savage launched the "It Gets Better" video project to encourage bullied gay teens. It was prompted by widely publicized suicides of young gays, and includes videos from politicians and celebrities.

"Bullying tends to decline with age regardless of sexual orientation and gender," and the study confirms that, said co-author Joseph Robinson, a researcher and assistant professor of educational psychology at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. "In absolute terms, this would suggest that yes, it gets better."

The study appears online Monday in the journal Pediatrics.

Eliza Byard, executive director of the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network, said the results mirror surveys by her anti-bullying advocacy group that show bullying is more common in U.S. middle schools than in high schools.

But the researchers said their results show the situation is more nuanced for young gay men.

In the first years of the study, gay boys and girls were almost twice as likely to be bullied as their straight peers. By the last year, bullying dropped overall and was at about the same level for lesbians and straight girls. But the difference between men got worse by ages 19 and 20, with gay young men almost four times more likely than their straight peers to be bullied.

The mixed results for young gay men may reflect the fact that masculine tendencies in girls and women are more culturally acceptable than femininity in boys and men, Robinson said.

Savage, who was not involved in the study, agreed.

"A lot of the disgust that people feel when you bring up homosexuality ... centers around gay male sexuality," Savage said. "There's more of a comfort level" around gay women, he said.

Kendall Johnson, 21, a junior theater major at the University of Illinois, said he was bullied for being gay in high school, mostly when he brought boyfriends to school dances or football games.

"One year at prom, I had a guy tell us that we were disgusting and he didn't want to see us dancing anymore," Johnson said. A football player and the president of the drama club intervened on his behalf, he recalled.

Johnson hasn't been bullied in college, but he said that's partly because he hangs out with the theater crowd and avoids the fraternity scene. Still, he agreed, that it generally gets better for gays as they mature.

"As you grow older, you become more accepting of yourself," Johnson said.

___

Online:

Pediatrics: http://www.pediatrics.org

It Gets Better: http://www.itgetsbetter.org

___

AP Medical Writer Lindsey Tanner can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/LindseyTanner

Read More..

Mystery after basketball coach, fiance murdered in parking lot

This post has been corrected. See the note below for details.

Family and friends had only praise for a Cal State Fullerton coach and her fiance Monday, a day after the recently engaged college sweethearts were found fatally shot in the parking structure of their condominium near UC Irvine.

The bodies of Monica Quan, an assistant women's basketball coach, and Keith Lawrence, who worked as a campus officer at USC, were discovered Sunday night in their parked car on the top floor of the parking structure at the upscale, high-security condominium complex.

They were each shot multiple times, and authorities said they have
tentatively ruled out the possibility of the crime being a murder-suicide or
motivated by robbery.

Those that knew the couple said they were shaken by the news.

Marcia Foster, the head basketball
coach at Cal State Fullerton, described her assistant as a special
person: "bright, passionate and empowering."

"I'm sorry we're gathered here today for news like this," Foster said at a campus news
conference Monday. "There just aren't words."

Friends said Quan shared a love of basketball with Lawrence, whom she met at Concordia University in Irvine, where the two played basketball. A tweet from Concordia on Monday described the two as "incredible alum."

Lawrence was a standout player, both at Concordia, where he helped lead his team to the 2007 NAIA national championship game, and at Moorpark High, where he was a starter.

Tim Bednar,
who coached Lawrence at Moorpark, said the point guard and shooting guard came from a family of athletes, was
talented, yet quiet and humble. After Lawrence graduated in 2003, he
continued to participate in summer youth camps.

When he returned for the camps, Bednar said, he was known as the "best basketball player that ever came through" the school.

"He was awesome with the kids," Bednar said. "They all wanted to be around Keith Lawrence."

Lawrence's friends and family put up a Facebook page. "RIP Keith
Lawrence, you will be missed," it said. Within hours, 840 people had
left comments or indicated they "liked" it. Concordia put up a link to
Lawrence's game-winning shot that carried the school into a post-season
tournament.

Michelle Thibeault, 27, said in a Facebook message that she had known
Quan for more than a decade. The two were on the same athletic teams
and went to junior high and high school together. "Monica was loved by
everyone," she said.

During a somber gathering at the Cal State Fullerton gymnasium Monday, Foster said: "We just shared a moment of incredible joy on her recent engagement. A bright light was just put out."

[Updated, 9:35 a.m. Feb.5: An earlier version of this post attributed a statement about Monica Quan to Quan's brother, Ryan. It should have been attributed to Marcia Foster, head basketball
coach at Cal State Fullerton.]

About 40 people later gathered at Walnut High School to remember Quan, whose aunt described her as "vivacious and energetic."

“Monica is like the daughter we never had,” Nicki Lew said.

ALSO:

2 women slain in rural Riverside County

Students sever fingers during game of tug of war

Woman and child abducted at Sam's Club in Orange County

-- Nicole Santa Cruz, Lauren Williams and Kate Mather

Read More..

BlackBerry shares jump after Bernstein upgrades stock

TORONTO (Reuters) – Shares of BlackBerry rose more than 8 percent in on Monday after Bernstein Research said it was upgrading the stock to “outperform” after last week’s launch of the company’s new line of BlackBerry 10 smartphones.

The brokerage firm, which has not had an “outperform” rating on the stock for more than three years, also lifted its price target to $ 22 from $ 12, saying it has grown much more confident about the success of the smartphones, powered by the new BlackBerry 10 operating system.

Shares of BlackBerry, which is in the process of changing its legal name from Research In Motion, rose 8.9 percent to $ 14.18 in early Nasdaq trading. BlackBerry’s Toronto-listed shares were up 9.1 percent at C$ 14.21 at 10:30 EST.

The stock began trading under the “BBRY” symbol on Nasdaq on Monday and under the “BB” symbol on the Toronto Stock Exchange. The stock used to trade as “RIMM” on the Nasdaq and “RIM” on the TSX.

“We upgrade BlackBerry to outperform today as we believe BB 10 is set for a strong launch,” Bernstein analyst Pierre Ferragu said in a note to clients. “Even if the long-term prospects for the platform are very uncertain, we believe all is in place for BlackBerry 10 to enjoy a great debut.”

BlackBerry, a one-time pioneer in the smartphone industry, has ceded market share in recent years to the likes of Apple’s iPhone, Samsung’s Galaxy line and a slew of devices powered by Google Inc’s market-leading Android operating system.

In a make-or-break move to regain market share and return to profit, BlackBerry introduced its new line of smartphones to much fanfare on Wednesday. However, its stock fell more than 10 percent following the launch as investors were disappointed that the new smartphones will only go on sale in mid-March in the crucial U.S. market.

“The strength of this launch is overlooked by investors, creating strong opportunity to buy BlackBerry,” said Ferragu, adding that he expects strong initial corporate demand for the new devices.

“We believe BlackBerry should trade in the $ 20-$ 25 range once a decent launch for Blackberry 10 and a stabilized trajectory for fiscal year 2014 are priced in,” he said.

BlackBerry unveiled both a touch-screen device and a physical-keyboard device last week. While the traditional keyboard model only goes on sale in April, the touch-screen device is already on sale in the United Kingdom and hits store shelves in Canada this week.

Waterloo, Ontario-based BlackBerry said the U.S. launch was delayed until mid-March because U.S. wireless carriers have a longer testing phase than carriers in other countries. The devices, which are set to retail for C$ 599 ($ 600) in Canada, are currently attracting bids of more than $ 1,000 each on auction site ebay.com.

(Reporting by Euan Rocha; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn; and Peter Galloway)

Wireless News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Molly Sims Flaunts Fab Post-Baby Body in Bikini

By Shanelle Rein-Olowokere

02/04/2013 at 12:50 PM EST

Well, that was fast! Just seven months after welcoming son Brooks, Molly Sims posted a photo of her svelte body in a black-two piece bathing suit while on vacation in Mexico Saturday with her girlfriends.

"Finally bikini ready & pulling out those Sports Illustrated swimsuit poses, just in time for my bestie Lauren's big bday!" she Tweeted.

Although sad about leaving her baby boy at home for the first time, the new mom managed to have a good time celebrating her close pal at the Viceroy Riviera Maya resort.

"Girls weekend, so fun! Love the sun. Love the beach," the model also Tweeted. "Best girlfriends getaway ever! Viva Mexico ... OLE!"

While not in a rush to shed the weight she gained during her pregnancy, Sims did enlist fitness trainer Tracy Anderson to help her get back to her pre-baby shape. But that doesn't mean it was an easy process.

"You have to think about a baby first, and you have to get off all of that fat and weight – and that's a whole thing on its own. It's literally the hardest thing I've ever done," she told PEOPLE recently.

Read More..

Bullying study: It does get better for gay teens

CHICAGO (AP) — It really does get better for gay and bisexual teens when it comes to being bullied, although young gay men have it worse than their lesbian peers, according to the first long-term scientific evidence on how the problem changes over time.

The seven-year study involved more than 4,000 teens in England who were questioned yearly through 2010, until they were 19 and 20 years old. At the start, just over half of the 187 gay, lesbian and bisexual teens said they had been bullied; by 2010 that dropped to 9 percent of gay and bisexual boys and 6 percent of lesbian and bisexual girls.

The researchers said the same results likely would be found in the United States.

In both countries, a "sea change" in cultural acceptance of gays and growing intolerance for bullying occurred during the study years, which partly explains the results, said study co-author Ian Rivers, a psychologist and professor of human development at Brunel University in London.

That includes a government mandate in England that schools work to prevent bullying, and changes in the United States permitting same-sex marriage in several states.

In 2010, syndicated columnist Dan Savage launched the "It Gets Better" video project to encourage bullied gay teens. It was prompted by widely publicized suicides of young gays, and includes videos from politicians and celebrities.

"Bullying tends to decline with age regardless of sexual orientation and gender," and the study confirms that, said co-author Joseph Robinson, a researcher and assistant professor of educational psychology at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. "In absolute terms, this would suggest that yes, it gets better."

The study appears online Monday in the journal Pediatrics.

Eliza Byard, executive director of the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network, said the results mirror surveys by her anti-bullying advocacy group that show bullying is more common in U.S. middle schools than in high schools.

But the researchers said their results show the situation is more nuanced for young gay men.

In the first years of the study, gay boys and girls were almost twice as likely to be bullied as their straight peers. By the last year, bullying dropped overall and was at about the same level for lesbians and straight girls. But the difference between men got worse by ages 19 and 20, with gay young men almost four times more likely than their straight peers to be bullied.

The mixed results for young gay men may reflect the fact that masculine tendencies in girls and women are more culturally acceptable than femininity in boys and men, Robinson said.

Savage, who was not involved in the study, agreed.

"A lot of the disgust that people feel when you bring up homosexuality ... centers around gay male sexuality," Savage said. "There's more of a comfort level" around gay women, he said.

Kendall Johnson, 21, a junior theater major at the University of Illinois, said he was bullied for being gay in high school, mostly when he brought boyfriends to school dances or football games.

"One year at prom, I had a guy tell us that we were disgusting and he didn't want to see us dancing anymore," Johnson said. A football player and the president of the drama club intervened on his behalf, he recalled.

Johnson hasn't been bullied in college, but he said that's partly because he hangs out with the theater crowd and avoids the fraternity scene. Still, he agreed, that it generally gets better for gays as they mature.

"As you grow older, you become more accepting of yourself," Johnson said.

___

Online:

Pediatrics: http://www.pediatrics.org

It Gets Better: http://www.itgetsbetter.org

___

AP Medical Writer Lindsey Tanner can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/LindseyTanner

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Priest molested girl who wore Snow White costume, records show

More disturbing stories of priests' molestations of children -- and questionable actions by church leaders -- emerged in 12,000 pages of once-confidential
personnel files.

The
Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles posted the documents on its website Thursday night, an hour
after a Los Angeles judge ended 5-1/2 years of legal wrangling
over the release of the files with an order compelling the church to
make the documents public within three weeks.

Victims, their lawyers, reporters and other members of the public spent
hours Friday poring through records that stretched back to the 1940s and
provided details about the scope of abuse in church ranks never before
seen.

The archdiocese of Los Angeles learned in the late 1970s that one of
its priests had sexually assaulted a 16-year-old boy so violently that
he was left bleeding and "in a state of shock." The priest said he was
too drunk to remember what happened and officials took no further
action.

But two decades later, word reached Cardinal Roger M. Mahony
that the same priest was molesting again and improperly performing the
sacrament of confession on his victim. The archdiocese sprang to action:
It dispatched investigators, interviewed a raft of witnesses and
discussed the harshest of all church penalties — not for the abuse but for
the violation of church law.

"Given the seriousness of this abuse of the sacrament of penance … it
is your responsibility to formally declare the existence of the
excommunication and then refer the matter to Rome," one cleric told
Mahony in a memo.

Full coverage: Priest Abuse Scandal

The case of Father Jose Ugarte is one of several instances detailed
in newly released records in which archdiocese officials displayed
outrage over a priest's ecclesiastical missteps while doing little for
the victims of his sexual abuse.

The files also suggested that the attempts to protect abusers from
law enforcement extended beyond the L.A. archdiocese to a Catholic order
tasked with rehabilitating abusers.

"Once more, we ask you to PLEASE DESTROY THESE PAGES AND ANY OTHER
MATERIAL YOU HAVE RECEIVED FROM US," the acting director of the order's
treatment program wrote to Mahony in 1988 in a letter detailing
therapists' reports about a prolific molester. "This is stated for your
own and our legal protection."

The order, the Servants of the Paraclete, closed the New Mexico
facility where many Los Angeles priests were sent amid a flood of
lawsuits in the mid-1990s. A lawyer for the order declined to comment,
but indicated in a 2011 civil court filing that all treatment records
were destroyed.

Mahony disregarded the order's advice, and therapy memos are among the most detailed records in the files.

One evaluation recounts how Father Joseph Pina, an East L.A. parish
priest, said he was attracted to a victim, an eighth-grade girl, when he
saw her in a costume.

"She dressed as Snow White … I had a crush on Snow White, so I
started to open myself up to her," he told the psychologist. In a report
sent to a top Mahony aide, the psychologist expressed concern the abuse
was never reported to authorities.

"All so very sad," Mahony wrote years later after Pina was placed on leave. He was defrocked in 2006.

The limitations of the treatment at the Servants' center are evident
in the file. After months of therapy in 1994, Father John Dawson was
allowed to leave the facility for a weekend. Among the first things
Dawson, who had been accused of plying altar boy victims with pot and
beer, did was apply for a job at the Arizona Boys School in Phoenix.

Treatment center staff found out only after the school phoned Dawson to
arrange an interview. "Had they not called the Villa, it is doubtful
that Fr. Dawson would have informed us of that job application and
interview," according to a 1994 letter to Mahony's vicar for clergy,
Msgr. Timothy Dyer.

Responding to a public rebuke by his successor, Mahony
insisted Friday that he tried his best to deal with the priest molestation
scandal but fell short because not enough was known about the problem
early in his career.

In an extraordinary open letter to Archbishop Jose Gomez, Mahony
insisted Friday that he ultimately instituted state-of-the-art
protections against child sexual abuse
within the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles. He seemed to
suggest that Gomez had acted unfairly by publicly announcing that he was
stripping the cardinal of any public role in the local church.

"Not once over these past years
did you ever raise any questions about our policies, practices or
procedures in dealing with the problem of clergy sexual misconduct
involving minors," he wrote.

PHOTOS: Cardinal Roger Mahony over the years

"Unfortunately, I cannot return now to the 1980s and reverse actions and
decisions made then," he added. "But when I retired as the active
archbishop, I handed over to you an archdiocese that was second to none
in protecting children and youth."

Mahony posted the letter on his blog Friday afternoon, hours after he said he had sent it to Gomez.

In a letter Thursday to parishioners, Gomez announced that "effective
immediately, I have informed Cardinal Mahony that he will no longer have
any administrative or public duties." The move came a week after the
release of church records showing Mahony worked to conceal abusers from
police in the 1980s.

-- Harriet Ryan, Victoria Kim, Ashley Powers, Mitchell Landsberg and Teresa Watanabe

Photo: At a news conference Friday at the
Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, Esther Miller, 54, holding photos
of other victims, breaks down while talking about being abused by a
Catholic priest when she was a young girl.
Credit: Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times

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IHT Rendezvous: Doctors to Prescribe Self-Help Books, Poetry for Mental Health Ills

LONDON — Doctors in England will soon be prescribing books as well as pills to patients suffering from anxiety and depression.

In a government-endorsed initiative supported by medical associations and librarians, physicians will be sending patients to their local libraries for a range of approved self-help titles targeted at those suffering from mild to moderate mental health problems.

Patients are also being encouraged to turn to what The Bookseller magazine described as “uplifting novels and poetry.”

Extolling the potentially curative powers of literature, the Reading Agency charity quoted research that showed reading reduced stress levels by 67 percent.

The charity, which is a partner in the new Books on Prescription program announced this week, quoted the New England Journal of Medicine as saying reading also cut the risk of dementia by more than a third.

The list of 30 approved self-help titles available on prescription from May includes page-turners like “The Feeling Good Handbook,” “How to Stop Worrying” and “Overcoming Anger and Irritability.”

“There’s growing evidence that shows that self-help reading can help people with certain mental health issues get better,” Miranda McKearney, the Reading Agency’s director said.

The sick often rely on the Internet to search for advice on symptoms and cures that can turn out to be unreliable. Doctors will now be able to write a prescription that gives patients immediate membership to their local library and access to recommended titles.

It is the first so-called bibliotherapy initiative to have received such high-level official backing from health authorities and librarians.

Campaigners for public libraries have applauded the program but worry that not enough is being done to protect the libraries themselves. Last year, 200 libraries were closed and another 300 are reportedly facing closure or being handed over to volunteers this year.

The Reading Agency meanwhile has come up with a core list of Mood-boosting Books designed to promote feeling good.

It includes proven classics such as “The Secret Garden,” by Frances Hodgson Burnett, but also upbeat titles from the likes of Bill Bryson, the best-selling U.S. humorist.

Development of the book prescription idea was paid for by the Arts Council England, which distributes public money to arts projects.

The Reading Agency has applied for funding from the government, which it says spends £14 billion, or $22 billion, a year treating mental health.

So, should sufferers of depression or panic attacks be advised to curl up with a good book? Or is this just a new health fad to find an alternative to costly medication and therapy.

The Reading Project is soliciting suggestions for stress-relieving books at the Twitter hashtag #moodboosting.

If you think there might be something in it, send us your own suggestions for therapeutic reading. And, while you’re at it, let us know any titles that are best avoided when we’re feeling low.

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Innovative Ways the Autism Community Uses iPads

The iPad has proven to be an especially useful communication tool for young people with autism. It provides a way to express themselves through words and images; it can be used to teach them about everyday scenarios and give them more independence. It’s also far less bulky than some communication devices of the past.

Autism Spectrum Disorders are developmental disabilities that affect about one in every 88 children, and one in 54 boys.

[More from Mashable: 10 Essential Tools for the Lean Web Developer]

Jonathan Izak‘s 12-year-old autistic brother inspired him to develop the AutisMate app for iPad. His brother, Oriel, is mostly nonverbal and used to struggle to communicate, sometimes throwing tantrums when he was unable to get his point across, Izak tells Mashable.

At 7 years old, Oriel had to wear a heavy communication device around his neck, which further set him apart from other children at school. Now, Oriel carries an iPad and uses the app his brother developed to communicate and learn new behaviors like how to act in specific social situations.

[More from Mashable: Tablet Shipments Hit Record Levels While Apple’s Market Share Declines]

With AutisMate, parents or caretakers take and upload photos of their child’s bedroom, the kitchen, his or her school to the app. When the app launches, the iPad’s GPS will know where the user is and allows them to tap pictures of their surrounding environment. The child can tap the refrigerator, for instance, to express that he or she is hungry.

Izak says these visual tools for communication don’t become a permanent crutch but rather promote speech and communication.

It’s not uncommon for children with autism to be nonverbal and need the iPad to communicate. AutismSpeaks.org says it’s estimated that 25% of people with autism are completely nonverbal.

Izak explains that, for someone with autism, the unknowns in life can be scary, so to prepare that person for the world, apps like AutisMate show scenes of how to do everyday things like go to a restaurant or the doctor’s office.

Parents, caretakers and doctors know early intervention with autism is a key factor to increasing their child’s likelihood of communicating, which is probably why most autism apps focus on children. iPad apps to help children with autism develop their communication skills are part of a rapidly growing market and have proved to be effective tools. Check out some of the apps we found and others recommended to us. Let us know if you know of any other useful apps for people with autism.

Click here to view the gallery: Autism Apps

Photo courtesy of iStockphoto, UrsaHoogle

This story originally published on Mashable here.

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