Second phase of BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill trial begins

The second phase of the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill trial begins Monday in New Orleans, restarting a legal juggernaut that could saddle the energy giant with the largest environmental penalty in U.S. history, determine the future health of the Gulf of Mexico and calculate, finally, the amount of crude oil that spewed from the crippled well.

The case — which involves a phalanx of federal and state prosecutors, attorneys for several multinational companies, and highly complex engineering testimony — has been droning on with little fanfare since February. But its high-stakes outcome has riveted both the legal world and the environmental community.

"It's fascinating for reasons of its size and complexity, the accusations of destruction of documents and evidence, and for the legal precedents. It's terrific stuff," said John Levy, a maritime law litigator and partner at the firm Montgomery McCracken.

The first phase of the nonjury trial examined the cause of the April 20, 2010, explosion on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig about 50 miles off the Louisiana coast. The blowout killed 11 people and gushed crude oil for more than three months until the well was capped.

Multiple witnesses spent weeks providing highly technical testimony detailing the performance of the rig's drilling and safety equipment, as well as the emergency response of on-site personnel.

U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier will use that information when he determines culpability among the partners on the rig: BP, which owned the well; Halliburton, which sealed the wellhead; and Transocean, which owned the Deepwater Horizon drilling vessel.

The companies are major employers in the gulf region, where world attention was transfixed during the tense months after the accident. Media broadcast live undersea images of the well gushing oil and methane gas and photos of oil-drenched pelicans — Louisiana's state bird — struggling to lift out of the miles-wide spill. The Gulf Coast's fishing and tourism industries were upended, beaches and bayous coated with oil.

As the trial has unspooled in an elegant courtroom in downtown New Orleans, numerous parallel legal proceedings have played out. BP has pleaded guilty to criminal negligence and 11 counts of felony manslaughter, and agreed to pay penalties and fines of $4 billion. In addition, the London-based company admitted withholding documents and lying to Congress regarding oil flow rates.

This month, BP asked Barbier to suspend payments in a $7.8-million fund the company had established to settle private economic and medical claims. The company argued there was a "feeding frenzy" of false claims. Barbier had rejected a similar request twice before.

Halliburton pleaded guilty to covering up evidence relating to the amount of oil coming from the well.

Transocean has pleaded guilty to criminal negligence and, in a separate case, agreed to pay $1 billion to settle civil charges.

After a brief summer hiatus, Barbier will now focus on determining how much oil flowed into the gulf and what will it cost the companies. Was it the 2.45 million gallons that BP contends, or the more than 4 million gallons estimated by government scientists?

Depending in part on that calculation, BP could be exposed to as much as $17 billion in fines for violating the Clean Water Act, the largest environmental penalty in U.S. history. A portion of the fines is earmarked for gulf restoration.

In addition, the court will determine whether BP's actions on the rig were negligent or grossly negligent. That distinction is important because it is the difference between a $4.5-billion fine and the maximum $17-billion penalty.

The prosecution must surmount an extremely high bar to meet a gross negligence threshold.

"To find gross negligence, you've got to prove that there's a known significant risk and that the company said, 'To hell with it, let's go anyway,'" Levy said.

For court watchers, every legal move is worth noting.

"It will be studied in law schools; it should be studied in management schools — how to administer this kind of a beast," said Carl Tobias, who studies the federal courts and teaches at the University of Richmond School of Law.

"We don't generally have these kinds of extended trials. You have the legal aspects, you have the science, and you have the cultural part — the water is so essential to so many people in the gulf," Tobias said. "For those in criminal law it will be interesting. It's the biggest environmental crime that's ever been pled to."

For conservation groups, maximum penalties could put other polluters on notice, which they say failed to happen after the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska's Prince William Sound in 1989, the second-largest in U.S. history.

"The value of severe penalties and fines is to serve as a deterrent," said David Muth, director of Mississippi River delta restoration for the National Wildlife Federation. "If BP skates, it hardly sends a good signal."

The environmental damage from the spill has yet to be fully quantified. At one point during the crisis, more than 1,000 miles of coastline were befouled with oil. Scientists are assessing the effects on marine life and coastal wetland systems.

Last week a study by Texas A&M-Corpus Christi found the blowout had damaged marine life for 57 square miles from the blast site, concluding that recovery could take a generation or more.

Tar balls are still found on beaches as far away as Florida. And this summer, a 40,000-pound tar mat — a slab of oil residue mixed with sand — was found on a Louisiana barrier island.

julie.cart@latimes.com

12.18 | 0 komentar | Read More

So far, couple's Hollywood fixer-upper has been a downer

The neighborhood seemed perfect for the two Hollywood artists.

Nestled beneath the Hollywood sign, the duplex that first-time homeowners John Sullivan and Carrie Dennis bought was near the studios he deals with and the Hollywood Bowl where she performs.

The place was built in 1924 by a man who used a mule and gold-mining equipment as collateral, then bought by a woman who had gotten a loan from actress Mary Pickford. When Sullivan and Dennis acquired the home, it was owned by a painter who used one of the units as a studio.

It was a fixer, but the clapboard duplex had a funkiness that charmed Sullivan, a 45-year-old writer, producer and actor, and Dennis, 35, the principal violist with the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

True, their upper-level two-bedroom unit lacked any closet space for them and their toddler twins, Atticus and Finneas. But the lower unit had a rent-paying tenant — something that helped with the bills.

But the lack of closet space turned out to be the least of their problems.

Life for them on Glen Green Street first hit a roadblock when Sullivan set out to landscape the slope behind his house and repair a water-damaged 7-by-10-foot backyard storage room the family used for closet space.

Sullivan planned to plant fruit trees that would tie in to a community orchard that a neighbor, actor Bill Pullman, was proposing at the top of the hill. But another neighbor, actress Jodi Long, objected when she noticed that Sullivan was digging into the slope to create terraces where the trees could be planted. Long's property extends onto the hillside above Sullivan's lot.

"He was cutting into the hill and compromising it," Long said. "I said, 'You can't do that — my property is above you and I don't want to be liable if my property ends up in your house.' He shrugged me off."

When Long complained to the city, an inspector told Sullivan the rail ties could not be used as retaining walls and ordered them removed.

Sullivan complied.

But when the inspector returned to verify that the ties had been removed, he noticed the repairs being made to the storage room. "Where's your permit for this?" he asked.

Sullivan quickly abandoned his do-it-yourself project, hired a contractor and applied for — and received — a $626 building permit for the storage room.

Meanwhile, an anonymous caller complained to the city about the tenant living in the second unit. When officials couldn't find paperwork showing a duplex at the address, they declared it a single-family dwelling and issued a stop-work order on the storage room repairs.

That set in motion a new round of inspections as officials investigated whether Sullivan had illegally turned a single-family home into a duplex.

A few days later, building and safety officials found the 1924 building permit that stated the property was, indeed, a duplex. It "had been misfiled … that effectively closed the case on the illegal use as a duplex," said contractor Kevin Meechan.

But Sullivan's problems were far from over.

In their walk-through, the inspectors spied large overhead beams in the family's living room and concluded that the home's roof had been illegally altered — converted from a gabled roof into a flat one. That meant that Sullivan and Dennis would have to break open the home's interior drywall to expose its structural framing for inspectors to take a look.

The city's "correction notice" stated that "permits for new footing, framing, electrical and plumbing" would be required if the structural integrity of the living room had been compromised by the suspected alteration.

After getting the previous owner to attest that the roof had been flat when she bought the property, Sullivan decided to do his own detective work.

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Dodgers will face Braves in division series

While the Dodgers were on their way to dropping a 2-1 decision to the Colorado Rockies in their regular-season finale Sunday at Dodger Stadium, they learned whom they face in the National League division series.

The St. Louis Cardinals secured the best record in the NL, leaving the second-seeded Atlanta Braves to face the third-seeded Dodgers in the first round of the playoffs.

The first two games of the best-of-five series will be played in Atlanta on Thursday and Friday. The Dodgers will host Game 3 on Sunday. If necessary, Game 4 would be played in Los Angeles on Monday.

Game 5 would be in Atlanta on Wednesday.

BOX SCORE: Rockies 2, Dodgers 1

"We're going to bring it back to L.A., 2-0, and win it here," first baseman Adrian Gonzalez told fans at the Dodgers' postgame rally.

The Dodgers dropped five of seven games to the Braves in the regular season.

The Dodgers visited Atlanta in mid-May and were swept in three games. The Dodgers led all three of those games in the sixth inning or later.

"We understand as a bullpen we lost all those three games," Kenley Jansen said. "But it's a different bullpen now."

Jansen wasn't the team's closer then. Ronald Belisario was pitching poorly. Brian Wilson wasn't on the team. Chris Withrow was still in the minors.

The lineup has changed significantly too. When the Dodgers visited Turner Field, Hanley Ramirez was on the disabled list and Yasiel Puig was at double-A Chattanooga.

The Dodgers and Braves split a four-game series at Dodger Stadium in June.

The Braves never faced Clayton Kershaw, who will pitch opposite Kris Medlen in Game 1.

The finale

The Dodgers treated their game Sunday as if it were a spring-training game, shuttling players in and out of the lineup. Hyun-Jin Ryu, who probably will start Game 3 of the division series, pitched four innings in an abbreviated start. He was charged with two runs and eight hits in four innings.

Short hops

Puig was held out of the lineup but said he would be ready for the start of the playoffs. … The Dodgers finished the season with a total of 3,743,527 tickets sold to their 81 home games, the most in the major leagues. … With Ramirez taking the day off and Nick Punto still sidelined by an ingrown toenail, Michael Young started at shortstop. … Reliever Paco Rodriguez was in Arizona for the birth of his first child.

dylan.hernandez@latimes.com

Twitter: @dylanohernandez

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No negligence found in deaths of 19 Arizona firefighters

PRESCOTT, Ariz. — Investigators found no evidence of recklessness or negligence in the battling of the Yarnell Hill wildfire that killed 19 Arizona firefighters in June, but acknowledged that the full story will never be known on the largest loss of firefighter lives since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

"To lose all 19 and have them not talk … makes it a very tough situation and a very different investigation," said Jim Karels, the leader for the Serious Accident Investigation Team.

The team, composed of local, state and federal investigators, released its 116-page report at a briefing Saturday in Prescott, where the Granite Mountain Interagency Hotshot Crew was based. A 20th member of that firefighting crew, a lookout, was separated from his comrades and survived.

"The judgments and decisions of the incident management organizations managing this fire were reasonable," said the report, adding that the crew members had been appropriately rested and trained. "Firefighters performed within their scope of duty, as defined by their respective organizations."

The report, which describes the events leading up to the moment on June 30 when the firefighters were overcome by flames reaching 2,000 degrees, notes several factors that contributed to the tragedy, such as wind, terrain and the firefighters' movements. It does not pinpoint any one factor as the leading cause of their deaths.

It does note that at some point, 19 members of the fire crew left the "black" — areas already burned over that are considered a safety zone. The crew had options on where to move or even could have stayed in place, but the members continued on, taking a route that would have let them rejoin the fight more quickly, the report said.

It's unclear, however, whether the crew had decided to sacrifice a little safety in order to fight the fire more aggressively as it neared Yarnell, a town in central Arizona. The report found that many structures in Yarnell, which lost 100 homes, were not defendable.

Investigators said they would probably never know what prompted the crew's actions.

"We don't know that information," Karels said. "We don't have it. That decision-making process is with those 19 men."

In addition, radio communication was a challenge during the wildfire, according to the report.

Some radios were not programmed appropriately. Although the crew was able to manage a work-around by the end of the day, at one point it was out of radio contact for about 30 minutes, the report said.

Even when the radios worked, communication was an issue, said Mike Dudley, co-leader of the investigation team.

"There was a lack of communication that occurred even when people were talking," he said. At times there seemed to be confusion as to what weather pattern was occurring and when.

In harrowing detail, the report describes what is known of the crew's last moments:

Around 4 p.m., fire officials heard that the Granite Mountain crew was headed for safety.

But at 4:39 there came a frantic SOS asking for help.

"Yeah, I'm here with Granite Mountain Hotshots; our escape route has been cut off," said Eric Marsh, 43, the crew's superintendent, sounding panicked. "We are preparing a deployment site and we are burning out around ourselves in the brush, and I'll give you a call when we are under the sh — the shelters."

But Marsh never called back.

Firefighters hide under the fabric-like shelters, lying flat on the ground, only as a last-ditch attempt to survive.

A torrent of fire moving 10 to 12 mph — at least as fast as a human running a six-minute mile — raced toward the firefighters. The men had only about two minutes to deploy their shelters once it became apparent they were trapped.

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House vote sets stage for government shutdown

WASHINGTON — Launching a risky strategy that draws the federal government to the edge of a shutdown, House Republicans doubled down on their drive to stop President Obama's healthcare law as a condition for keeping federal offices running past the midnight Monday deadline.

The hard-line approach failed last week in the Senate, but House Republican leaders saw little choice but to cater to the demands of their right flank and try again, setting up a rare Saturday night session. Tea party lawmakers who say they believe ordinary Americans want to end the Affordable Care Act have committed to that goal, even if Republicans are blamed for shutting down routine government services for the first time in nearly two decades.

House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) was cheered with chants of "Vote! Vote! Vote!" as he outlined the proposal during a noon meeting in the Capitol basement. After midnight Saturday, the House approved the plan, sending legislation to the Senate to fund the government through Dec. 15 but delay the rollout of the healthcare law for one year and repeal the law's tax on medical-device manufacturers. A separate bill was approved to ensure that military troops continue to be paid if there is a shutdown.

House Republicans appeared unswayed by the certainty that this latest effort is doomed in the Senate, where Democrats have the majority, or by stern warnings from the White House, which promised a veto and said the amendments "advance a narrow ideological agenda and threaten the nation's economy."

The president's spokesman warned Republicans against pursuing this "reckless and irresponsible" path. "Today, Republicans in the House of Representatives moved to shut down the government," White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said in a statement. "The president has shown that he is willing to improve the healthcare law and meet Republicans more than halfway to deal with our fiscal challenges, but he will not do so under threats of a government shutdown that will hurt our economy."

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) vowed Saturday that Americans would not be "extorted by tea party anarchists."

"To be absolutely clear, the Senate will reject both the one-year delay of the Affordable Care Act and the repeal of the medical-device tax," he said in a statement. "After weeks of futile political games from Republicans, we are still at square one."

The Senate, which was not expected to resume work on the bill until Monday, could operate under rules that require only a simple majority to reject the Republican amendments, a leadership aide said. That could leave the House on the hook to pass the government funding bill later Monday or launch a shutdown.

Boehner would then have few choices. He could try to approve a stopgap measure to keep the government running for a short time as talks continue or try to attach more modest changes to the healthcare law. He could also simply abandon his most conservative colleagues and seek a bipartisan coalition with Democrats to continue to fund the government and prevent a shutdown, risking the ire of his majority.

In the afternoon, Boehner walked through the crowded Speaker's Lobby off the House chamber for a smoke break on the balcony, but declined to answer reporters' questions.

The gloomy prospect of an economic disruption that could be triggered by furloughed federal workers and closed museums, parks and government operations on Tuesday, the first day of the new fiscal year, was no match for the enthusiasm of GOP lawmakers filling the halls of the Capitol on Saturday.

"Did you hear all the hooting and hollering?" said Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Texas), as rank-and-file lawmakers spilled out of a private strategy session. "The conference is pretty unified. Ready to fight on."

A day earlier, it had seemed that the Republican Party's far-right flank had exhausted its efforts after the Senate defeated its bid to halt federal funding for the healthcare law. Boehner remained largely silent and out of sight.

But the failed GOP effort in the Senate led by tea party Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) appeared only to energize the conservative flank in the House. Cruz held the Senate floor for more than 21 hours to denounce the law, also known as Obamacare, and encouraged his compatriots in the House to carry on the fight. More than 60 GOP lawmakers pledged their support of a one-year delay of the law.

With such overwhelming numbers, Boehner had few options but to embrace their strategy lest he loosen an already wobbly grip on his increasingly defiant GOP majority.

"He saw folks coalescing around a concept," said Rep. Tom Graves (R-Ga.), who led the effort to delay Obamacare in the House. "It's one step at a time."

Republicans see Tuesday's launch of the healthcare law's online marketplaces as one of their last chances to stop Obamacare, even though Senate Democrats appear united in their commitment to protect the president's signature legislative accomplishment. The House bill would delay the marketplaces for a year.

Any delay in the healthcare law remains highly unlikely. Moreover, key aspects of the law are already underway.

The president said Friday that the marketplaces, where the uninsured will shop for policies, will open for business on Tuesday even if there is a federal shutdown. "That's a done deal," he said.

But the attempt to repeal the medical-device tax put some Democrats in a bind. More than 30 Democrats in the Senate and a similar number in the House have previously backed a repeal, including many from states with companies that make medical devices.

The 2.3% tax on devices other than such routine equipment as eyewear and hearing aids is expected to raise about $30 billion over 10 years to help pay for the Affordable Care Act.

However, key Democratic lawmakers said they would not agree to repeal the tax as part of the government funding bill. House

Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) said the repeal effort was "a gift to the insurance companies by putting them back in charge of Americans' healthcare."

The difficulty Boehner had convincing Republicans to vote for any measure that does not fully end Obamacare was evident in the bill. It includes a provision that would allow employers that have religious or moral objections to contraception not to provide it on their company health insurance policies for employees.

Only one lawmaker, Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.), publicly urged his colleagues in the meeting of House Republicans to keep in mind the "big picture." But others privately worried about the political fallout over what they feared was the inevitable outcome, and hoped a last-minute resolution would emerge on Monday.

"If this is part of a process, fine. I'll vote for it," said Rep. Peter T. King (R-N.Y.). "But we can't let the government shut down. If we do, we've just allowed people to hijack our party and the government."

lisa.mascaro@latimes.com

michael.memoli@latimes.com

12.18 | 0 komentar | Read More

5 Questions: 'Top Chef' contestant Brian Huskey of Paiche

Brian Huskey will be L.A.'s lone hopeful when the new season of Bravo's "Top Chef" premieres on Wednesday. The Pasadena native, who started his career at the California Culinary Academy in San Francisco, decided to take a culinary journey around the world after he finished his training. During his travels, he learned to incorporate Asian, French and Peruvian influences into his food. He eventually returned to L.A. and landed a job with Ricardo Zarate. Huskey helped Zarate open Picca and Mo-Chica and currently works as a saucier at Paiche. If Huskey wins Season 11 of the cooking competition show, he'll be the first L.A. chef to win since Michael Voltaggio in Season 6.

Latest ingredient obsession?

My latest ingredient obsession is white soy sauce.

What restaurant do you find yourself going to again and again?

Sushi Gen for the sashimi lunch special and Yogurtland for all the fruit-flavored yogurts topped with fruity pebbles and gummy bears.

The last cookbook you read, and what inspired you to pick it up?

The last cookbook i read was "I Love NY: Ingredients and Recipes" by Daniel Humm and Will Guidara. It was gifted to me by good friend Michael Cirino.

What's your favorite breakfast?

My favorite breakfast is sausage eggs Benedict on a biscuit with extra hollandaise sauce and tater tots.

Your favorite day off away from the kitchen is ...

Spending the day with my girlfriend, Shannon Loera. Starting with sleeping in a little, a bloody mary, then enjoying L.A. (a sporting event, concert, museum, new places to eat, the beach) and ending by cooking together and watching a movie. Simple pleasures.

Paiche, 13488 Maxella Ave., Marina del Rey, (310) 893-6100

jenn.harris@latimes.com

12.18 | 0 komentar | Read More

Raise a glass to great bar food at three L.A. area restaurants

At a new restaurant, I check out the bar not so much for the cocktails but to see what the menu is like and take in the scene from a bird's-eye perch. I actually love to eat at the bar, a great choice on the later side, or even the earlier. And it's especially good if you're dining alone. But it also works for two — and, at a push, three, as long as you can get a spot at the corner of the bar where it's easier to talk. You can start with a drink and then move on to a dish or two, whatever you feel like, no rules. At some restaurants, the bar menu is basically snacks. But others put some effort into the special menu, encouraging even regulars to drop in on nights when they're not ready for the commitment of a full tasting menu. Here are some worthy contenders.

Spago

When Wolfgang Puck re-envisioned Spago last year, part of his idea was to expand the bar. It now encompasses the eight-seat bar itself, a handful of tables across from it and, around the corner, another half dozen low tables dispersed in front of a fireplace at the garden end of the dining room. To eat: fantastic bincho-grilled chicken wings, pork and leek chile dumplings and a soft-shell crab po' boy with the world's best tartar sauce. There's also a burger and Puck's smoked salmon pizza. For dessert, a frozen kulfi pop or doughnuts with yuzu glaze and black sesame custard. And, this is a big plus, you can order wine by the glass or from the hefty regular wine list.

176 N. Cañon Drive, Beverly Hills, (310) 385-0880. Bar bites, $6 to $28.

Lucques

Lucques has long been my favorite stop for a steak frites at the bar and a glass of St. Joseph. It comes with a made-to-order béarnaise and, of course, excellent fries. But there's also a comforting omelette aux fines herbes with a perky arugula salad, jamón serrano and butter sandwich, or spaghetti carbonara. And to finish, a trio of beautiful cheeses, each one à point. You can order from the regular menu at the L-shaped bar as well and just kind of hang with the bartender and whoever else is sitting there. One night it was a wine producer and his wife tucking into the giant grilled club steak for two.

8474 Melrose Ave., West Hollywood, (323) 655-6277. Bar menu, $7 to $24.

Bar Bouchon

Downstairs from Bouchon Bistro is Bar Bouchon with its own small menu. With tables set along the arcade, it's a quiet spot for supper or a light snack. You can order popcorn lavished with truffle butter, a trio of barbecued pork sliders on adorable shiny buns with a little slaw inside, and a beautifully seasoned steak tartare if you get there before 7 p.m. when the happy hour menu is still in effect. Otherwise, it's chilled seafood platters, steamed mussels, a lovely yellowfin tuna Nicoise with butter leaf lettuce stacked high — and the world's best French dip sandwich. Note that it's open only until 10 p.m.

235 N. Cañon Drive, Beverly Hills, (310) 271-9910. Bar menu, $3 to $23.

irene.virbila@latimes.com

12.18 | 0 komentar | Read More

Jonathan Gold | L.A. restaurant review: At Willie Jane, a local phenom refined

If you follow the restaurant scene in Los Angeles, you have known about Govind Armstrong for years, possibly since he was a teenage cooking prodigy whose mom drove him to stints on the line at the original Spago the way that other moms drive their kids to Little League practice. Or perhaps you know him from his long collaboration with locavore Ben Ford, or from his solo gigs at Table 8 and 8 Oz. Burger Bar. You may have followed Armstrong's short-lived adventure in New York, which wasn't well-received, and his appearances on "Top Chef" and on the list of People magazine's 50 Most Beautiful People.

It is more likely that you noticed his restaurant Post & Beam, which he started a couple of years ago with business partner Brad Johnson and is the most ambitious restaurant ever to open in the Crenshaw District. If you want to understand the power structure of South Los Angeles, you could do worse than to eavesdrop over grits and a Bloody Mary at Post & Beam after church on a Sunday afternoon.

But while Armstrong has been widely discussed as a phenomenon, and his cascading hair still makes teenage foodies swoon, his development as a chef may have been less examined — his style's evolution from California Mediterranean, his work with organic farmers, his burger-bar perfectionism, his streamlined African American menu at Post & Beam. Much of his early cooking was tasty but undisciplined, overgarnished and underthought. At Post & Beam, with a clientele that expected something close to perfection in dishes that reminded them of home (which is quite different from that of uptown customers demanding novelty), Armstrong finally settled into a groove.

PHOTOS: Inside Willie Jane

At Willie Jane, the new restaurant he runs with Johnson on Abbot Kinney's restaurant row, Armstrong's style has become more refined yet — it's kind of a fantasy mash-up of Low Country cuisine with farm-driven California presentation, heavily reliant on the sharply tart notes that have become his trademark, and heavily reliant on Geri Miller's urban farm Cook's Garden, which happens to be right next door. When the collards and lettuces are grown less than 50 feet from your kitchen, and the farmer is apt to glare if you have treated her peppers with less than total respect, you have to maintain a certain watchfulness. Many of the dishes may have their origins in the coastal Carolinas, but they are grounded in Venice soil.

So in addition to the buttermilk biscuits with soft honey butter, the deviled eggs and the mussels steamed with ham and lemon, there are sliced peak-season peaches with burrata, smoked pecans and a handful of next-door arugula; a heap of milky ricotta with crunchy bits of fried bread and sliced next-door cucumbers; and a spicy watermelon salad with somewhat overcooked shrimp and a scattering of next-door lettuce. You can get a stack of spareribs brushed with a tart hibiscus-flower glaze — Mexicans call the herb jamaica — but it will be sprinkled with peppery yellow arugula blossoms, which is not what they put on the ribs at Bludso's. You may know shrimp and grits as the saucy, hammy breakfast dish you find everywhere in Charleston. Armstrong's version involves chile-marinated grilled shrimp, more Caribbean than South Carolina, with a small lake of organic Anson Mills grits and a kind of roasted pepper ragout. It is as close to Low Country shrimp and grits as New Orleans barbecued shrimp is to barbecue, and when you eat it, semantics don't come into play.

Most of the seating for the restaurant is outside, on patios that back up against the nursery on the other side of the building. The waiters have the ease (and the cheekbones) of models. The bartender rings herb-flavored seasonal variations on classic Southern cocktails like Old-Fashioneds, Vieux Carres and shrubs.

Is the fried chicken crisp, the pan-roasted salmon properly medium rare and the charred carrot as compelling as the hanger steak with which it is served? Indeed. The braised oxtail is compelling in its plainness, little more than fat chunks of tail soft enough to eat with a spoon, served with a lightly curried sauce you may never get around to using (it would be the main attraction at a soul food restaurant in Compton or Willowbrook). The pork chop brined in sweet tea is uncommonly juicy. The cast-iron chicken is sort of a marriage between Tuscan chicken under a brick and Edna Lewis-style pan-roasted chicken, bone out and cooked between two hot cast-iron pans until the juices run clear and the skin becomes about 90% crunch. The greens cooked down with pickled peppers, the black-eyed peas with tasso and kale, and the late-summer creamed corn are at least as interesting as the meat.

You may be tempted by the giant slabs of red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting, the berry shortcake or the pudding, but the one dessert you must try is the raisin-oatmeal cookie sandwich, as chewy, crisp and buttery as your fondest dreams, and stuffed with cool mascarpone cream.

jonathan.gold@latimes.com

Willie Jane

Kind of a fantasy mashup of Low Country cuisine with farm-driven California presentation

LOCATION

1031 Abbot Kinney Blvd., Venice, (310) 392-2425, williejane.com.

PRICES

Appetizers, $6-$19; main courses $16-$22; sides $6-$8; desserts $8.

DETAILS

Open 4 p.m. to midnight, Tuesday-Friday; noon to midnight, Saturday; 11 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., Sunday. Credit cards accepted. Full bar. Valet parking.

RECOMMENDED DISHES

Shrimp and grits; barbecued quail with corn pudding; sweet-tea-brined pork chops; cast-iron chicken; simmered greens with pickled peppers; raisin oatmeal cookie sandwich.

12.18 | 0 komentar | Read More

5 Questions: 'Top Chef' contestant Brian Huskey of Paiche

Brian Huskey will be L.A.'s lone hopeful when the new season of Bravo's "Top Chef" premieres on Wednesday. The Pasadena native, who started his career at the California Culinary Academy in San Francisco, decided to take a culinary journey around the world after he finished his training. During his travels, he learned to incorporate Asian, French and Peruvian influences into his food. He eventually returned to L.A. and landed a job with Ricardo Zarate. Huskey helped Zarate open Picca and Mo-Chica and currently works as a saucier at Paiche. If Huskey wins Season 11 of the cooking competition show, he'll be the first L.A. chef to win since Michael Voltaggio in Season 6.

Latest ingredient obsession?

My latest ingredient obsession is white soy sauce.

What restaurant do you find yourself going to again and again?

Sushi Gen for the sashimi lunch special and Yogurtland for all the fruit-flavored yogurts topped with fruity pebbles and gummy bears.

The last cookbook you read, and what inspired you to pick it up?

The last cookbook i read was "I Love NY: Ingredients and Recipes" by Daniel Humm and Will Guidara. It was gifted to me by good friend Michael Cirino.

What's your favorite breakfast?

My favorite breakfast is sausage eggs Benedict on a biscuit with extra hollandaise sauce and tater tots.

Your favorite day off away from the kitchen is ...

Spending the day with my girlfriend, Shannon Loera. Starting with sleeping in a little, a bloody mary, then enjoying L.A. (a sporting event, concert, museum, new places to eat, the beach) and ending by cooking together and watching a movie. Simple pleasures.

Paiche, 13488 Maxella Ave., Marina del Rey, (310) 893-6100

jenn.harris@latimes.com

12.18 | 0 komentar | Read More

Temecula college student arrested on federal 'sextortion' charges

A 19-year-old Temecula college freshman was taken into custody Thursday on federal charges he "sextorted" newly crowned Miss Teen USA and other young women around the world by hijacking their computer's webcams to capture naked images.

Jared James Abrahams allegedly commandeered webcams of unsuspecting women in Canada, Ireland, Russia and across the United States, a federal criminal complaint unsealed Thursday said.

After hacking into the webcams to obtain nude photos and videos, Abrahams allegedly used them to blackmail females as young as 16 to provide even more images, videos or live chat sessions.

If they refused, the complaint states, he would post their images on the Internet to humiliate them.

Abrahams allegedly threatened to transform reigning Miss Teen USA Cassidy Wolf 's "dream of being a model ... into a porn star" if the victim did not comply with his demands, according to a court record.

Wolf, who was Miss California Teen USA before winning the Miss Teen USA pageant in August, discussed the incident on the "Today Show" before Abrahams was arrested.

The FBI investigation was sparked after Wolf alerted authorities in March to a change in her Facebook password and an alleged sextortion demand from a person authorities said they later identified as Abraham.

Abrahams allegedly changed her Twitter account photo to a half-naked image of her and then sent her two images of her naked that were taken inside her home by her webcam months earlier, according to the criminal complaint.

The complaint identifies at least seven victims identified by initials only — several from the Temecula area — and said that once confronted, Abrahams admitted his crimes in an interview with an FBI special agent.

One of the victims, a 17-year-old from Ireland, reluctantly disrobed on his orders during a Skype session, according to a Sept 19 affidavit.

"Please remember I'm 17. Have a heart," the affidavit quotes the girl as saying. "Abrahams allegedly responded: "I'll tell you this right now! I do NOT have a heart. However, I do stick to my deals. Also age doesn't mean a thing to me!!!".

When FBI agents first raided his Temecula home in June and seized computers and hardware, cellphones and hacking software, they found evidence that he had commandeered 30 to 40 computers and gathered images of victims in Southern California, Maryland, Ireland, Canada, Russia and Moldova, according to the criminal complaint

FBI officials added that Abrahams bragged on a hacker forum how he had installed malware on the computer of "this girl who happens to be a model..."

Abrahams was being held on $50,000 bail Thursday. A judge ordered that Abrahams, if freed, must wear a GPS tracker and would be prohibited from using a computer for anything other than academic work.

richard.winton@latimes.com

12.18 | 0 komentar | Read More

Boxer asks EPA to ensure safety of L.A. neighborhood near oil field

U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) asked federal environmental officials Thursday to ensure the safety of a low-income South Los Angeles community where residents worry that their dizziness, headaches and nosebleeds may be linked to noxious odors from an urban oil field.

In a terse letter, Boxer asked U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Ginza McCarthy to "immediately address these unacceptable situations using all available and appropriate authorities."

Boxer requested a response by Monday describing the steps that the EPA will take to address the chemical smells, which waft through the University Park neighborhood from an oil-pumping operation on land Allenco Energy Co. leases from the Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles.

Residents say they have suffered from respiratory ailments, headaches and nosebleeds since 2010, when Allenco ramped up production at its wells by more than 400%. Neighbors complained to state air quality officials 251 times over the next three years. The South Coast Air Quality Management District responded by issuing 15 citations against Allenco for foul odors.

After analyzing three air samples collected in 2011, the district concluded that the odors pose no health risks.

Allenco has declined to comment on its operation.

University Park is one of a growing number of communities with concerns about newly invigorated wells. New extraction technologies and rising prices for crude oil are motivating a revival of old oil fields across Southern California.

"These communities are frustrated, and I want local residents to know that I hear them and understand their concerns," Boxer said in a statement. "I will do everything I can to ensure they get the answers they deserve."

The action was welcomed by University Park residents including Monic Uriarte and her 12-year-old daughter, who suffers from recurring nosebleeds.

"We're grateful to have the attention of Sen. Boxer," Uriarte said. "If it turns out that our illnesses are related to those odors, we will demand that the oil field immediately cease production."

Angela Johnson Meszaros, general counsel with the Los Angeles chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility, agreed.

"Finally, this issue is being taken seriously," Meszaros said. "It's also sad that it takes someone in Washington to send a latter to someone else in Washington to get California regulators to do something about a problem that's been going on way too long."

Air quality district officials were not available for comment.

The Allenco site, which was donated to the archdiocese in the 1950s, is surrounded by affordable-housing projects and schools, including the Doheny Campus of Mount St. Mary's College and a Los Angeles Unified School District high school for adults with psychological challenges.

U.S. Energy Department records show that Allenco's 21 wells at the site had been idled in the 1990s because of low oil prices and calcification. Hydrochloric acid and phosphoric acid were used to unplug five of the wells in 2005. Allenco bought the operation in 2009.

louis.sahagun@latimes.com

12.18 | 0 komentar | Read More

Review: 'Metallica: Through the Never' an intriguing but weird beast

There are all sorts of great rock 'n' roll movies: straight concert docs ("The Last Waltz," "Gimme Shelter"), road sagas ("Don't Look Back," "Dig!") and fictional films ("A Hard Day's Night," "Quadrophenia").

So what is this weird beast "Metallica Through the Never"? It's two-thirds orthodox concert flick, one-third wordless sci-fi fright show. For America's biggest metal band, it's an ambitious but garbled attempt to stir up new evil.

Director Nimród Antal ("Kontroll," "Predators") sets up an intriguing premise for "Metallica Through the Never." As the band rages inside a sold-out arena show, a young roadie on assignment gets sucked into a battle among balaclava-clad street gangs, brutal riot cops and at least one horseman of the apocalypse. If you're at all familiar with Metallica's three decades of sinewy riffage and doom-stricken lyrics, it will feel entirely apropos.

PHOTOS: Movie Sneaks 2013

As a straightforward concert document, "Through the Never" is excellent. Although the San Francisco-bred band hasn't been at metal's artistic vanguard for years, it remains a stellar live act and one of the last big draws in rock. The performance footage of "Through the Never" is seamlessly stitched from a few tour dates, and Antal's clever staging captures the band's ferocious instrumentalism.

The four members prowl an unusual four-pronged stage in-the-round, showing their individual charismas — drummer Lars Ulrich the curmudgeonly perfectionist, bassist Robert Trujillo the low-slung enforcer, guitarist Kirk Hammett the baked-looking warlock. The 3-D is generally tasteful (even if you get enough of singer James Hetfield's chest hair to feel as if you have to pick it out of your teeth), and the song selections — "Hit the Lights," "Ride the Lightning," "Master of Puppets" — will earn devil-horns from old thrash-metal vets and festival novices alike.

The problem is that Antal and Metallica took two different movies — a fine live-band document and a supernatural end-of-days romp — and smashed them together to make both of them more boring.

PHOTOS: Hollywood backlot moments

Dane DeHaan ("The Place Beyond the Pines") is convincing as Trip, the weary, devoted young Metallica roadie set upon by thugs and demons while retrieving a bag belonging to the band (one can't imagine Kings of Leon or the Black Keys commanding such loyalty today). Antal and the film's cinematographer, Gyula Pados, occasionally wring some real dread out of the scenario. The grim shots of public hangings could make Burzum's church-burning singer Varg Vikernes flinch.

But like a blast-beat metal drummer lagging behind his band, the dialogue-free fictional segments and the live concert footage don't seem to have much to do with each other.

Sometimes the problems are metaphysical — does Metallica know the apocalypse is happening outside its arena show? Is Trip fighting the street rioters or the cops or the evil horseman, who seems to be killing everyone simultaneously? And the answer to that movie-driving question of "What's in that infernal bag Trip's carrying anyway?" is a jerky cop-out.

PHOTOS: Iconic rock guitars and their owners

But mostly, the flaws are structural. Just when you get comfy watching a long, pulverizing take on "…And Justice for All," the film suddenly veers to Trip self-immolating in an alleyway. Then back to the band doing "Nothing Else Matters," followed by Trip's city-destroying showdown with the dark rider on the roof of the arena.

All this disrupts the Metallica show inside only briefly. And to think the Stones barely made it through Altamont.

If Antal and the band had a bit of self-awareness, they could have made a kind of "Heavy Metal Parking Lot" meets "Quadrophenia" and "Evil Dead" — a brawny, campy genre movie that takes Metallica-ness in wild new directions, while showcasing the group at its onstage best. The lean and menacing Metallica circa-1983's "Kill Em All" would have loved that movie.

Instead, "Metallica Through the Never" feels more like the group as seen in 2004's droll band-in-couples-therapy documentary "Some Kind of Monster" — a little confused, unsure of itself and losing the plot despite having powerful talents at its disposal. If only this master of puppets had a tighter grip on the strings.

august.brown@latimes.com

12.18 | 0 komentar | Read More

Hacienda La Puente school board member criticized over China trips

In an auditorium in eastern China, Hacienda La Puente school board member Joseph Chang posed for a photograph with 15 students who planned to spend their senior year at Wilson High.

Wearing a black suit and red tie, a beaming Chang was surrounded by teenagers whose parents would shell out tens of thousands of dollars for a year of secondary education in Hacienda Heights, ideally followed by a top American university.

Also at the school that day in August 2012 was Norman Hsu, a former school board member who now works for Bela Education Group, a private company that recruits Chinese students to study in the Hacienda La Puente Unified School District.

Chang is now facing questions over who paid his airfare to China and whether he used his elected position to benefit Hsu's company.

On Thursday, Chang's school board colleagues will consider whether to censure him after a district investigation found that the trip and several others created a conflict of interest. The Los Angeles County district attorney's office has written to the school district asking for documents relating to Chang's China travels.

"There are very questionable ties to existing and past board members," said school board President Jay Chen, who is critical of the arrangement with Bela. "There are far too many conflicts of interest, the kind of thing that really shakes public confidence in elected officials."

Chang held a news conference Wednesday to accuse Chen of attacking him for political gain. A math professor at Cal State Fullerton, Chang is up for reelection in November, with five other candidates competing for three seats.

"My Bela relationship is only to help them to establish the program," Chang said. "I don't have anything from Bela. Nothing. So this always tying me to Bela is a false accusation, trying to fabricate that I got profits from them. This is really, really dirty politicians trying to attack me."

In a December 2012 public disclosure, Chang declared that Bela had paid his $1,000 airfare for each of three recruiting trips to China. He said Wednesday that Hsu, who is Bela's managing director, picked up the tab, and that he has since reimbursed his friend.

Gifts to California elected officials are normally subject to a $420 limit, though some types of travel are exempt. Chang said his trips to China were legal because he was offering his expertise as an educator.

Chang's critics also allege that he has advocated to keep the district's international student tuition low so Bela can reap a higher profit, and that he has pressured school officials to accept unqualified Chinese students.

Under federal law, an international student who enrolls in a public high school must pay the full cost of his or her education. That means tuition in the neighborhood of $15,000 in some school districts.

The Hacienda La Puente district, which has about 20 students from China this year, initially charged $8,600, then raised its fee this summer to $12,900 with the support of all but one board member — still below the $14,459 that the district is spending per pupil this year.

Bela lists a tuition of nearly $15,000 on its website, along with fees for SAT classes, visa processing and room and board. In all, Chinese families pay Bela about $30,000.

In an interview Wednesday, Chang said he believed that the $12,900 tuition fee reflected the actual cost to the district. He also said that he has inquired about the status of some international student applications but never pushed school officials to change denials into acceptances.

Most Chinese students enrolled at Hacienda La Puente this year and last year were not directly associated with Bela, though receipts from the school district listed Chang or Hsu as the recruiter for some students. Bela's presence in the school district, which is already home to many Chinese families, will expand next year with 30 students.

Hsu, who served on the school board for two decades until 2011 and is still influential in the Hacienda Heights Chinese community, acknowledged that he works for Bela but said he is not involved in any programs related to the school district.

The district's May 2013 investigative report also found students living with host families who did not always provide them with adequate food, heat or supervision. School administrators have been taxed by the extra work of helping foreign students in the country without their families, the report said.

"It shouldn't be costing the district and overtaxing the teachers," said Jane Shults, head of the Hacienda La Puente Teachers Assn. "It's a great program to have, but we need to have enough money to take care of these kids."

cindy.chang@latimes.com

12.18 | 0 komentar | Read More

Analysts see hope for California prison overcrowding solution

SACRAMENTO — The state and the courts have been at odds for years over whether California's prisons are too crowded, but a new ruling this week offers a glimmer of hope that there's a middle way forward, analysts said Wednesday.

The big question is what the governor is willing to do.

On Tuesday, a panel of three federal judges gave Gov. Jerry Brown a surprise one-month reprieve of their order to remove more than 9,600 inmates from state prisons by year's end.

After long having shown impatience with Brown's pleas for more time, the judges indicated they were open to a longer extension if he and lawyers for inmates could agree on how to shrink the prison population for the long term.

"The court has given a month with the express hope that the two sides can work out a meaningful settlement," said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Irvine School of Law. "It really depends on whether Gov. Brown is now willing to do so."

Brown declared recently that he would not let inmates, who have sued the state over prison conditions, rewrite corrections policies.

"It would not be responsible to turn over California's criminal-justice policy to inmate lawyers who are not accountable to the people," Brown said last month, after state Senate leader Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) proposed settlement talks similar to those ordered by the judges this week.

On Wednesday, Brown remained defiant as his administration filed a new brief with the U.S. Supreme Court. The governor has appealed to the high court to overturn the three judges' order on the 9,600 inmates.

In the new filing, state officials say they have "no opposition to participating" in the talks ordered by the panel.

But they also maintain that Tuesday's order, which blocked the state's plan to send thousands of inmates to out-of-state prisons, was out of line. The filing says the three judges overstepped their authority and asks the high court to intervene.

Brown submitted a plan to the three judges last week that could have involved sending thousands of inmates to lockups in other states and placing about 2,500 more in privately owned facilities in California.

"This order, like the court's other recent actions, disregards the law and the role of the judiciary," the governor's lawyers argue in the Wednesday brief.

Others said the judges had offered a blueprint for compromise, echoing a set of solutions proposed Monday in a letter to the court from Steinberg.

The senator suggested that the three judges order discussions about alternative measures to relieve crowding. Those measures could include reviewing California's incarceration of federal immigration detainees and increasing resources to speed parole hearings for juvenile offenders and people serving life sentences, Steinberg wrote.

Those ideas were among the issues the jurists ordered the state to discuss with prisoners' lawyers.

The order "represents the possibility of a major breakthrough," Steinberg said Wednesday.

The judges' order said the talks, to begin immediately and to be run by Justice Peter J. Siggins of California's 1st District Court of Appeal, are to be confidential.

The ACLU's criminal justice director in Northern California, Kim Horiuchi, said the closed doors could defuse much of the political rhetoric that can prevent compromise.

"That's the beauty of it being confidential," she said.

The court's assignment of Siggins as mediator is also significant, said Joan Petersilia, a criminologist and law professor at Stanford Law School. Siggins has been involved in the case in the past and is trusted by both sides, she said.

Don Specter, a lead attorney for the inmates who sued the state over prison conditions, has been down this road before, to no avail.

"It's hard to be too optimistic after all these years of frustration," Specter said. "But we are going into this with an open mind, and we will make a good-faith effort to reach an agreement."

The two sides sat down twice before, Specter said, when Arnold Schwarzenegger was governor — just before and just after a crucial trial in 2008 over prison crowding. Neither discussion bore fruit, Specter said.

Susan Kennedy, who was Schwarzenegger's senior policy advisor, said the political dynamics were different then.

In 2008, the state had 18,000 inmates sleeping on bunks stacked three high in what were supposed to be gymnasiums.

"Now, you are down to the last 10,000 [inmates], and these are not guys you want on the street. There's no fast solution to this."

patrick.mcgreevy@latimes.com

anthony.york@latimes.com

Times staff writer Paige St. John contributed to this report.

12.18 | 0 komentar | Read More

Kings prospect Linden Vey's day seems to be coming

With one small gesture, Kings defenseman Jake Muzzin may have done the best job of assessing center Linden Vey's hockey-playing qualities.

Location, location, location.

"His skill is right up there with any of these guys," Muzzin said, waving toward a section of the team's dressing room in El Segundo.

Rest assured, Muzzin wasn't directing his arm at the mucker-and-grinder section. It was more like the Justin Williams-Jarret Stoll-Anze Kopitar wing.

The fascination of the latter stages of training camp is the speculation and anxiety amid the final cuts. Rosters are limited to 23 players. On Wednesday, the Kings whittled their number to 29, sending defenseman Derek Forbort and center Nick Shore to their American Hockey League affiliate in Manchester, N.H.

This means that Vey and his highly touted linemates, wingers Tanner Pearson and Tyler Toffoli, are still in camp with two preseason games remaining. The trio combined for 69 goals in Manchester last season, and the thought of the line's connecting in the NHL is wildly intriguing.

For now, hold that thought.

The NHL contracts in camp — as well as the salary-cap considerations — suggest the kids will start the season in Manchester, barring a major surprise, and the words "youth movement" aren't traditionally associated with Kings Coach Darryl Sutter.

Also, Kings General Manager Dean Lombardi bristles at the suggestion of hyping the youngsters. He takes almost a fatherly position. In fact, early in Lombardi's tenure he was protective of former Kings goalie Jonathan Bernier, sending the then-19-year-old back to his junior team early on when the Kings were flailing in 2007.

Though the Kings 2013 have almost nothing in common with the Kings 2007, Lombardi's core beliefs have not changed.

Team executives think Vey will make his NHL debut at some point this season. Toffoli appeared in 10 games with the Kings last season and 12 more in the playoffs, and Pearson made his NHL debut in the second round of the playoffs, playing in one game.

Lombardi, via email, made a baseball comparison earlier in camp when he was talking about the potential upside of Pearson-Vey-Toffoli.

"That whole line is like when [Ron] Cey, [Bill] Russell, [Davey] Lopes and [Steve] Garvey were all in the minors together," Lombardi said of the storied Dodgers infielders.

Said Muzzin: "I remember last year playing with them and sometimes it was, 'Wow.' They just know something that other teams didn't know. Once they got the system down, they had a feel for each other."

Vey, who turned 22 in July, said the hope is that they can make the squad "one by one." Drafted in the fourth round in 2009, he has had plenty of meetings with Lombardi.

"Obviously, there's been some good ones and some bad ones over the last couple of years," Vey said. "I know my first camp I didn't come in the greatest of fitness. He sat me down and said, 'Hey, this is the way things are going to go.'"

Vey turned it around, and a source of recent inspiration has been his 26-year-old brother, Shaun, who once played junior hockey for Tri-Cities in the Western Hockey League. The brothers played one game against each other when Linden, then 16, was just starting to make his name with Medicine Hat.

Now working for an agricultural company in Saskatchewan in Canada, Shaun received a diagnosis of testicular cancer in February but got a clean bill of health in the summer. "We grew up together and I learned a lot from him," Linden said.

Said Shaun by phone: "He's somebody I've leaned on and he's leaned on me. Having him to follow in hockey helped me keep my mind off things. We're four years apart, but we've been best friends for years."

Linden, apparently, is his own toughest critic.

"He's usually pretty honest about how he is playing," Shaun said. "If anything, he's a little bit hard on himself at times. If he tells me he's played OK, I think he played good. If he says he played bad, he probably didn't play as bad as he thinks."

lisa.dillman@latimes.com

Twitter: @reallisa

12.18 | 0 komentar | Read More

L.A. students breach school iPads' security

It took exactly one week for nearly 300 students at Roosevelt High School to hack through security so they could surf the Web on their new school-issued iPads, raising new concerns about a plan to distribute the devices to all students in the district.

Similar problems emerged at two other high schools as well, although the hacking was not as widespread.

Officials at the Los Angeles Unified School District have immediately halted home use of the Apple tablets until further notice.

The incident, which came to light Tuesday, prompted questions about overall preparations for the $1-billion tablet initiative.

The roll-out is scheduled to put an iPad in the hands of every student in the nation's second-largest school system within a year. Roosevelt was among the first to distribute them, starting a week ago.

Tablets were still being handed out Friday when administrators discovered the hacking already in progress, allowing students to reach such restricted sites as YouTube and Facebook, among others.

"Outside of the district's network ... a user is free to download content and applications and browse the Internet without restriction," two senior administrators said in a memo to the board of education and L.A. schools Supt. John Deasy. "As student safety is of paramount concern, breach of the … system must not occur."

Other schools reporting the problem were Westchester High and the Valley Academy of Arts and Sciences in Granada Hills.

Students began to tinker with the security lock on the tablets because "they took them home and they can't do anything with them," said Roosevelt senior Alfredo Garcia.

Roosevelt students matter-of-factly explained their ingenuity Tuesday outside school. The trick, they said, was to delete their personal profile information. With the profile deleted, a student was free to surf.

Soon they were sending tweets, socializing on Facebook and streaming music through Pandora, they said.

L.A. Unified School District Police Chief Steven Zipperman suggested, in a confidential memo to senior staff obtained by The Times, that the district might want to delay distribution of the devices.

"I'm guessing this is just a sample of what will likely occur on other campuses once this hits Twitter, YouTube or other social media sites explaining to our students how to breach or compromise the security of these devices," Zipperman wrote. "I want to prevent a 'runaway train' scenario when we may have the ability to put a hold on the roll-out."

By Tuesday afternoon, L.A. Unified officials were weighing potential solutions. One would limit the tablets, when taken home, to curricular materials from the Pearson corporation, which are already installed. All other applications and Internet access would be turned off, according to a district "action plan."

A second approach would be to buy and install a new security application.

Apple's just-released new operating system might help, but not the current iteration, according to the district. A fix from Apple is not likely to be available before late December.

The devices should work normally at school, although even that has been problematic. Teacher Robert Penuela said his use of the tablets has been limited because he can't get them to work for all students at once.

Roosevelt freshman Alan Munoz said that, so far, he was using his iPad only during free time.

The excitement of receiving the device quickly wore off for senior Kimberly Ramirez when she realized it was for schoolwork only.

"You can't do nothing with them," she said. "You just carry them around."

howard.blume@latimes.com

12.19 | 0 komentar | Read More

129 are indicted in O.C. probe targeting Mexican Mafia

A violent prison gang ran drugs in Orange County's jails, ordered brutal beatings of inmates, collected tariffs from neighborhood gangs and issued so-called hard candy lists that marked disobedient members for death, according to indictments made public Tuesday

In what authorities described as a major blow to the Mexican Mafia, 129 people were indicted by federal and state authorities on racketeering and other charges related to a criminal enterprise that engaged in murder, extortion and drug-dealing.

The 21/2-year probe was dubbed Operation Smokin' Aces and was conducted by FBI agents, Santa Ana police officers, Orange County sheriff's detectives, and members of the Orange County district attorney's office and other agencies.

A raid early Tuesday resulted in 55 arrests. An additional 51 suspects were already in state or federal prison and 21 remain at large. One of those named in the federal indictment is dead and another was deported.

More than 60 weapons, 22 pounds of methamphetamine, 11/2 pounds of heroin and three pounds of cocaine were seized during the course of the investigation. Two of the weapons have been linked to slayings in Santa Ana, investigators said.

"Federal and local law enforcement here in Orange County joined forces to surgically target the leaders and operatives of the Mexican Mafia and sever their influence over street gangs responsible for far too much menace and mayhem in our neighborhoods," said Andre Birotte Jr., U.S. attorney in Los Angeles.

The indictment describes violent gangsters operating on the streets and in the jail in the heart of Orange County.

The operation, the indictment says, was carried out by a crew of ranking gang members with names such as "Lil Bogart," "Creeper," "Big Shotgun" and "Bugsy."

A district attorney investigation said the beatings administered to gang inmates resulted in bruises and head injuries so severe that in one case, 20 staples were required to close the wound. The indictment details more than a dozen jail beatings in 2011 and 2012.

In one case, a 39-year-old woman who was deemed to be an enemy was killed in a Tijuana hotel room where she was lured under the pretense of discussing gang business, authorities said. Her body was later burned and dumped in a remote area of Mexico, where it was discovered days later, authorities said.

One of those named in the federal indictment was a 28-year-old Santa Ana woman who was found shot to death under a Newport Bay bridge on Labor Day. Nancy Hammour had supplied about 13 grams of methamphetamine to a confidential informant and ordered drugs from another defendant, the indictment says.

Authorities said agents intercepted dozens of conversations about gang activity, the arrival of heroin shipments in greeting cards and "green light" communications that ordered beatings of inmates whose gangs had failed to pay "rent."

Smokin' Aces is the latest law enforcement operation targeting the Mexican Mafia in Orange County and its affiliated gangs, particularly in Santa Ana.

In 2011, Operation Black Flag resulted in charges against 99 suspected gang members from Orange, Los Angeles and Riverside counties. So far two-thirds of those have been convicted in state and federal court, said Thom Mrozek, spokesman with the U.S. attorney's office.

Peter "Sana" Ojeda, who is accused of ordering killings on behalf of the Mexican Mafia from federal prison, was among those charged in 2011, Mrozek said. The trial of Ojeda, believed to be a member of the gang since the 1960s, is set for March 2014.

The reputed Mexican Mafia godfather of Orange County is credited with extending the gang's influential reach from prisons to the streets, according to a 2005 Times story. Although not charged in the latest indictment, Ojeda's name comes up repeatedly in it in connection with defendants being ordered to carry out assaults and strong-arm gang members to pay "taxes."

The indictments are crucial, said Richard Valdemar, a retired Los Angeles County sheriff's investigator who was on the first task force that targeted the Mexican Mafia.

"But it's like the Italian Mafia," Valdemar said. "We hurt them, but they don't stop functioning."

adolfo.flores@latimes.com

Times staff writers Robert Lopez and Richard Winton contributed to this report.

12.19 | 0 komentar | Read More

USC offers measured reaction to Penn State having football scholarships restored

The NCAA announced Tuesday it would begin to restore some of the scholarships it took from Penn State's football program in the aftermath of the Jerry Sandusky sexual-abuse scandal, news that brought measured reaction from USC, which is in the midst of sanctions imposed in 2010 that included the loss of 30 scholarships.

Athletic Director Pat Haden said in a statement that USC was hopeful that the NCAA's recently enacted enforcement and penalty reforms would "result in a consistent and fair enforcement and penalty process for all its institutions." He did not indicate that USC would seek relief of its scholarship penalty.

The NCAA cited Penn State's "continued progress toward ensuring athletics integrity" in relaxing the scholarship losses that threatened to cripple the program. The action was based on the recommendation of former U.S. Sen. George Mitchell and endorsed by the NCAA Division I board of directors.

"While there is more work to be done, Penn State has clearly demonstrated its commitment to restoring integrity in its athletics program," Mitchell said. "… relief from the scholarship reductions is warranted and deserved."

NCAA President Mark Emmert handed down unprecedented sanctions in 2012 in the wake of one of college sport's most disgraceful episodes. Emmert, who sidestepped due process after receiving permission to act alone from university presidents, imposed on Penn State a four-year bowl ban, a $60-million fine and a reduction of total scholarships to 65 — 20 below the NCAA maximum — for four years.

In June 2010, the NCAA's Committee on Infractions hit USC with penalties for violations related to former Trojans running back Reggie Bush. Each year for three years, USC's annual scholarship limit was reduced and the Trojans are limited to 75 scholarship players on the roster, 10 fewer than the maximum. The penalties end after the 2014 season because USC delayed implementation by appealing.

Lane Kiffin, who succeeded Pete Carroll as USC's coach five months before the sanctions were handed down, has lamented USC's sanctions-induced roster size.

Kiffin said Tuesday it was "awesome" that Penn State's punishment would be reduced and that USC deserved the same consideration.

Penn State, under Coach Bill O'Brien, will be allowed to increase its scholarships to 75 in the 2014-15 academic year, 80 in 2015-16 and 85 in 2016-17.

"Knowing what it's like to go through and trying to manage those numbers and plan down the road as we have, now for Bill not to have to do that as much is great for him," Kiffin said. "I've had a chance to talk with him a couple times and he's doing an awesome job there so [I'm] really happy for him."

Sean Kennally, president of the Trojan Club of the San Gabriel Valley, said emails he had seen among USC supporters expressed an overwhelming sentiment.

"Once again, they think another school seems to get a little more leniency and we don't," Kennally said.

gary.klein@latimes.com

Twitter: @latimesklein

Staff writer Chris Dufresne contributed to this report.

12.19 | 0 komentar | Read More

Sparks' season comes to an end on Brittney Griner basket

Brittney Griner hit a turnaround jumper with 4.9 seconds left, lifting the Phoenix Mercury to a 78-77 victory over the Los Angeles Sparks on Tuesday night in the deciding Game 3 of their WNBA playoff series.

Candice Dupree scored 22 points, Dewanna Bonner added 19, and Diana Taurasi had 18 points and 10 assists while improving to 6-0 in career elimination games with the Mercury.

Phoenix advanced to the Western Conference finals against top-seeded Minnesota. Game 1 is Thursday.

Kristi Toliver led the Sparks with 22 points. WNBA MVP Candace Parker added 18 points, and Nneka Ogwumike had 13 points and 10 rebounds.

After Parker gave the Sparks just their second lead of the fourth on a layup with 7 seconds to go, Griner responded with the winning basket for the Mercury.

Parker missed a fling from the wing after getting trapped in the right corner as time expired, dashing her hopes of adding her first WNBA championship to her collection of NCAA titles and Olympic gold medals.

Both teams shot poorly in the fourth quarter, when they each went more than 2 minutes without scoring.

Taurasi found Jasmine James down low for a layin that extended the Mercury's lead to 76-73 with 1:15 left. Lindsey Harding got fouled and made both to draw the Sparks within one point.

Bonner missed a 3-pointer and after a timeout, Parker's layup put the Sparks ahead 77-76.

The Mercury clinched their fifth conference finals appearance and fourth in the last five years.

Phoenix saw most of its seven-point lead evaporate in the third, when Griner picked up her fourth foul and sat the rest of the period. Toliver's jumper beat the buzzer to leave the Sparks trailing 66-64 heading into the fourth.

The Sparks came in 0-for-21 from 3-point range in the series, and they finished the game 2 of 16.

The Mercury rallied from eight points down to lead 42-40 at halftime. Griner picked up her third foul and Taurasi got her second in the final 1:30 of the second quarter. Dupree, Taurasi and Bonner combined to score all of the Mercury's 23 points in the second, when they shot 73 percent.

12.18 | 0 komentar | Read More

Family reunited after child welfare system odyssey

The college application essay was the tipoff. It was beautifully written but painfully rendered; a high school student's story of her family's tumble from middle-class stability into homelessness and addiction.

It helped Danielle Stone earn a spot at UCLA. But it also drew her family into a yearlong odyssey through Los Angeles County's child welfare system.

A teacher who read the essay notified social workers. They visited the family in the San Pedro motel they moved into after a string of evictions.

"They felt like there might be emotional abuse," recalled Danielle's mother, Lisa Stone. "When they visited, everything was OK."

For the next six months, things were mostly OK. Then in the summer of 2012, social workers monitoring the family walked in on an ugly argument between mother and daughter. About a month later, they picked up Danielle's little brother from school and announced that he wouldn't be living with their parents anymore.

"They did an on-the-spot drug test, and we failed," said Lisa's husband, Archie Stone.

The couple began using drugs when they lost their home in the recession. Then Archie's paychecks from his longshoreman's job were garnished and they couldn't even afford an apartment.

"Coming from a million-dollar house to being homeless .... it was a nightmare," Lisa said. "Drugs were a way to not think about it."

They didn't realize how much they were hurting their children with their mood swings and neglect.

"The day social workers walked up the door with our daughter and son and said he was going to foster care, that was the worst day of our lives," she said.

::

If that was the worst day of their lives, last Friday was probably one of the best.

That afternoon they were among a half-dozen reunited families released from supervision by the Department of Children and Family Services.

To get their children back, Lisa and Archie had completed drug treatment programs, taken parenting classes, attended weekly therapy sessions and compiled a year's worth of clean drug tests.

"If you'd asked me at the time it happened whether we needed all of that, I'd be in total disagreement," Archie said. "But did it work out the way it should? It probably did.

"Our life has gotten a lot better. We're a lot closer than during our days of addiction. That part has really been good."

For years family reunification has been a goal of the child welfare system — and a target for critics when children suffer because parents don't make good.

But the horror stories don't tell the whole tale. So many children are taken from struggling parents with fixable problems that it makes sense to try to repair families rather than strand children in foster care.

"This is the best thing we do," said Judge Michael Nash, who presided over Friday's reunification hearings. "When we can put a family back together and get the government out of their lives, it's a victory for everybody involved."

Last year, 6,000 children were returned to their families in a county that has more than 17,000 children in foster care.

12.18 | 0 komentar | Read More

San Diego GOP power brokers plot comeback after Filner debacle

SAN DIEGO — Republican Party leaders and their allies in the business community did not like it when a Democrat was elected mayor last November.

Still shaken by the chaotic nine months of Bob Filner's tenure, including his feud with the tourism industry and his orders to halt several construction projects, Republicans are determined to see the mayor's office returned to GOP hands.

So on Aug. 31, the day after Filner's resignation became effective, an invitation-only meeting was held in the La Jolla home of Tom Sudberry, a prominent developer and Republican contributor.

Depending on who is commenting, the meeting was either an attempt by civic-spirited citizens to return stability to a shaken and demoralized city government or a throwback to the days when a small group of kingmakers could decide San Diego's future.

In any case, it was politics, San Diego style.

The meeting's goal was to find a candidate that the Republican Party and various business groups could rally behind. In the 2012 mayoral primary, when three prominent Republicans were on the ballot, the moderate and conservative vote was split.

The fight left the party splintered for the runoff, helping Filner become San Diego's first Democratic mayor in two decades.

From the three dozen people at the August meeting came an informal consensus that the best candidate was Councilman Kevin Faulconer, 46. Ex-Councilman Carl DeMaio, 39, a loser to Filner in 2012, should stick with a race for Congress, the thinking went, and Supervisor Ron Roberts, 71, should run for reelection.

A pollster reminded attendees that for all its reputation as a bastion of Republicanism, San Diego has become a Democratic city with 40% of voters registered as Democrats, compared with 27% as independents and 26% as Republicans. Democrats hold five of nine seats on the City Council.

With his more agreeable personality and reputation as a moderate, Faulconer was seen by many at the meeting as standing a better chance of attracting centrists than DeMaio, known as brash and uncompromising on issues such as pension reform and outsourcing of city jobs.

DeMaio was clearly eager to make a second try for mayor. Just days earlier he had unveiled what he called a blueprint for restoring ethical behavior to City Hall in the wake of the sexual harassment allegations that swept Filner from office.

DeMaio had his vocal loyalists, most notably Douglas Manchester, 71, hotel developer and owner of the U-T San Diego newspaper who likes to be called Papa Doug. San Diego has not had a decent mayor in 15 years, Manchester loudly told the group.

Manchester's comment did not sit well with Jerry Sanders, who was mayor from 2006 to 2012 and is now chief executive of the Chamber of Commerce. Sanders, 63, had backed Dist. Atty. Bonnie Dumanis over DeMaio in 2012 and was among those who considered Faulconer the party's best choice now.

Sanders, a former police chief known for a low-key, courteous manner, looked Manchester in the eye and used an obscenity to describe the newspaper owner's comment, according to people in attendance and an account on the Voice of San Diego website.

Manchester and Sanders have had their differences: Sanders opposed Proposition 8, the anti-gay-marriage initiative, while Manchester supported and financed the measure. Manchester wants a football stadium built near the waterfront, whereas Sanders prefers an expansion plan for the waterfront convention center. Manchester wanted the city to bid for a Republican national convention, Sanders was not interested.

When Manchester did not immediately back down, Sanders explained that he had spent seven years as mayor cleaning up what he described — again deploying an obscenity — as a "mess" caused when other Republican mayors had let the city's pension deficit spiral.

After the heated exchange, Manchester apologized. DeMaio left the meeting without indicating whether he would run for mayor or stick with a bid for Congress in the 52nd District in hopes of ousting one-term Democrat Scott Peters.

Two days after the meeting, Manchester's newspaper ran an editorial urging DeMaio not to join the mayor's race. The reasoning tracked closely with what was said at the La Jolla meeting.

When DeMaio announced that he would stay in the race for Congress, an editorial praised his "statesmanship" and loyalty to his city and political party.

Manchester is traveling in Europe, according to an aide, and unavailable for comment. Sanders declined to comment.

Faulconer is the only big-name Republican in the Nov. 19 race against three well-known Democrats — former Assemblyman Nathan Fletcher, Councilman David Alvarez and former City Atty. Michael Aguirre — as well as a lineup of little-known hopefuls. If no candidate gets more than 50%, a runoff will be held between the two top vote-getters.

Carl Luna, political science professor at San Diego Mesa College, said those at the gathering are probably right, "their best hope in winning back the mayor's office lay in circling the wagons around" Faulconer rather than making a second attempt with the more divisive DeMaio. But nudging DeMaio out "was definitely hard-ball real politik."

But Tony Krvaric, chairman of the county Republican Party, who attended the meeting, called it a case of trying to find a candidate to keep San Diego fiscally sound and repair the damage done by Filner.

Krvaric also notes the possible larger significance of the mayor's race in California's second-largest city, given that Republicans hold none of California's statewide offices.

"With a Republican mayor, San Diego could be the only bright spot in the state, the only place with a different, taxpayer-friendly, pro-business management style," he said.

Not surprisingly, the Manchester-Sanders dust-up has been much discussed in media and political circles.

Political consultant John Dadian said that the spat "shows there's not a complete monolith in the old-boys network."

tony.perry@latimes.com

12.18 | 0 komentar | Read More

Global warming 'hiatus' puts climate change scientists on the spot

It's a climate puzzle that has vexed scientists for more than a decade and added fuel to the arguments of those who insist man-made global warming is a myth.

Since just before the start of the 21st century, the Earth's average global surface temperature has failed to rise despite soaring levels of heat-trapping greenhouse gases and years of dire warnings from environmental advocates.

Now, as scientists with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change gather in Sweden this week to approve portions of the IPCC's fifth assessment report, they are finding themselves pressured to explain this glaring discrepancy.

The panel, a United Nations creation that shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore, hopes to brief world leaders on the current state of climate science in a clear, unified voice. However, experts inside and outside the process say members probably will engage in heated debate over the causes and significance of the so-called global warming hiatus.

"It's contentious," said IPCC panelist Shang-Ping Xie, a professor of climate science at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego. "The stakes have been raised by various people, especially the skeptics."

Though scientists don't have any firm answers, they do have multiple theories. Xie has argued that the hiatus is the result of heat absorption by the Pacific Ocean — a little-understood, naturally occurring process that repeats itself every few decades. Xie and his colleagues presented the idea in a study published last month in the prestigious journal Nature.

The theory, which is gaining adherents, remains unproved by actual observation. Surface temperature records date to the late 1800s, but measurements of deep water temperature began only in the 1960s, so there just isn't enough data to chart the long-term patterns, Xie said.

Scientists have also offered other explanations for the hiatus: lack of sunspot activity, low concentrations of atmospheric water vapor and other marine-related effects. These too remain theories.

For the general public, the existence of the hiatus has been difficult to reconcile with reports of record-breaking summer heat and precedent-setting Arctic ice melts.

At the same time, those who deny the tenets of climate change science — that the burning of fossil fuels adds carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases to the atmosphere and warms it — have seized on the hiatus, calling it proof that global warming isn't real.

Climate scientists, meanwhile, have had a different response. Although most view the pause as a temporary interruption in a long-term warming trend, some disagree and say it has revealed serious flaws in the deliberative processes of the IPCC.

One of the most prominent of these critics is Judith Curry, a climatologist who heads the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She was involved in the third IPCC assessment, which was published in 2001. But now she accuses the organization of intellectual arrogance and bias.

"All other things being equal, adding more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere will have a warming effect on the planet," Curry said. "However, all things are never equal, and what we are seeing is natural climate variability dominating over human impact."

Curry isn't the only one to suggest flaws in established climate models. IPCC vice chair Francis Zwiers, director of the Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium at the University of Victoria in Canada, co-wrote a paper published in this month's Nature Climate Change that said climate models had "significantly" overestimated global warming over the last 20 years — and especially for the last 15 years, which coincides with the onset of the hiatus.

The models had predicted that the average global surface temperature would increase by 0.21 of a degree Celsius over this period, but they turned out to be off by a factor of four, Zwiers and his colleagues wrote. In reality, the average temperature has edged up only 0.05 of a degree Celsius over that time — which in a statistical sense is not significantly different from zero.

Of course, people don't actually spend their entire lives subjected to the global average temperature, which is currently about 15 degrees Celsius, or 59 degrees Fahrenheit. Those who fixate on that single measurement lose sight of significant regional trends, particularly in the Northern Hemisphere, climate scientists say.

Xie and Yu Kosaka, an assistant project scientist at Scripps, used computer models to simulate the Pacific decadal oscillation, a phenomenon related to the El Niño and La Niña ocean temperature cycles that lasts for 20 to 30 years. The model suggested that the northern mid-latitudes — an area that includes the United States and most of Europe and China — were "insulated" from the oscillation's cooling effect during the summer months, as was the Arctic region.

"In the summer you've basically removed the Pacific cooling, so we're still baked by greenhouse gases," Xie said.

As a consequence, 2012 marked two climate milestones, he said. The U.S. experienced its hottest year on record, while ice cover in the North Pole shrank to the lowest level ever observed by satellite.

Other climatologists, such as Bill Patzert of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge, say sea level rise is "unequivocal proof" that greenhouse gases are continuing to heat the planet, and that much of this added heat is being absorbed by the oceans.

As ocean water warms, it expands and drives sea levels higher, Patzert said. Currently, oceans are rising at an average of more than 3 millimeters, or 0.12 of an inch, per year. This pace is significantly faster than the average rate over the last several thousand years, scientists say.

"There's no doubt that in terms of global temperatures we've hit a little flat spot in the road here," Patzert said. "But there's been no slowdown whatsoever in sea level rise, so global warming is alive and well."

Whether that message is communicated successfully by the IPCC this week remains to be seen. In the days leading up to the meeting, the organization has found itself on the defensive.

A draft summary that was leaked to the media reported that scientists were "95% confident" that human activity was responsible for more than half of the increase in average global surface temperature between 1951 and 2010. But critics openly scoff, considering the IPCC's poor record for predicting short-term temperature increases.

"This unpredicted hiatus just reflects the fact that we don't understand things as well as we thought," said Roger Pielke Jr., a professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado in Boulder and vocal critic of the climate change establishment. "Now the IPCC finds itself in a position that a science group never wants to be in. It's in spin management mode."

monte.morin@latimes.com

12.18 | 0 komentar | Read More

Global warming 'hiatus' puts climate change scientists on the spot

It's a climate puzzle that has vexed scientists for more than a decade and added fuel to the arguments of those who insist man-made global warming is a myth.

Since just before the start of the 21st century, the Earth's average global surface temperature has failed to rise despite soaring levels of heat-trapping greenhouse gases and years of dire warnings from environmental advocates.

Now, as scientists with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change gather in Sweden this week to approve portions of the IPCC's fifth assessment report, they are finding themselves pressured to explain this glaring discrepancy.

The panel, a United Nations creation that shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore, hopes to brief world leaders on the current state of climate science in a clear, unified voice. However, experts inside and outside the process say members probably will engage in heated debate over the causes and significance of the so-called global warming hiatus.

"It's contentious," said IPCC panelist Shang-Ping Xie, a professor of climate science at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego. "The stakes have been raised by various people, especially the skeptics."

Though scientists don't have any firm answers, they do have multiple theories. Xie has argued that the hiatus is the result of heat absorption by the Pacific Ocean — a little-understood, naturally occurring process that repeats itself every few decades. Xie and his colleagues presented the idea in a study published last month in the prestigious journal Nature.

The theory, which is gaining adherents, remains unproved by actual observation. Surface temperature records date to the late 1800s, but measurements of deep water temperature began only in the 1960s, so there just isn't enough data to chart the long-term patterns, Xie said.

Scientists have also offered other explanations for the hiatus: lack of sunspot activity, low concentrations of atmospheric water vapor and other marine-related effects. These too remain theories.

For the general public, the existence of the hiatus has been difficult to reconcile with reports of record-breaking summer heat and precedent-setting Arctic ice melts.

At the same time, those who deny the tenets of climate change science — that the burning of fossil fuels adds carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases to the atmosphere and warms it — have seized on the hiatus, calling it proof that global warming isn't real.

Climate scientists, meanwhile, have had a different response. Although most view the pause as a temporary interruption in a long-term warming trend, some disagree and say it has revealed serious flaws in the deliberative processes of the IPCC.

One of the most prominent of these critics is Judith Curry, a climatologist who heads the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She was involved in the third IPCC assessment, which was published in 2001. But now she accuses the organization of intellectual arrogance and bias.

"All other things being equal, adding more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere will have a warming effect on the planet," Curry said. "However, all things are never equal, and what we are seeing is natural climate variability dominating over human impact."

Curry isn't the only one to suggest flaws in established climate models. IPCC vice chair Francis Zwiers, director of the Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium at the University of Victoria in Canada, co-wrote a paper published in this month's Nature Climate Change that said climate models had "significantly" overestimated global warming over the last 20 years — and especially for the last 15 years, which coincides with the onset of the hiatus.

The models had predicted that the average global surface temperature would increase by 0.21 of a degree Celsius over this period, but they turned out to be off by a factor of four, Zwiers and his colleagues wrote. In reality, the average temperature has edged up only 0.05 of a degree Celsius over that time — which in a statistical sense is not significantly different from zero.

Of course, people don't actually spend their entire lives subjected to the global average temperature, which is currently about 15 degrees Celsius, or 59 degrees Fahrenheit. Those who fixate on that single measurement lose sight of significant regional trends, particularly in the Northern Hemisphere, climate scientists say.

Xie and Yu Kosaka, an assistant project scientist at Scripps, used computer models to simulate the Pacific decadal oscillation, a phenomenon related to the El Niño and La Niña ocean temperature cycles that lasts for 20 to 30 years. The model suggested that the northern mid-latitudes — an area that includes the United States and most of Europe and China — were "insulated" from the oscillation's cooling effect during the summer months, as was the Arctic region.

"In the summer you've basically removed the Pacific cooling, so we're still baked by greenhouse gases," Xie said.

As a consequence, 2012 marked two climate milestones, he said. The U.S. experienced its hottest year on record, while ice cover in the North Pole shrank to the lowest level ever observed by satellite.

Other climatologists, such as Bill Patzert of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge, say sea level rise is "unequivocal proof" that greenhouse gases are continuing to heat the planet, and that much of this added heat is being absorbed by the oceans.

As ocean water warms, it expands and drives sea levels higher, Patzert said. Currently, oceans are rising at an average of more than 3 millimeters, or 0.12 of an inch, per year. This pace is significantly faster than the average rate over the last several thousand years, scientists say.

"There's no doubt that in terms of global temperatures we've hit a little flat spot in the road here," Patzert said. "But there's been no slowdown whatsoever in sea level rise, so global warming is alive and well."

Whether that message is communicated successfully by the IPCC this week remains to be seen. In the days leading up to the meeting, the organization has found itself on the defensive.

A draft summary that was leaked to the media reported that scientists were "95% confident" that human activity was responsible for more than half of the increase in average global surface temperature between 1951 and 2010. But critics openly scoff, considering the IPCC's poor record for predicting short-term temperature increases.

"This unpredicted hiatus just reflects the fact that we don't understand things as well as we thought," said Roger Pielke Jr., a professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado in Boulder and vocal critic of the climate change establishment. "Now the IPCC finds itself in a position that a science group never wants to be in. It's in spin management mode."

monte.morin@latimes.com

12.18 | 0 komentar | Read More

Shutdown threat reveals split in Republican Party

WASHINGTON — With one week left before a possible government shutdown, congressional debate has exposed deep divisions within the Republican Party, pitting tea-party-backed conservatives against their colleagues.

Budget moves orchestrated by tea party leader Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas have encountered outright hostility from fellow Republican senators who say his strategy does not appear to have an endgame.

"I didn't go to Harvard or Princeton, but I can count," Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) said last week in a not-so-veiled swipe on Twitter at Cruz, who studied at both schools. Cruz's strategy is leading the party into a "box canyon" and "will fail and weaken our position," Corker said.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is expected to begin debate this week on legislation approved by the Republican-led House that would keep the government running but do away with President Obama's Affordable Care Act.

Because the Senate's Democratic majority is likely to have enough votes to strip out the healthcare law provision and keep Obama's signature domestic achievement on track, Republicans have few options.

They can block the entire bill, joining Cruz's call for a filibuster and risking blame if the government shuts down. Or they can step aside and try to fight the healthcare law during the next budget battle in mid-October.

"I believe we should stand our ground," Cruz said on "Fox News Sunday."

Cruz, a potential presidential contender who just started his filibuster strategy in recent days, conceded that he did not yet have the backing of enough fellow Republicans. But he and his allies, including Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), are working on it.

"This has been a fast-moving target. You know, just a few weeks ago we didn't have anywhere near the votes we needed in the House or in the Senate," Cruz said. "It's now our turn to unify, to stand together with House Republicans."

But top Republicans publicly and privately say a filibuster could be a losing proposition. Not only would the party probably face public blame — much as it did during the last government shutdowns in 1995 and '96 — but there is no simple exit strategy even if it succeeds.

Several key Republicans have distanced themselves from their more firebrand colleagues. A sign of the party's public relations pretzel was clear Saturday as the conservative advocacy group Heritage Action for America urged senators to block the bill, which on Friday it had urged House Republicans to pass.

"If we could do this, we should do it. But we can't," Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) said on "Face the Nation" on Sunday.

To overcome a Republican filibuster, Democrats would need at least six GOP senators — possibly more if some of their 54-member caucus defect — to reach the necessary 60-vote threshold to advance the bill. Most Senate aides think Democrats will have the votes.

Republicans have been counting on defections in particular among Democrats up for reelection in 2014 in states where the Affordable Care Act is less popular. So far, Democratic support for Obama's healthcare law has largely held. Both Sens. Mary L. Landrieu (D-La.) and Kay Hagan (D-N.C.), who are up for reelection next year, have said they will not vote to defund the healthcare law as part of a routine government funding bill.

Polls continue to be mixed on the healthcare law, with many Americans saying they remain confused about what it entails and how it will affect their personal health insurance options. A key test comes Oct. 1, the start of the fiscal year, when the new online health marketplaces open, allowing many uninsured Americans to shop for policies they will be required to carry in 2014.

"The biggest poll we had on this was the last election," Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) said on "This Week With George Stephanopoulos" on Sunday. "President Obama said that he was going to implement the Affordable Care Act, and Mitt Romney said he was going to defund it. And the president won."

This week's Senate action could push the shutdown threat to the final hours. House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) has told lawmakers to prepare for a weekend session.

The longer the Republican senators fight — consuming every minute of floor time — the less time Boehner has to devise alternatives, a problem facing Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) as he attempts to lead renegade senators.

If Senate Republicans fail to block the bill, then Democrats, under Senate rules, will need only a simple majority to delete the provision that would defund the healthcare law. Under that scenario, the bill would return to the House, probably over the weekend, with less than 48 hours for Boehner to act before money halts for federal services, including national parks and soldiers' pay.

Republicans in the House and Senate insist they have no intention of shutting down the government. All they want, they say, is to undo the president's healthcare law before it starts.

Some in their party want to push the confrontation to next month, when Congress will be asked to raise the debt limit to continue paying the nation's bills, but many Republicans see this as their best chance.

"We hope the Senate will stand up to fight," said Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.), who helped organize Republican efforts in the House. "I am confident that we'll have Senate Republicans up there fighting for the American people."

lisa.mascaro@latimes.com

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