From country music success to a battle with addictions and a penchant for self-harm, retrace how the singer's life has unraveled
Credit: Fred Prouser/Reuters/Landov
Updated: Wednesday Jan 16, 2013 | 06:00 PM EST
By: Mike Fleeman
NEW YORK (AP) — A new study shows New York City is doing better than Los Angeles in the battle against childhood obesity, at least for low-income children.
From 2003 to 2011, obesity rates for poor children dropped in New York to around 16 percent. But they rose in Los Angeles and ended at about 20 percent.
The researchers focused on children ages 3 and 4 enrolled in a government program that provides food and other services to women and their young children.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released the study Thursday.
The authors noted that the Los Angeles program has many more Mexican-American kids. Obesity is more common in Mexican-American boys than in white or black kids.
Prosecutors said one of the five people charged in connection with the
take-over robbery at a Nordstrom Rack department store in Westchester raped one of the female hostages.
Prosecutors offered no details. But a district attorney's office spokeswoman said the victim was sexually assaulted "multiple times."
Raymond Sherman Jr., 34, who authorities said was the most violent in the group, was charged with two counts
of forcible rape, one count of
oral copulation, one count of kidnapping for rape, one count of assault
with a
deadly weapon and 14 counts of second-degree robbery.
DOCUMENT: Read the criminal complaint
Troy Marsay Hammock, 29, and Everett Oneal Allen, 24, face 14 counts
each of second-degree robbery and one count each of assault with a
deadly weapon, identified as a knife, according to the Los Angeles
County district attorney's office.
Rochelle Monique Sherman, 33; and Paula Roneshia Bradley, 29, were charged with one count each of accessory after the fact.
The complaint also alleges Sherman, who is awaiting extradition from Phoenix, where he was
arrested Saturday, used a handgun in the commission of the crimes.
Police have not detailed the roles of the suspects in the
robbery and hostage situation. But those in law enforcement familiar with
the investigation said there is strong evidence linking the crimes to those charged, including physical evidence and security video.
The incident began about 11 p.m. Thursday at the Promenade at Howard
Hughes Center, near the 405 Freeway. Sherman, Hammock and Allen
allegedly confronted the employees as they were leaving the store, which
had just closed.
As the incident was unfolding, one of the employees called her
husband and told him to call 911. The LAPD called a tactical alert and
closed off the area around the shopping center. When the police
department's SWAT officers arrived, they surrounded the store.
At one point, one of the suspected burglars exited, saw the police and ran back inside. A
second suspected burglar walked out with an unidentified woman, saw police and
also headed back inside. The officers entered the store at 3:30 a.m. and
freed the captives.
At least three of the employees were injured, including at least one
woman who was sexually assaulted. Another woman was stabbed in the neck
and sustained non-life-threatening injuries, and a third employee was
pistol-whipped, police said. LAPD Chief Charlie Beck praised the
employees for their bravery and composure.
Beck would not discuss whether the robbers hid in the store or gained
entrance after it closed. Nor would he say how long they remained in the
store before fleeing in a white SUV, or discuss how much cash was taken
in the robbery.
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--Andrew Blankstein
Photo: Police officers stand outside Nordstrom Rack in Westchester following take-over style robbery. Credit: Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times
Eric Feferberg/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
French soldiers rode in armored vehicles as they left Bamako and started their deployment to the north of Mali on Wednesday.
BAMAKO, Mali — French soldiers battled armed Islamist occupiers of a desert village in central Mali on Wednesday, a Malian army colonel said, in the first direct ground combat involving Western troops since France launched its military operation here last week to help wrest this nation back from an Islamist advance.
The Malian colonel said his army’s ground troops had joined the French forces and ringed the village of Diabaly, which Islamist fighters had seized the day before. Now, he said, they were engaged in fighting to extricate the militants, who had taken over homes and ensconced themselves.
“It’s a very specialized kind of war,” said the colonel, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “The town is surrounded.”
The ground fighting expanded the confrontation between the Islamists and the French forces, who had previously conducted aerial assaults after President François Hollande of France ordered an intervention in Mali last Friday to thwart a broader push by Islamist rebels controlling the north of the country.
The battle in Diabaly came as news reports from the region said that Islamist militants affiliated with Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb had seized a foreign-run gas field near the Algeria-Libya border, hundreds of miles away, and had seized foreign hostages, including Americans, in retaliation for the French intervention in Mali and for Algeria’s cooperation in that effort. The Algerian state-run news agency quoted regional government officials as say ingthat about 20 foreigners had been seized, including American, British, French, Norwegian and Japanese citizens. It also said that two people had been killed, at least one of them British.
The number of hostages and their nationalities could not be confirmed independently. Japanese officials acknowledged that Japanese citizens were involved in the hostage situation, and the Irish foreign ministry said one Irish citizen had been kidnapped. The British foreign office also said in a statement that “British nationals are caught up in this incident,” which it described as “ongoing.”
The developments underscored an earlier acknowledgment from the French defense minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, that the military campaign to turn back the Islamists and drive them from their redoubts in northern Malian desert would be a protracted one.
“The combat continues and it will be long, I imagine,” he said Wednesday on RTL radio. “Today the ground forces are in the process of deploying,” he said. “Now the French forces are reaching the north.”
Adm. Edouard Guillaud, the French chief of staff, told Europe 1 television that ground operations began overnight.
He accused jihadists of using civilians as human shields and said, “We refuse to put the population at risk. If there is doubt, we will not fire.”
In Paris, Mr. Hollande said Wednesday that he took the decision to intervene last Friday because it was necessary. If he had not done so, it would have been too late. “Mali would have been entirely conquered and the terrorists would today be in a position of strength."
On Tuesday, witnesses in Mali reported, the insurgents had regrouped after French airstrikes and embedded themselves among the population of Diabaly, hiding in the mud and brick houses in the battle zone and thwarting attacks by French warplanes to dislodge them.
“They are in the town, almost everywhere in the town,” said Bekaye Diarra, who owns a pharmacy in Diabaly, which remained under the control of insurgents. “They are installing themselves.”
Benco Ba, a parliamentary deputy there, said residents were fearful of the conflict that had descended on them. “The jihadists are going right into people’s families,” he said. “They have completely occupied the town. They are dispersed. It’s fear, ” he said, as it became
clear that airstrikes alone will probably not be enough to root out these battle-hardened insurgents, who know well the harsh grassland and desert terrain of Mali.
Both GameStick and NVIDIA’s Project Shield are upcoming game consoles the size of a game controller, which can hook up to a larger display. Both are powered by Android, Google‘s open-source operating system that’s normally used on smartphones and tablets. And both have working hardware prototypes already. But one is a $ 99 Kickstarter project by an indie group, while the other has the backing of two major companies in the PC gaming world — and will probably be a lot more expensive when it comes out.
Here’s a look at two upcoming TV game consoles that you’ll be able to fit in your pocket or handbag.
GameStick: Exactly what it sounds like
Imagine a tiny, rectangular game controller, sort of like a Wii Remote with more buttons and twin analog sticks. On one side is a plastic bump, that when you pull it off it becomes this gadget the size of a USB memory stick that plugs into a TV’s HDMI port. That’s GameStick, and with 19 days left to go in its Kickstarter fund-raiser it’s managed to raise more than three times the $ 100,000 its creators asked for.
GameStick will have 8 GB of flash memory, and a processor capable of handling modern AAA Android games like Shadowgun, plus 1080p video. If you don’t like the controller it comes with, you’ll be able to connect up to four of your own via Bluetooth, or even use your Android or iOS smartphone or tablet as a controller.
Project SHIELD: A controller that can stop bullets
Maybe it can’t literally serve as a shield. But at about the size of the original Xbox’s controller, the “portable” console NVIDIA showed off at this year’s CES sure looks like it can. It’s powered by a next-generation Tegra 4 processor, and features its own built-in 5-inch multitouch screen for gaming on the go. But it can also connect to a TV, and can even stream PC games via Steam’s Big Picture mode, which was designed for controller games.
A not-so-silver lining?
GameStick’s biggest weakness may be its developer support. Its Kickstarter page mentions the hundreds of thousands of Android games out there, but most of those are only on Google Play, which (unlike most of the rest of Android) is proprietary to Google. Time will tell whether its creators can get enough developers to write games for the platform by the time of its planned April launch, or enough gamers to buy games they might already have on their tablets.
In contrast, between full support for the Google Play store and PC game streaming from Steam, Project SHIELD will have thousands and thousands of games, and there will be no need to repurchase titles you’ve already bought from either store. There’s no word from NVIDIA yet, though, on how much its game console will cost or even when it will launch.
Jared Spurbeck is an open-source software enthusiast, who uses an Android phone and an Ubuntu laptop PC. He has been writing about technology and electronics since 2008.
Linux/Open Source News Headlines – Yahoo! News
Channing and Jenna Dewan-Tatum with dogs Lulu and Meeka
All Access Photo/Splash News Online
The American Horror Story actress, who has stayed active while expecting, was joined by husband Channing on Tuesday for a trek through L.A.'s Runyon Canyon with the couple's two dogs, Lulu and Meeka.
"They are my kids," Dewan-Tatum told PEOPLE in October of the pair's furbabies. "I always joke around, 'If I can love my actual kids as much as my dogs, we're golden.'"
Meanwhile, the Magic Mike star has expressed his excitement over expanding the couple's human family.
"The first number that pops into my head is three," Tatum said about the number of children he'd like, "but I just want one to be healthy and then we’ll see where we go after that."
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A new government survey suggests the number of people seeking emergency treatment after consuming energy drinks has doubled nationwide during the past four years, the same period in which the supercharged drink industry has surged in popularity in convenience stores, bars and on college campuses.
From 2007 to 2011, the government estimates the number of emergency room visits involving the neon-labeled beverages shot up from about 10,000 to more than 20,000. Most of those cases involved teens or young adults, according to a survey of the nation's hospitals released late last week by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.
The report doesn't specify which symptoms brought people to the emergency room but calls energy drink consumption a "rising public health problem" that can cause insomnia, nervousness, headache, fast heartbeat and seizures that are severe enough to require emergency care.
Several emergency physicians said they had seen a clear uptick in the number of patients suffering from irregular heartbeats, anxiety and heart attacks who said they had recently downed an energy drink.
More than half of the patients considered in the survey who wound up in the emergency room told doctors they had downed only energy drinks. In 2011, about 42 percent of the cases involved energy drinks in combination with alcohol or drugs, such as the stimulants Adderall or Ritalin.
"A lot of people don't realize the strength of these things. I had someone come in recently who had drunk three energy drinks in an hour, which is the equivalent of 15 cups of coffee," said Howard Mell, an emergency physician in the suburbs of Cleveland, who serves as a spokesman for the American College of Emergency Physicians. "Essentially he gave himself a stress test and thankfully he passed. But if he had a weak heart or suffered from coronary disease and didn't know it, this could have precipitated very bad things."
The findings came as concerns over energy drinks have intensified following reports last fall of 18 deaths possibly tied to the drinks — including a 14-year-old Maryland girl who died after drinking two large cans of Monster Energy drinks. Monster does not believe its products were responsible for the death.
Two senators are calling for the Food and Drug Administration to investigate safety concerns about energy drinks and their ingredients.
The energy drink industry says its drinks are safe and there is no proof linking its products to the adverse reactions.
Late last year, the FDA asked the U.S. Health and Human Services to update the figures its substance abuse research arm compiles about emergency room visits tied to energy drinks.
The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration's survey was based on responses it receives from about 230 hospitals each year, a representative sample of about 5 percent of emergency departments nationwide. The agency then uses those responses to estimate the number of energy drink-related emergency department visits nationwide.
The more than 20,000 cases estimated for 2011 represent a small portion of the annual 136 million emergency room visits tracked by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The FDA said it was considering the findings and pressing for more details as it undertakes a broad review of the safety of energy drinks and related ingredients this spring.
"We will examine this additional information ... as a part of our ongoing investigation into potential safety issues surrounding the use of energy-drink products," FDA spokeswoman Shelly Burgess said in a statement.
Beverage manufacturers fired back at the survey, saying the statistics were misleading and taken out of context.
"This report does not share information about the overall health of those who may have consumed energy drinks, or what symptoms brought them to the ER in the first place," the American Beverage Association said in a statement. "There is no basis by which to understand the overall caffeine intake of any of these individuals — from all sources."
Energy drinks remain a small part of the carbonated soft drinks market, representing only 3.3 percent of sales volume, according to the industry tracker Beverage Digest. Even as soda consumption has flagged in recent years, energy drinks sales are growing rapidly.
In 2011, sales volume for energy drinks rose by almost 17 percent, with the top three companies — Monster, Red Bull and Rockstar — each logging double-digit gains, Beverage Digest found. The drinks are often marketed at sporting events that are popular among younger people such as surfing and skateboarding.
From 2007 to 2011, the most recent year for which data was available, people from 18 to 25 were the most common age group seeking emergency treatment for energy drink-related reactions, the report found.
"We were really concerned to find that in four years the number of emergency department visits almost doubled, and these drinks are largely marketed to younger people," said Al Woodward, a senior statistical analyst with the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration who worked on the report.
Emergency physician Steve Sun said he had seen an increase in such cases at the Catholic hospital where he works on the edge of San Francisco's Golden Gate Park.
"I saw one young man who had mixed energy drinks with alcohol and we had to admit him to the hospital because he was so dehydrated he had renal failure," Sun said. "Because he was young he did well in the hospital, but if another patient had had underlying coronary artery disease, it could have led to a heart attack."
___
Follow Garance Burke on Twitter at http://twitter.com/garanceburke
Los Angeles City Councilman Paul Krekorian wants the city to explore the feasibility of banning the possession of high-capacity gun magazines, the first step toward instituting stricter city gun and ammunition laws.
Although the California penal code now prohibits the manufacture and sale of magazines that hold more than 10 bullets, Krekorian said in a council motion Tuesday that a ban on the possession of the magazines within city limits could further improve public safety.
"The element missing from the state prohibition on high-capacity magazines is possession," Krekorian said in an interview with The Times
FOR THE RECORD:
High-capacity gun magazines: An earlier online version of this article, and its headline, incorrectly stated that Councilman Paul Krekorian has asked the city to consider banning ammunition for high-capacity gun magazines. Krekorian has requested that the city research a ban on the high-capacity magazines themselves, not their ammunition.
Although gun rights advocates frequently describe high-capacity magazine bans as "feel-good" steps, Krekorian said prohibiting their possession would give police a way to stop potential mass shooters before a tragedy can take place.
"I'm not interested in doing something that will have no effect," Krekorian said. "I'm interested in doing something that will prevent the kinds of slaughters we experience too often -- whether it's school shootings, shootouts with the police or drive-bys by gangbangers."
Krekorian's motion cited the 1997 North Hollywood shootout -- during which two bank robbers fired thousands of automatic weapon rounds at responding officers -- as well as the recent Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings in Newtown, Conn.
The motion asks that the Los Angeles Police Department, the city attorney and the city legislative analyst look into the feasibility, effectiveness and benefits of such a ban.
It marks the first formal request by a council member to look into a potential ban, according to Krekorian's spokesperson.
Second Amendment advocates have widely decried city, state and federal high-capacity magazine bans. Representatives from both the Gun Owners of America and National Rifle Assn. have previously said the bans restrict the ability of law-abiding gun owners from defending themselves.
"If the city of Los Angeles is looking to find new ways to waste taxpayer money, a proposal along the lines of banning the possession of instruments currently legal to own would certainly be one way to do it," said Brandon Combs, executive director of Calguns Foundation, a California-based 2nd Amendment advocacy group.
Although Combs said it's reasonable to consider bans on "true high-capacity magazines" holding more than 30 bullets, bans on 10- to 20-bullet magazines being pushed into law across the country are infringing on the rights of gun owners to protect themselves.
Meanwhile, a ban would do nothing to curb the behavior of criminals, who probably will continue to use high-capacity magazines even where they are illegal, he said.
"These criminals who commit mass shootings are not interested in listening to the Los Angeles City Council," Combs said. "I'd like to see some evidence that suggests a ban on high-capacity magazines has any effect on crime at all."
He noted that other California cities -- including San Francisco and San Jose -- have also pushed new gun and ammunition restrictions in the wake of the Sandy Hook shooting.
While other Los Angeles City Council members have supported a national ban on assault weapons and called for city investment funds to sell any stock they might hold in companies that make or sell such guns, the request for this report is the first step toward curbing high-capacity magazine possession at the city level since the mass shooting in Connecticut.
The December shooting in Newtown, which left 27 dead, including 20 children and the gunman, and last week's shooting at Taft Union High School in Kern County have re-energized discussions of gun control measures among Los Angeles politicians.
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and LAPD Chief Charlie Beck bumped up the annual gun buyback program and have increased the police presence in schools. The mayor has also scheduled a news conference Wednesday to further address gun violence.
Meanwhile, all four mayoral hopefuls -- including current council members Jan Perry and Eric Garcetti -- have called for the renewal of the federal assault weapons ban.
Combs said if there was going to be a renewed conversation about gun control, he hopes the politicians who have added gun safety measures to their platforms and stump speeches open the discussion to 2nd Amendment advocates.
"Are these city officials going to invite us to the table? Or is this just going to be them passing restrictive gun laws they've already decided they want to see pass?" Combs said. "Hopefully, our elected officials are reaching out to gun rights organizations if they're truly interested in having a conversation."
wesley.lowery@latimes.com
A series of deadly explosions struck the Aleppo University campus in Syria on Tuesday, antigovernment activists and Syrian state television reported, in what appeared to be a major expansion of the violent struggle for control of the largest city in the nearly two-year-old Syrian conflict. Each side blamed the other for the blasts.
Antigovernment activists also reported that violence convulsed some suburbs of Damascus, the capital, where members of the insurgent Free Syrian Army were engaged in combat with government forces in the Ain Tarma and Zamalka neighborhoods. The fighting erupted after a campaign of Syrian Air Force attacks over the past few days apparently aimed at expunging insurgents from strategic areas. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an antigovernment group based in Britain with a network of contacts in Syria, said at least 15 people were killed and dozens wounded in the explosions at Aleppo University, which was in a government-controlled part of Aleppo and had been conducting classes despite the mayhem and deprivation that have ravaged other parts of the city.
Aleppo, in northern Syria, has essentially been under siege since July, with insurgents and government forces in a stalemate. The city, which was once the commercial epicenter of Syria, has been struck by numerous shellings, bombings and airstrikes, but the university area had been largely spared until Tuesday.
Antigovernment activists said the university dormitories, which had been housing both students and civilians displaced by fighting elsewhere, were hit by one missile fired by Syrian military forces. They said buildings housing the architecture and humanities departments were also hit by missiles fired by the military.
Syria’s state-run SANA news service did not specify the number of casualties but said the explosions came on the first day of exams. SANA attributed the death and destruction to at least two rockets fired by what it called terrorists, the government’s blanket description for the armed insurgency against President Bashar al-Assad.
Photographs and video uploaded on the Internet by antigovernment groups showed extensive destruction of dormitory buildings, the hulks of several burned vehicles and bodies on the ground.
The United Nations has estimated that more than 60,000 people have been killed in Syria since the uprising against Mr. Assad began in March 2011.
Mr. Assad appeared to further distance himself on Monday from any thought of relinquishing power via a BBC interview with his deputy foreign minister, Faisal Muqdad. Mr. Muqdad suggested that Mr. Assad would run for re-election next year when his term expires. “We are opening the way for democracy, or deeper democracy,” he said. “In a democracy you don’t tell somebody not to run.”
Groups opposed to Mr. Assad have said they will not even consider political dialogue to resolve the conflict unless Mr. Assad resigns or is removed from power first. The special peace envoy from the United Nations and the Arab League, Lakhdar Brahimi, has urged Mr. Assad to step down and said he cannot be part of any transitional government. The Syrian government has accused Mr. Brahimi of bias toward the insurgency.
With diplomacy still deadlocked, more than 50 member states in the United Nations submitted an unusual written appeal to the Security Council on Monday to at least request an investigation by the International Criminal Court into possible war crimes and atrocities committed in Syria, by both the loyalist and the insurgent sides.
But whatever chance of such a move appeared to be ended on Tuesday by Russia, the biggest foreign defender of the Syrian government, which has vetoed three Security Council proposals on Syrian intervention since the conflict began.
“We consider this initiative ill-timed and counterproductive if we are to achieve the current priority goal — an immediate end to bloodshed in Syria,” Russia’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement. “We are convinced that speculation about international criminal prosecution and the search for guilty parties will only serve to keep the opposing sides in hard-line positions and complicate the search for a path of political-diplomatic settlement of the Syrian conflict.”
The Biggest Loser
Monday's episode of The Biggest Loser featured "Cut the Junk" week on campus. Can you believe approximately 17 percent of American children ages 2 to 19 years are obese? How about this fact: approximately 60 percent of overweight children ages 5 to 10 already have at least one risk factor for heart disease? We are all to blame for this – parents, schools, kids – all of us.
During this week's quiz, the contestants were shocked by the staggering statistics, as was I. The childhood obesity epidemic in our country needs to be fixed. I battled with my weight as a teenager, partly because there wasn't the information or conversation about how to live a healthy lifestyle. This season's contestants and kids are being armed with that information. The adults are learning to pour orange juice over everything in the temptation room to not succumb to temptation and the kids (and their families) were forced to make changes when Dr. Joanna visited them in their homes.
On a lighter note, what did you think of the gumball challenge? Being there I felt the weight of the goo from the contestants and their struggles were very real. Plus, it was disgusting on their clothes when they were done. I've got to say, that is one challenge I'm glad I didn't have to do!
At the end of the week, I think each team learned a lot, especially the blue team who was stuck in that temptation room for four hours a day. If you're spending four hours a day eating junk and playing video games, try the last-chance workout challenge that Bob did with his team instead!
At the end of the week, the weigh-in was again intense. I felt for Jackson as he again had a small weight loss but I love that Dolvett continues to support him and keep him positive. At the end, it was Kate who went home but we all had faith she'd be fine in continuing her journey at home, and her "Where Are They Now" package shows we were right.
Favorite moment of the week: Pam's reaction to losing 9 lbs. It was hilarious!
Make sure to tune in next week, when the trainers head to the homes of Sunny, Lindsay and Biingo and leave the adults to train on their own at the Ranch. How do you think they'll do?
The Biggest Loser contestants
Tyler Golden / NBC
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