Judge weeps at "Dating Game" serial killer's 'horrific acts'

California serial killer Rodney Alcala was sentenced to additional prison time in New York for the murders of two more women, a case that brought a veteran judge to tears during the hearing.

Alcala, who is already on death row in California for the murders of four women and a girl, pleaded guilty in December to the 1971 murder of Cornelia Crilley and the 1977 murder of Ellen Hover, both in New York. On Monday, New York Supreme Court Judge Bonnie Wittner handed down a sentence of 25 years to life in prison, the Wall Street Journal reported.

"This kind of case is something I've never experienced, hope to never again. I just want to say I hope these families find some peace and solace for these inexplicably brutal and horrific acts," Wittner said, according to the Journal.

PHOTOS: California serial killers

Wittner then dissolved into tears. "As I said, in 30 years I've never had a case like this," she said.

Alcala raped and strangled Crilley, a 23-year-old TWA flight attendant, inside her Upper East Side apartment in 1971. Six years later, he killed Hover, also 23 and living in Manhattan. Her body was found in Westchester County, not far from her family's estate. 

The Journal reported that many in attendance at Monday's sentencing wore stickers bearing the black-and-white photograph that initially appeared in stories about Crilley's death. "Cornelia Always in Our Hearts," the stickers read.

Crilley's sister, Katie Stigell, spoke to the court, using most of her time talking about her sister, who "was in her prime" and "wouldn't hurt anybody." But Stigell also had words for Alcala.

"Mr. Alcala, I want you to know you broke my parents' hearts," Stigell said. "They never really recovered."

Hover's stepsisters declined to appear in court. Instead, prosecutor Alex Spiro read a letter on their behalf, the Journal reported.

"Ellen was a sweet, kind, generous, compassionate, loving and beautiful young woman. She chose to see the good in everyone she met because she had a huge and open heart," the letter read. "Her senseless murder irreparably damaged our family."

Alcala, a self-styled playboy who once appeared on "The Dating Game" TV match-making show, spent much of the 1970s eluding police by changing identities and locales. He has been behind bars since 1979, when he was arrested in the death of 12-year-old Robin Samsoe of Huntington Beach.

Twice he was sent to death row for murder, but both convictions were overturned on appeal. In February 2010, he was convicted again for Samsoe's murder and for the murders of four women in Los Angeles County. He is now awaiting execution.

At a news conference after Monday's hearing, Manhattan Dist. Atty. Cyrus Vance said Alcala would be returned to California, where he is appealing his death-penalty conviction. Should that conviction be overturned, Vance said, Alcala would return to New York for his sentence.

The extent of Alcala's crimes were revealed as a task force formed by the Los Angeles Police Department and other agencies that was examining cold cases tied him to slayings across Southern California. New York police had long considered Alcala a suspect in the slayings of Crilley and Hover and had taken impressions of his teeth in 2003. Alcala had lived in New York periodically between 1968 and 1977. 

During that period, Crilley was found raped and strangled with her nylon stockings in her Manhattan apartment. Around that time, Alcala was working at a summer camp for girls in New Hampshire, authorities said.

Hover went missing in July 1977 and her body was discovered the following year. Before she disappeared, she had written the name "John Berger" in a planner, a name police believe Alcala used as an alias while in New York.

The Southern California killings began just a few months later.

THE ALCALA CASE: A TIMELINE

---

1972 — Alcala is convicted in the 1968 rape and beating of an 8-year-old girl.

Nov. 10, 1977 — The body of 18-year-old Jill Barcomb is found in the Hollywood Hills. She had been sexually assaulted, bludgeoned and strangled with a pair of blue pants.

Dec. 16, 1977 — Georgia Wixted, 27, is found beaten to death at her home in Malibu. She had been sexually assaulted and strangled.

1978 — Alcala appears in an episode of “The Dating Game” as Bachelor No. 1.

June 24, 1978 — Charlotte Lamb, a 32-year-old legal secretary from Santa Monica, is found in the laundry room of an El Segundo apartment complex. She had been sexually assaulted and strangled with a shoelace. 

June 14, 1979 — Jill Parenteau, 21, of Burbank is found strangled on the floor of her Burbank apartment.

June 20, 1979 – Robin Samsoe, 12, disappears near the Huntington Beach Pier. Her body is found 12 days later in the Sierra Madre foothills.

July 24, 1979 — Rodney James Alcala, an unemployed photographer, is arrested at his parents’ Monterey Park home.

September 1980 – Alcala is convicted of the 1978 rape of a 15-year-old Riverside girl and sentenced to nine years in state prison.

June 20, 1980 — Orange County Superior Court Judge Philip E. Schwab sentences Alcala to death after he is convicted of Samsoe's murder.

July 11, 1980 — The Los Angeles County district attorney’s office files murder, burglary and sexual assault charges against Alcala in the slaying of Parenteau.

April 15, 1981 — The L.A. district attorney’s office tells a judge that prosecution of Alcala in the Parenteau case could not proceed because a key witness admitted that he had committed perjury in another case.

Aug. 23, 1984 — The state Supreme Court reversed Alcala’s murder conviction in connection with Samsoe, ruling that the jury was improperly told about Alcala’s prior sex crimes.

June 20, 1986 — For the second time, Alcala is convicted for Samsoe’s murder and sentenced to death in Orange County Superior Court.

Dec. 31, 1992 — The California Supreme Court unanimously upholds Alcala’s death sentence.

April 2, 2001 — A federal appellate court overturns Alcala’s death sentence in the Samsoe case, ruling that the Superior Court judge precluded the defense from presenting evidence “material to significant issues.”

June 5, 2003 — The Los Angeles County district attorney’s office files murder charges against Alcala alleging that he killed Wixted during a burglary and rape.

Sept. 19, 2005 — Additional murder charges are filed against Alcala in connection to the deaths of Barcomb, Wixted and Lamb.

Jan. 11, 2010 — Alcala’s trial for the five murders begins. He represents himself.

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Photo: Convicted serial killer Rodney Alcala appears in a New York courtroom on Monday, where he was sentenced for two murders in the 1970s. Credit: David Handschuh / Associated Press

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Chemical Weapons Showdown With Syria Led to Rare Accord

Muzaffar Salman/Reuters

The violence in Syria continued on Monday. Above, Syrians went to the aid of a man who was wounded when a missile hit the al-Mashhad district of Aleppo.

WASHINGTON — In the last days of November, Israel’s top military commanders called the Pentagon to discuss troubling intelligence that was showing up on satellite imagery: Syrian troops appeared to be mixing chemicals at two storage sites, probably the deadly nerve gas sarin, and filling dozens of 500-pounds bombs that could be loaded on airplanes.

Within hours President Obama was notified, and the alarm grew over the weekend, as the munitions were loaded onto vehicles near Syrian air bases. In briefings, administration officials were told that if Syria’s increasingly desperate president, Bashar al-Assad, ordered the weapons to be used, they could be airborne in less than two hours — too fast for the United States to act, in all likelihood.

What followed next, officials said, was a remarkable show of international cooperation over a civil war in which the United States, Arab states, Russia and China have almost never agreed on a common course of action.

The combination of a public warning by Mr. Obama and more sharply worded private messages sent to the Syrian leader and his military commanders through Russia and others, including Iraq, Turkey and possibly Jordan, stopped the chemical mixing and the bomb preparation. A week later Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said the worst fears were over — for the time being.

But concern remains that Mr. Assad could now use the weapons produced that week at any moment. American and European officials say that while a crisis was averted in that week from late November to early December, they are by no means resting easy.

“I think the Russians understood this is the one thing that could get us to intervene in the war,” one senior defense official said last week. “What Assad understood, and whether that understanding changes if he gets cornered in the next few months, that’s anyone’s guess.”

While chemical weapons are technically considered a “weapon of mass destruction” — along with biological and nuclear weapons — in fact they are hard to use and hard to deliver. Whether an attack is effective can depend on the winds and the terrain. Sometimes attacks are hard to detect, even after the fact. Syrian forces could employ them in a village or a neighborhood, some officials say, and it would take time for the outside world to know.

But the scare a month ago has renewed debate about whether the West should help the Syrian opposition destroy Mr. Assad’s air force, which he would need to deliver those 500-pound bombs.

The chemical munitions are still in storage areas that are near or on Syrian air bases, ready for deployment on short notice, officials said.

The Obama administration and other governments have said little in public about the chemical weapons movements, in part because of concern about compromising sources of intelligence about the activities of Mr. Assad’s forces. This account is based on interviews with more than half a dozen military, intelligence and diplomatic officials, all of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the intelligence matters involved.

The head of Germany’s foreign intelligence service, the BND, warned in a confidential assessment last month that the weapons could now be deployed four to six hours after orders were issued, and that Mr. Assad had a special adviser at his side who oversaw control of the weapons, the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel reported. Some American and other allied officials, however, said in interviews that the sarin-laden bombs could be loaded on planes and airborne in less than two hours.

“Let’s just say right now, it would be a relatively easy thing to load this quickly onto aircraft,” said one Western diplomat.

How the United States and Israel, along with Arab states, would respond remains a mystery. American and allied officials have talked vaguely of having developed “contingency plans” in case they decided to intervene in an effort to neutralize the chemical weapons, a task that the Pentagon estimates would require upward of 75,000 troops. But there have been no evident signs of preparations for any such effort.

The United States military has quietly sent a task force of more than 150 planners and other specialists to Jordan to help the armed forces there, among other things, prepare for the possibility that Syria will lose control of its chemical weapons.

Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was reported to have traveled to Jordan in recent weeks, and the Israeli news media have said the topic of discussion was how to deal with Syrian weapons if it appeared that they could be transferred to Lebanon, where Hezbollah could lob them over the border to Israel. But the plans, to the extent they exist, remain secret.

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Target to match some rivals’ online prices year-round

(Reuters) – Target Corp said on Tuesday it will match on a year-round basis the prices found on the websites of key rivals Amazon.com Inc, Best Buy Co Inc, Wal-Mart Stores Inc and Toys R Us, its latest tactic to hold onto shoppers focused on price.

The move extends an online price-matching program that Target introduced over the holiday season and which was supposed to last only from November 1 to December 16. It also comes after Target last week reported flat sales growth in December at stores open at least a year.

In November Chief Executive Gregg Steinhafel said the retailer was not seeing a lot of price-match activity in its stores.

While shopping online has grown rapidly in recent years, it still represents a small fraction of overall shopping in the United States. Target’s policy of matching online prices differs from policies at several chains, which match only printed advertised prices for items sold at stores.

Target said that throughout the year it will match the price when a customer buys an eligible item at one of its stores and finds the same item at a lower price in the following week’s Target circular or in a local competitor’s printed ad. It will also match the price if the customer finds the same item at a lower price within a week on Target’s website or the websites of Amazon, Walmart, Best Buy and Toys R Us.

Amazon says it offers competitive prices and does not offer price matching when an item’s price drops after a customer buys it, with the exception of televisions. Walmart matches the prices of print ads from competitors. Walmart also says it checks the prices of 30,000 items at competing chains each week to make sure it has the lowest prices.

Best Buy matches the price from a local competitor’s store, a local Best Buy store or its own web site. Toys R Us matches in-store prices and certain online prices.

(Reporting By Jessica Wohl in Chicago and Phil Wahba in New York; Editing by Alden Bentley and John Wallace)

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Alison Sweeney Blogs: 'Oh, Dreaded Week Two' on The Biggest Loser

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By Alison Sweeney

01/08/2013 at 12:00 PM EST

Oh, dreaded week two! Emotions run high and numbers are typically low at the second weigh-in on The Biggest Loser. Never ones to keep things the same from season to season, it seemed like the prefect time to introduce the outdoor gyms created by each of the trainers.

Dolvett's dungeon pushed his team, but nothing compared to Jillian's gym ... or to Jillian's frustration with her team. As I watched the workout, I felt for Danni and Pam. Jillian's tenacity and relentlessness was hard to watch. I thought their conversation the next day was really important – and not just for each of them as individuals but for the audience, as well, to help us understand why Jillian fights so hard for, and how to not give up when the going gets tough.

I personally also love NFL week because of the incredible athletes that motivate our contestants. This season, eight-time NFL Pro Bowler Antonio Gates didn't disappoint. The best part of the challenge was the kids being reunited with their teams and how encouraging everyone was with each other. I loved every aspect of the challenge – I thought it did equalize everything, giving each team a chance at the prize. And yet the white team has now won back-to-back challenges!

It was so fun to see Bob teasing Gina. "This is not the Biggest Loser Resort & Spa!" he told her. He cracks me up! And WOW, what a change from Jillian in the last chance work out with Pam! I was so impressed! She had the conversation with them, followed through on her end of the bargain, and so did Pam. When Jill told me about it at the weigh-in I was shocked, but to watch it in the context of the show ... I was moved.

Those kid statistics in the Biggest Loser Fitness test are so important. As Dolvett said, "We are responsible. We have to do something." It's such a great idea to get kids motivated and taking those first steps. Remember that test – it definitely comes back into play later in the season!

The hardest part for all of us was in losing Nate. He and TC were both such strong influences in the house and worked so hard. They deserved every second on the Ranch and so much more time. But the changes Jillian made with them in a short time will hopefully last a long and healthy lifetime.

Favorite moment of the week: when Jillian was confronting Pam and she accidentally (Freudian slip?) said "bear claw" instead of "bear CRAWL." I loved the way it broke the tension, the way they both took a moment and laughed about it. I would never admit to Jill I know the name of any donut. Lol! It was a great moment.

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Report: Death rates from cancer still inching down

WASHINGTON (AP) — Death rates from cancer are continuing to inch down, researchers reported Monday.

Now the question is how to hold onto those gains, and do even better, even as the population gets older and fatter, both risks for developing cancer.

"There has been clear progress," said Dr. Otis Brawley of the American Cancer Society, which compiled the annual cancer report with government and cancer advocacy groups.

But bad diets, lack of physical activity and obesity together wield "incredible forces against this decline in mortality," Brawley said. He warned that over the next decade, that trio could surpass tobacco as the leading cause of cancer in the U.S.

Overall, deaths from cancer began slowly dropping in the 1990s, and Monday's report shows the trend holding. Among men, cancer death rates dropped by 1.8 percent a year between 2000 and 2009, and by 1.4 percent a year among women. The drops are thanks mostly to gains against some of the leading types — lung, colorectal, breast and prostate cancers — because of treatment advances and better screening.

The news isn't all good. Deaths still are rising for certain cancer types including liver, pancreatic and, among men, melanoma, the most serious kind of skin cancer.

Preventing cancer is better than treating it, but when it comes to new cases of cancer, the picture is more complicated.

Cancer incidence is dropping slightly among men, by just over half a percent a year, said the report published by the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Prostate, lung and colorectal cancers all saw declines.

But for women, earlier drops have leveled off, the report found. That may be due in part to breast cancer. There were decreases in new breast cancer cases about a decade ago, as many women quit using hormone therapy after menopause. Since then, overall breast cancer incidence has plateaued, and rates have increased among black women.

Another problem area: Oral and anal cancers caused by HPV, the sexually transmitted human papillomavirus, are on the rise among both genders. HPV is better known for causing cervical cancer, and a protective vaccine is available. Government figures show just 32 percent of teen girls have received all three doses, fewer than in Canada, Britain and Australia. The vaccine was recommended for U.S. boys about a year ago.

Among children, overall cancer death rates are dropping by 1.8 percent a year, but incidence is continuing to increase by just over half a percent a year. Brawley said it's not clear why.

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Serial killer stalked, killed 3 young mothers at bars, LAPD says

Authorities on Monday announced the arrest of a 72-year-old man who they allege is a serial killer responsible for the slayings of at least three women in Los Angeles in the 1980s.

Officials would not elaborate on the backgrounds of the
victims but said all three had children.

Los Angeles Police Department detectives allege that Samuel Little preyed on women in downtown and Central L.A., meeting some at bars before strangling them and dumping their bodies.

Police identified the victims as Carol Alford, 41, found dead on July
13, 1987; Audrey Nelson, 35, whose body was discovered Aug. 14, 1989;
and Guadalupe Apodaca, 46, found Sept. 2, 1989. Their bodies were
discovered in the Central Avenue-Alameda Street corridor, just south of
downtown.

Police allege that Little met women while cruising in his car or in bars.

If the allegations are true, it would mark the discovery of yet another serial killer operating in L.A. during the 1980s. Two years ago, the LAPD arrested a man they said was the notorious “Grim Sleeper,” allegedly responsible for at least 10 slayings in South L.A.

Little has been extradited to California from Kentucky, where he was taken into custody by the U.S. Marshals Service in early September on an unrelated criminal warrant, LAPD officials said. He was charged Monday by the L.A. County district attorney's office with three murder counts and special circumstances for multiple murder.

LAPD detectives Mitzi Roberts and Rick Jackson, who investigated the case, said there is DNA evidence linking Little to the Los Angeles slayings but would not elaborate, citing the ongoing investigation. Roberts and Jackson spent months crisscrossing the country following Little’s path.

Sources said they interviewed four women who said they survived attacks by Little and that they might testify in court.

Little has a long criminal record, dating to the 1950s. Detectives said they believe he committed thefts during the day to make money to finance his bar-hopping.

“It was theft by day and murder by night,” Jackson said.

Little, who also went under the name Samuel McDowell, committed crimes in 24 states but served relatively little time in state prison or county jail, the detectives said. In the early 1980s, he was accused of a two murders and two attempted murders in the Gainesville, Fla., and Pascagoula, Miss., areas.

Little was acquitted by a Florida jury in the strangulation death of Patricia Ann Mount, 26, whose body was discovered Sept. 12, 1982.

He was never brought to trial in the Mississippi cases, which include the strangulation death of Melinda LaPree, 24, on Sept., 14 1982. That case has been reopened by the Pascagoula Police Department in light of new evidence, authorities said.

Little moved from the South to California in the mid-1980s, moving first to San Diego.

He served more than two years in state prison after being convicted of assault and false imprisonment of two San Diego women in separate cases, police said. Shortly after being paroled, he moved to Los Angeles.

Little was being held in Wasco State Prison after being extradited and could not be reached for comment.

The LAPD is now working with other jurisdictions to determine whether Little might be a suspect in additional killings.

“If any law enforcement agencies have similar killings that occurred between 1960 and the present, they should contact LAPD cold case detectives,” Roberts said.

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Photo: Samuel Little. Credit: Los Angeles Police Department

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With Eye on China, Japan Weighs Raising Military Spending

TOKYO — Japan’s new conservative government announced a review of national military strategy on Monday that analysts said was aimed at offsetting China’s growing military power and that may increase defense spending for the first time in a decade.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe ordered his government to replace the nation’s five-year military spending plan and to review defense guidelines adopted in 2010 by the left-leaning Democratic Party, which his party defeated in elections last month. Those guidelines called for gradual reductions in defense spending, and also in the size of Japan’s military, particularly in the number of tanks and infantry members.

Mr. Abe had promised during the election campaign to strengthen the military to defend Japan’s control of islands in the East China Sea that are also claimed by China.

Mr. Abe did not release details of his intent on the military revisions, but news reports said the replacement plan would probably reverse the Democrats’ cuts, starting with a 120 billion yen, or $1.4 billion, increase in the military budget in the 2013 fiscal year, which begins in April. That would be the first increase in Japanese military spending since 2002, as the nation has tightened its belt during a long economic decline.

The reports said the new spending plan, proposed by members of Mr. Abe’s governing Liberal Democratic Party, would seek to increase the number of ground troops, strengthen air and sea defenses around the disputed islands, and buy new early-warning aircraft to guard against Chinese intrusions near the islands, as well as missile launchings by North Korea.

The reports said the plan could also include financing for a feasibility study on acquiring Osprey aircraft, American vertical-takeoff transport planes whose introduction last year to a Marine airfield on Okinawa set off protests. The Osprey can fly farther and faster than Japan’s current helicopters, allowing its troops to more easily reach the disputed islands, known as the Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China.

Despite a decade of defense cuts, analysts said Japan last year had the world’s sixth-largest military budget, spending 4.65 trillion yen, or $5.3 billion, on defense. Japan has one of the largest and most advanced militaries in Asia, though it has kept a low profile to avoid stirring bitter memories of its early-20th-century empire building.

Mr. Abe’s efforts to raise Japan’s military profile in the region are intended not only to bolster his nation’s declining influence, but also to help an economically ailing ally, the United States, counter China’s rising military prowess.

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Kuwait sentences second man to jail for insulting emir: lawyer

DUBAI (Reuters) – A Kuwaiti court sentenced a man to two years in prison on Monday for insulting the country’s ruler on Twitter, his lawyer said, the second to be jailed for the offence in as many days.

The U.S.-allied Gulf Arab state has clamped down in recent months on political activists who have been using social media websites to criticize the government and the ruling family.

Kuwait has seen a series of protests, including one on Sunday night, organized by the opposition since the ruling emir, Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah, used emergency powers in October to change the voting system.

The court sentenced Ayyad al-Harbi, who has more than 13,000 followers on Twitter, to the prison term two months after his arrest and release on bail.

Harbi used his Twitter account to criticize the Kuwait government and the emir. He tweeted on Sunday: “Tomorrow morning is my trial’s verdict on charges of slander against the emir, spreading of false news.”

His lawyer, Mohammed al-Humidi, said Harbi would appeal against the verdict. “We’ve been taken by surprise because Kuwait has always been known internationally and in the Arab world as a democracy-loving country,” Humidi told Reuters by telephone. “People are used to democracy, but suddenly we see the constitution being undermined.”

On Sunday, Rashid Saleh al-Anzi was given two years in prison over a tweet that “stabbed the rights and powers of the emir”, according to the online newspaper Alaan. Anzi, who has 5,700 Twitter followers, was expected to appeal.

Kuwait, a U.S. ally and major oil producer, has been taking a firmer line on politically sensitive comments aired on the Internet.

In June 2012, a man was sentenced to 10 years in prison after he was convicted of endangering state security by insulting the Prophet Mohammad and the Sunni Muslim rulers of Saudi Arabia and Bahrain on social media.

Two months later, authorities detained Sheikh Meshaal al-Malik Al-Sabah, a member of the ruling family, over remarks on Twitter in which he accused authorities of corruption and called for political reform, a rights activist said.

Public demonstrations about local issues are common in a state that allows the most dissent in the Gulf, and Kuwait has avoided Arab Spring-style mass unrest that has ousted four veteran Arab dictators in the past two years.

But tensions have risen between Kuwait’s hand-picked government, in which ruling family members hold the top posts, and the elected parliament and opposition groups.

(Reporting by Mahmoud Habboush; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

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Kate Falls Under Vogue's Microscope

By Stephen M. Silverman

01/07/2013 at 12:45 PM EST

Duchess of Cambridge

Fame; Landov (2); WireImage

What's a little more scrutiny?

Arguably the most-watched fashion icon – certainly the most closely followed expectant mother – in the world, the Duchess of Cambridge has been placed under the microscope of U.K. Vogue for its February issue.

Before determining the key to her "feminine and traditional" style (at least, before her baby bump), the publication first categorizes Kate's look as "International Sleekness."

Just how close is the mag's inspection? Close enough to note exactly how often and the manner in which Kate, who turns 31 Jan. 9, holds her clutch bags: hands together, 48% of the time; one-handed, 31%.

As for when the Kate phenomenon actually started, the article's author, Lisa Armstrong, fashion editor of the Daily Telegraph, turns to Reiss's brand director, Andy Rogers. He pinpoints the moment to "when Kate wore that nude-pink Shola dress to meet the Obamas at Buckingham Palace in May 2011."

Comparing the two women's styles, Rogers says, "Michelle wore a beautiful blue silk dress and fuchsia jacket, very bold, and probably bang-on trend – but whoa, it clashed with the [gaudy] decor." As a result, "Kate," he insists, "dominates the picture."

She also helped put the fashion brand on the map. "In the past 18 months, thanks to the Kate Effect, Reiss's reputation has grown globally," Armstrong writes. "Before Kate, Reiss had eight stores in America. Now it has 14 more concessions, all in Bloomingdale's."

By Vogue's calculation, Kate also helped boost sales of hosiery at the British supermarket chain Asda by a staggering 500%.

Apparently, too, Kate is strictly hands-on when it comes to her appearance. "She's got someone who organizes appointments with designers," a fashion-industry fixer tells Vogue. "Obviously there are ladies-in-waiting who do the packing. But she had to work out her look herself."

Other vitals: the royal ringlets measure nearly one inch; she works out "all the time, apparently"; necklines are "usually curved"; she wears blue 24% of the time and cream or yellow only 5%; she positions her hats "to the right of the royal 'do at a 50-degree angle, thus emphasizing her cheekbones"; and she prefers three-quarter-length sleeves, the better to reveal her wrist bling and confirm the fact that her arms are not too thin.

So, what's ahead? "Diverting looks," writes Armstrong, "and a fair few raised waists that accommodate, rather than flaunt, the royal belly." But wait, there's more: "And even more luxuriant hair."

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Your medical chart could include exercise minutes

CHICAGO (AP) — Roll up a sleeve for the blood pressure cuff. Stick out a wrist for the pulse-taking. Lift your tongue for the thermometer. Report how many minutes you are active or getting exercise.

Wait, what?

If the last item isn't part of the usual drill at your doctor's office, a movement is afoot to change that. One recent national survey indicated only a third of Americans said their doctors asked about or prescribed physical activity.

Kaiser Permanente, one of the nation's largest nonprofit health insurance plans, made a big push a few years ago to get its southern California doctors to ask patients about exercise. Since then, Kaiser has expanded the program across California and to several other states. Now almost 9 million patients are asked at every visit, and some other medical systems are doing it, too.

Here's how it works: During any routine check of vital signs, a nurse or medical assistant asks how many days a week the patient exercises and for how long. The number of minutes per week is posted along with other vitals at the top the medical chart. So it's among the first things the doctor sees.

"All we ask our physicians to do is to make a comment on it, like, 'Hey, good job,' or 'I noticed today that your blood pressure is too high and you're not doing any exercise. There's a connection there. We really need to start you walking 30 minutes a day,'" said Dr. Robert Sallis, a Kaiser family doctor. He hatched the vital sign idea as part of a larger initiative by doctors groups.

He said Kaiser doctors generally prescribe exercise first, instead of medication, and for many patients who follow through that's often all it takes.

It's a challenge to make progress. A study looking at the first year of Kaiser's effort showed more than a third of patients said they never exercise.

Sallis said some patients may not be aware that research shows physical inactivity is riskier than high blood pressure, obesity and other health risks people know they should avoid. As recently as November a government-led study concluded that people who routinely exercise live longer than others, even if they're overweight.

Zendi Solano, who works for Kaiser as a research assistant in Pasadena, Calif., says she always knew exercise was a good thing. But until about a year ago, when her Kaiser doctor started routinely measuring it, she "really didn't take it seriously."

She was obese, and in a family of diabetics, had elevated blood sugar. She sometimes did push-ups and other strength training but not anything very sustained or strenuous.

Solano, 34, decided to take up running and after a couple of months she was doing three miles. Then she began training for a half marathon — and ran that 13-mile race in May in less than three hours. She formed a running club with co-workers and now runs several miles a week. She also started eating smaller portions and buying more fruits and vegetables.

She is still overweight but has lost 30 pounds and her blood sugar is normal.

Her doctor praised the improvement at her last physical in June and Solano says the routine exercise checks are "a great reminder."

Kaiser began the program about three years ago after 2008 government guidelines recommended at least 2 1/2 hours of moderately vigorous exercise each week. That includes brisk walking, cycling, lawn-mowing — anything that gets you breathing a little harder than normal for at least 10 minutes at a time.

A recently published study of nearly 2 million people in Kaiser's southern California network found that less than a third met physical activity guidelines during the program's first year ending in March 2011. That's worse than results from national studies. But promoters of the vital signs effort think Kaiser's numbers are more realistic because people are more likely to tell their own doctors the truth.

Dr. Elizabeth Joy of Salt Lake City has created a nearly identical program and she expects 300 physicians in her Intermountain Healthcare network to be involved early this year.

"There are some real opportunities there to kind of shift patients' expectations about the value of physical activity on health," Joy said.

NorthShore University HealthSystem in Chicago's northern suburbs plans to start an exercise vital sign program this month, eventually involving about 200 primary care doctors.

Dr. Carrie Jaworski, a NorthShore family and sports medicine specialist, already asks patients about exercise. She said some of her diabetic patients have been able to cut back on their medicines after getting active.

Dr. William Dietz, an obesity expert who retired last year from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said measuring a patient's exercise regardless of method is essential, but that "naming it as a vital sign kind of elevates it."

Figuring out how to get people to be more active is the important next step, he said, and could have a big effect in reducing medical costs.

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Online:

Exercise: http://1.usa.gov/b6AkMa

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

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