Mayor who gambled away $1 billion had brain tumor

The lawyer for former San Diego Mayor Maureen O'Connor suggested that a brain tumor may have caused her to lose massive sums gambling on video poker games.

Over a nine-year period O'Connor wagered an estimated $1 billion,
including millions from a charity set up by her late husband, who
founded the Jack in the Box fast-food chain.

That was the portrait that emerged in court Thursday as the frail
former mayor tearfully acknowledged that she skimmed more than $2 million
from the charity founded by her late husband, Robert O. Peterson.

O'Connor, 66, admitted in a plea deal that she had a gambling addiction
and is nearly destitute. Her lawyer, prominent defense attorney Eugene
Iredale, suggested that a brain tumor may have impaired her reasoning.

Reporters were given copies of her brain scan from a 2011 surgery.

O'Connor's rapidly declining medical condition "renders it highly
improbable — if not impossible — that she could be brought to trial,"
according to court documents filed by federal prosecutors.

"This is a sad day for the city of San Diego," said Assistant U.S.
Atty. Phillip Halpern. "Maureen O'Connor was born and raised in this
town. She rose from humble origins.... She dedicated much of her life,
personal and professional, to improving this city."

The $1-billion gambling binge stretched from 2000 to 2009, according
to court documents. In 2008 and 2009, when the fortune she had inherited
was not enough, she began taking from the R.P. Foundation to cover her
losses.

Despite being ahead more than $1 billion at one point, O'Connor
"suffered even larger gambling losses," according to prosecutors. Her
net loss, Iredale said, was about $13 million.

She was considered such a high roller that Las Vegas casinos would
send a private jet to pick her up in San Diego. Records show that
O'Connor won $100,000 at the Barona casino in San Diego County, while at
roughly the same time she needed to cash a $100,000 check at the
Bellagio in Las Vegas.

Those who knew the former political doyenne said she had become a recluse, inscrutable even to those she counted as friends.

"I considered myself one of her closest friends, but I would call her
and she wouldn't return my call," said lawyer Louis Wolfsheimer. "I
didn't want anything from her, just to know how she was. But it looked
like she was becoming reclusive."

In a bargain with prosecutors, O'Connor agreed to repay $2,088,000 to
the R.P. Foundation, which supported charities such
as City of Hope, San Diego Hospice, and the Alzheimer's Assn. before it was driven into insolvency in 2009 by O'Connor's misappropriation of funds, prosecutors said.

"I never meant to hurt the city," an emotional O'Connor told
reporters gathered at a restaurant close to the federal courthouse. She
promised to repay the foundation but declined to answer questions.

Prosecutors agreed to defer prosecution for two years. If O'Connor
violates no further laws and makes restitution, the charge of making
illegal financial transactions may be dismissed. Under the agreement,
O'Connor acknowledged her guilt but was allowed to plead not guilty.

If convicted, O'Connor could have faced a maximum 10-year prison sentence and a fine of up to $250,000.

As part of her plea agreement, O'Connor agreed to settle "all tax
liability resulting from her receipt" of money from the foundation. She
also agreed to seek treatment for her gambling addiction.

Although she is currently without income or a bank account,
O'Connor's economic status could reverse if she wins a civil lawsuit
filed against a German bank involved in the 2005 purchase of a resort in
Mendocino County that O'Connor had acquired in 1998.

O'Connor sold the Heritage House for $19.5 million but has alleged
that she was the victim of fraud in the sale. A settlement or victory at
trial could provide the millions needed to pay restitution to the
foundation as well as the tax liabilities involved with the misallocation
of its funds.

"No figure, regardless of how much good they've done or how much
they've given to charity, can escape criminal liability with impunity,"
said U.S. Atty. Laura Duffy.

One of O'Connor's major worries, defense attorney Iredale said, "is fear of losing her reputation."

ALSO:

Man killed in Valentine's Day shooting in Maywood

Ex-mayor's lawyer ties her gambling addiction to brain tumor

Gusty winds blow through Southern California, advisory issued

-- Tony Perry in San Diego

Photo: Maureen O'Connor walks to court with her attorney, Eugene Iredale. If
O'Connor violates no further laws and makes restitution, the charge of
making illegal financial transactions may be dismissed.
Credit: Peggy Peattie / Associated Press

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Way of the World: Technology, Trade and Fewer Jobs

NEW YORK — President Barack Obama’s State of the Union speech this week confirmed it: The pre-eminent political and economic challenge in the industrialized democracies is how to make capitalism work for the middle class.

There is nothing mysterious about that. The most important fact about the United States in this century is that middle-class incomes are stagnating. The financial crisis has revealed an equally stark structural problem in much of Europe.

Even in a relatively prosperous age — for all of today’s woes, we have left behind the dark, satanic mills and workhouses of the 19th century — this decline of the middle class is more than an economic issue. It is also a political one. The main point of democracy is to deliver positive results for the majority.

All of which is why understanding what is happening to the middle class is urgently important. There is no better place to start than by talking to David Autor, an economics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Mr. Autor is one of the leading students of the most striking trend bedeviling the middle class: the polarization of the job market. That is a nice way of saying the economy is being cleaved into high-paying jobs at the top and low-paying jobs at the bottom, while the middle-skill and middle-wage jobs that used to form society’s backbone are being hollowed out.

But when I asked him this week what had gone wrong for the U.S. middle class, he gave a different answer: “The main problem is we’ve just had a decade of incredibly anemic employment growth. All of a sudden, around 2000 and 2001, things just slowed down.”

Academics can usually be counted on to have a confident explanation for everything. That is why I was surprised and impressed by Mr. Autor’s answer when I asked him where the jobs had gone. “No one really understands why that is the case,” he said.

It was a winningly modest reply. But work by Mr. Autor and two colleagues — David Dorn, a visiting professor at Harvard, and Gordon Hanson of the University of California, San Diego — is starting to untangle the two forces that both the conventional wisdom and the academy agree are probably responsible for a lot of what is happening to the middle class.

Those forces are technological change and trade. The easy assumption is that the two go together. After all, trade needs technology — it is hard to imagine outsourcing without the Internet, sophisticated logistics systems and jet travel. Technology is dependent on trade, too: The opportunity for global scale is one reason technological innovation has yielded such outsize rewards.

But in a careful study of local labor markets in the United States, Mr. Autor, Mr. Dorn and Mr. Hanson have found that trade and technology had very different consequences for jobs.

“We were surprised at how distinct the two were,” Mr. Autor said. “We found that the trade shock had a very measurable impact on the employment rate. Technology led to job polarization, but its employment effect was minimal.” Trade, at least in the short term, really did ship jobs overseas. Technology did not kill jobs per se, but it did hollow out those essential jobs in the middle.

The big surprise, at least for believers (like me) in the classic liberal economic view that trade benefits both parties, is the strong and negative impact of globalization on U.S. workers — Mr. Autor estimates it accounts for 15 to 20 percent of jobs lost.

“The rise of China was such a huge change. It really did matter,” Mr. Autor said. “First, China is such a huge country. Two, China was 40 or 50 years behind in technology, so it had a lot of catching up to do. Third, it happened so fast.”

What is striking, and frightening, is the extent to which, at least in the U.S.-China trade relationship, the knee-jerk, populist fears intellectuals tend to deride actually turned out to be true.

“U.S.-China trade is almost a one-way street. This trade relationship doesn’t clearly give you the benefit that you can sell a lot of stuff to your trade partner,” Mr. Dorn said. “If you talk to someone who is somehow involved in the promotion of free trade, they may say that maybe the headquarters of Apple benefits. That may be true. But the first-order effect is of job loss.”

The impact of technology is more familiar. Mr. Autor, Mr. Dorn and Mr. Hanson found that it did not create fewer jobs overall, but it did hollow out the jobs in the middle.

“Technology has really changed the distribution of occupation. That doesn’t necessarily go hand in hand with reduced unemployment, but it creates a more bimodal set of opportunities,” Mr. Autor said. “There is an abundance of work to do in food service and there is an abundance of work in finance, but there are fewer middle-wage, middle-income jobs.”

What is challenging about both of these trends, and what makes the hollowing out of the middle class a political problem as well as an economic one, is how different they look depending on whether you own a company or work for one.

Shipping middle-class jobs to China, or hollowing them out with machines, is a win for smart managers and their shareholders. We call the result higher productivity. But looked at through the lens of middle-class jobs, it is a loss. That profound difference is why politics in the rich democracies are so polarized right now. Capitalism and democracy are at cross-purposes, and no one yet has a clear plan for reconciling them.

Chrystia Freeland is editor of Thomson Reuters Digital.

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Has Miley Cyrus Chosen Her Wedding Dress Designer?

Stylewatch
Style News Now

02/14/2013 at 12:00 PM ET

Christopher Polk/Getty

Until now, Miley Cyrus has been fairly tight-lipped about her impending nuptials to fiancé Liam Hemsworth, but it seems she’s ready to dish about the part we most care about: her bridal gown.

“[Marchesa] is definitely one of our options,” Cyrus told PEOPLE at the Marchesa fashion show in N.Y.C. on Monday. “[They're] amazing.”

If Cyrus does walk down the aisle in Marchesa, she certainly wouldn’t be the first celebrity to do so: Blake Lively, Nicole Richie, Petra Nemcova and Molly Sims all wore custom gowns from the romantic, feminine line for their weddings.

But don’t start collecting from your Miley Cyrus Wedding Dress Pool just yet; it’s hardly a done deal: “I have so many options of different people who want to be involved in it,” she said. “I’ll probably have 30 [dresses]!”

Tell us: Who do you hope designs Cyrus’s wedding dress?

–Jennifer Cress, reporting by Catherine Kast

PHOTOS: SEE MORE STAR STYLE!

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Morning-after pill use up to 1 in 9 younger women

NEW YORK (AP) — About 1 in 9 younger women have used the morning-after pill after sex, according to the first government report to focus on emergency contraception since its approval 15 years ago.

The results come from a survey of females ages 15 to 44. Eleven percent of those who'd had sex reported using a morning-after pill. That's up from 4 percent in 2002, only a few years after the pills went on the market and adults still needed a prescription.

The increased popularity is probably because it is easier to get now and because of media coverage of controversial efforts to lift the age limit for over-the-counter sales, experts said. A prescription is still required for those younger than 17 so it is still sold from behind pharmacy counters.

In the study, half the women who used the pills said they did it because they'd had unprotected sex. Most of the rest cited a broken condom or worries that the birth control method they used had failed.

White women and more educated women use it the most, the research showed. That's not surprising, said James Trussell, a Princeton University researcher who's studied the subject.

"I don't think you can go to college in the United States and not know about emergency contraception," said Trussell, who has promoted its use and started a hot line.

One Pennsylvania college even has a vending machine dispensing the pills.

The morning-after pill is basically a high-dose version of birth control pills. It prevents ovulation and needs to be taken within a few days after sex. The morning-after pill is different from the so-called abortion pill, which is designed to terminate a pregnancy.

At least five versions of the morning-after pills are sold in the United States. They cost around $35 to $60 a dose at a pharmacy, depending on the brand.

Since it is sold over-the-counter, insurers generally only pay for it with a doctor's prescription. The new Affordable Care Act promises to cover morning-after pills, meaning no co-pays, but again only with a prescription.

The results of the study were released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It's based on in-person interviews of more than 12,000 women in 2006 through 2010. It was the agency's first in-depth report on that issue, said Kimberly Daniels, the study's lead author.

The study also found:

—Among different age groups, women in their early 20s were more likely to have taken a morning-after pill. About 1 in 4 did.

—About 1 in 5 never-married women had taken a morning-after pill, compared to just 1 in 20 married women.

—Of the women who used the pill, 59 percent said they had done it only once, 24 percent said twice, and 17 percent said three or more times.

A woman who uses emergency contraception multiple times "needs to be thinking about a more regular form" of birth control, noted Lawrence Finer, director of domestic research for the Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit group that does research on reproductive health.

Also on Thursday, the CDC released a report on overall contraception use. Among its many findings, 99 percent of women who've had sex used some sort of birth control. That includes 82 percent who used birth control pills and 93 percent whose partner had used a condom.

___

Online:

CDC report: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/

Emergency contraception info: http://ec.princeton.edu/index.html

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Coach posed as girl to get nude images of boys, police allege

An Irvine baseball coach and high school history teacher posed as a young blonde woman on Facebook to persuade boys to send him pornographic images of themselves, prosecutors alleged this week.

Zachary Reeder, 30, of Orange has been charged with 110 felonies, including 34 counts each of distributing pornography to a minor, contacting a child with the intent to commit a lewd act and using a minor for sex acts.

Other charges include six felony counts of committing a lewd act upon a child and one felony count of bringing obscene material into California, according to court records.

Some of the 35 known victims were between the ages of 14 and 15, according to court documents filed in Orange County.

Reeder allegedly posed as a young blonde woman on Facebook to lure boys into taking sexually explicit photos of themselves and sending them to him, Irvine police said.

Irvine detectives were investigating whether Reeder targeted victims while working at Servite High School in Anaheim, where he has taught history since fall 2008, police said.

Reeder also worked at Beckman High School in Irvine for four seasons, ending last year, as a walk-on assistant baseball coach, police said.

Anyone who believes they may be a victim is asked to call Anthony Sosnowski, an investigator for the district attorney, at (714) 834-8794 or Irvine Police Det. Frough Jahid at (949) 724-7184.

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Tow truck driver killed on Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu

Dorner manhunt: Investigators pursue 1,000 tips about ex-cop

Dorner manhunt: Girls basketball scholarship honors slain couple

— Lauren Williams and Jeremiah Dobruck, Daily Pilot

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International Military Officials Investigate Afghan Deaths

KABUL, Afghanistan — International military officials are investigating two episodes in which as many as 11 Afghan civilians may have been killed in what appeared to be American-led military actions.

In the more lethal episode, Afghan officials said 10 civilians were killed overnight in Kunar Province in eastern Afghanistan in a village where two known Taliban commanders were visiting family members.

“Ten civilians were killed last night in a joint Afghan and American operation that took place in Chogam Valley in Shigal District,” said Fazullah Wahidi, the provincial governor. He said four women, one man and five children between the ages of 8 and 13 were killed; four teenagers were wounded, three of whom were girls.

Increasingly over the last two years, foreign insurgents, sometimes with links to Al Qaeda and other non-Afghan groups, have taken refuge in Kunar and neighboring Nuristan Province. Both provinces have a long border with Pakistan, and insurgents can hide easily in the rugged and forested mountain terrain Mr. Wahidi said the target of Kunar operation was a Taliban leader named Shahpour, “a known and really dangerous Afghan Taliban commander with links to Al Qaeda operatives in Kunar” and another Taliban commander, known as “Rocketi,” a Pakistani citizen from the Northwest Frontier Province. Both men were killed in the attack.

Mr. Wahidi said that the operation was not coordinated with Afghan security forces, but that locally hired Afghan paramilitaries were involved in the raid, which included an airstrike and a ground operation. Sometimes other United States government agencies rather than the military use special commandos.

Maj. Adam Wojack, a spokesman for the International Security Assistance Force, said they had no information on the operation but “were aware of the reports” of civilian deaths and were looking into it.

Local officials in Kunar said that Shahpour was believed to have links to Al Qaeda and narrowly escaped being killed last year when the Americans attacked another Al Qaeda-linked Taliban commander known as Abu Hafez Al-Najde, who also went by the name Commander Ghani. Shahpour was the Taliban leader in charge of nearby Dangam district but was visiting relatives at the time of the raid.

People from Chogam, who brought injured from the remote village where the attack took place to the main hospital in the provincial capital of Asadabad, described a precise but damaging hit on two adjacent houses.

“Two homes were totally destroyed; air power was used during the operation,” said a man who brought a boy with cuts to the hospital for treatment, but refused to give his name. “There are still dead bodies under the rubble and human flesh scattered in the area.”

The other episode in which an Afghan civilian was killed by foreign troops occurred on Tuesday during daylight hours.

It took place as NATO-led forces were checking a stretch of heavily traveled highway between Kandahar and Spin Boldak for explosives during a road clearance mission and shot at an oncoming car that did not stop when signaled to do so, Major Wojack said.

An Afghan policeman, Taj Mohammed, the local Border Police commander, corroborated much of the ISAF account, but did not see the shooting himself. He said the car was carrying people from a wedding party.

Major Wojack said that the forces had followed standard procedure of signaling to the car to stop. After the driver stopped, he then started to accelerate toward the convoy, at which point the soldier ISAF shot at the car, Mr. Wojack said.

Reporting was contributed by Taimoor Shah in Kandahar and by an employee of The New York Times in Kunar Province.

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Dear Jessica Chastain, We've Found Your Oscars Gown!

Stylewatch
Style News Now

02/13/2013 at 12:05 PM ET

Kristina Bumphrey/Startraks; Inset: WireImage

As we pull together our Academy Awards gown predictions, we’ve had the hardest time picking one for Jessica Chastain. She’s gorgeous, talented and impossible to anticipate on the red carpet, not favoring any one designer or color, and we were stumped.

But the moment we watched this rich violet peplum number sashay down the Oscar de la Renta runway Tuesday night, we knew we’d found the perfect look for her big night on Feb. 24. First of all, the color was practically made to complement her fair complexion — and in a sea of nudes, blacks and reds, the vivid hue is sure to stand out.

It’s also a blend of fashion-forward and body-conscious, a combination the actress seems to favor. Finally, that neckline is just begging for some major diamond chandeliers or a beautiful diamond choker (by Harry Winston, of course — her go-to jeweler for big events).

Now that we’ve pictured it, we’ll be devastated if our wish doesn’t come true, so let’s just hope she’s an avid reader of the site. Tell us: Do you agree with our pick for Jessica Chastain’s Academy Awards gown? If not, what do you want to see her wear?

–Alex Apatoff

SEE MORE MAJOR STAR RED CARPET MOMENTS HERE!

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Report: Tracking system needed to fight fake drugs

WASHINGTON (AP) — Fighting the problem of fake drugs will require putting medications through a chain of custody like U.S. courts require for evidence in a trial, the Institute of Medicine reported Wednesday.

The call for a national drug tracking system comes a week after the Food and Drug Administration warned doctors, for the third time in about a year, that it discovered a counterfeit batch of the cancer drug Avastin that lacked the real tumor-killing ingredient.

Fake and substandard drugs have become an increasing concern as U.S. pharmaceutical companies move more of their manufacturing overseas. The risk made headlines in 2008 when U.S. patients died from a contaminated blood thinner imported from China.

The Institute of Medicine report made clear that this is a global problem that requires an international response, with developing countries especially at risk from phony medications. Drug-resistant tuberculosis, for example, is fueled in part by watered-down medications sold in many poor countries.

"There can be nothing worse than for a patient to take a medication that either doesn't work or poisons the patient," said Lawrence O. Gostin, a professor of health law at Georgetown University who led the IOM committee that studied how to combat the growing problem.

A mandatory drug-tracking system could use some form of barcodes or electronic tags to verify that a medication and the ingredients used to make it are authentic at every step, from the manufacturing of the active ingredient all the way to the pharmacy, he said. His committee examined fakes so sophisticated that health experts couldn't tell the difference between the packaging of the FDA-approved product and the look-alike.

"It's unreliable unless you know where it's been and can secure each point in the supply chain," Gostin said.

Patient safety advocates have pushed for that kind of tracking system for years, but attempts to include it in FDA drug-safety legislation last summer failed.

The report also concluded that:

—The World Health Organization should develop an international code of practice that sets guidelines for monitoring, regulation and law enforcement to crack down on fake drugs.

—States should beef up licensing requirements for the wholesalers and distributors who get a drug from its manufacturer to the pharmacy, hospital or doctor's office.

__Internet pharmacies are a particularly weak link, because fraudulent sites can mimic legitimate ones. The report urged wider promotion of the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy's online accreditation program as a tool to help consumers spot trustworthy sites.

The Institute of Medicine is an independent organization that advises the government on health matters.

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Dorner manhunt leads to deadly standoff

Human remains have been discovered in the debris of a burned cabin in Big Bear. While authorities can't confirm the remains are those of Christopher Dorner, it appears likely they are.

When authorities hemmed in the man they suspected of killing three people in a campaign of revenge that has gripped Southern California, he responded as they had feared: with smoke bombs and a barrage of gunfire.

The suspect, who police believe is fugitive ex-cop Christopher Dorner, shot to death one San Bernardino County sheriff's deputy and injured another Tuesday. He then barricaded himself in a wood cabin outside Big Bear in the snow-blanketed San Bernardino Mountains, police said.

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

PHOTOS: Manhunt for ex-LAPD officer

Then the cabin burst into flames. By late Tuesday evening, the smoldering ruins remained too hot for police to enter, but authorities said they believed Dorner's body was inside.

The standoff appeared to end a weeklong hunt for the former L.A. police officer and Navy reserve lieutenant, who is also suspected of killing an Irvine couple and a Riverside police officer. But Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck said he would not consider the manhunt over until a body was recovered and identified as Dorner.

"It is a bittersweet night," said Beck as he drove to the hospital where the injured deputy was undergoing surgery. "This could have ended much better, it could have ended worse. I feel for the family of the deputy who lost his life."

TIMELINE: Manhunt for ex-LAPD officer

According to a manifesto Dorner allegedly posted on Facebook, he felt the LAPD unjustly fired him in 2009, when a disciplinary panel determined that he lied in accusing his training officer of kicking a mentally ill man during an arrest. Beck has promised to review the case.

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

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

FULL COVERAGE: Sweeping manhunt for ex-cop

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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India Ink: Image of the Day: Feb. 12

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