U.N. Rejects Claim for Direct Compensation to Victims of Cholera Epidemic in Haiti

There will be no direct financial compensation from the United Nations for the more than 8,000 Haitians who died and the 646,000 sickened by cholera since the disease struck the earthquake-ravaged country in October 2010, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon told the Haitian president this week.

More than 15 months after the United Nations received a legal claim seeking to hold peacekeeping troops responsible for setting off the epidemic, its lawyers declared the claim “not receivable,” citing diplomatic immunity.

At the same time, Partners in Health, the leading nongovernmental health care provider in Haiti, has stepped forward to urge the United Nations to invest more seriously in Mr. Ban’s own largely unfunded anticholera initiative to make amends.

In an Op-Ed article posted Friday night on the Web site of The New York Times, Dr. Louise C. Ivers, the group’s senior health and policy adviser, says the United Nations has “a moral, if not legal, obligation to help solve a crisis it inadvertently helped start.” Evidence, she said, finds the United Nations “largely, though not wholly” culpable for the outbreak of cholera.

To date, Mr. Ban has not acknowledged the reigning scientific theory about the origin of Haiti’s cholera epidemic — that peacekeepers from Nepal imported the cholera and, through a faulty sanitation system at their base, infected a tributary of the country’s largest river.

Dr. Ivers, however, while noting the “causality” of epidemic disease is complex, says that no other reasonable hypothesis for Haiti’s cholera has been put forth.

What makes her comments especially striking is that her organization’s co-founder and chief strategist, Dr. Paul Farmer, served as the United Nations’ deputy special envoy for Haiti for the past three years and was appointed by Mr. Ban in December to lead the very anticholera initiative that she found lacking.

Dr. Farmer declined to comment, but a spokeswoman for Partners in Health said Dr. Ivers’s statements represented the group’s concerns about the 10-year, $2.2 billion anticholera initiative that he was supposed to advise.

The ambitious initiative is intended to upgrade Haiti’s abysmal water and sanitation infrastructure while increasing cholera prevention and treatment efforts, including the expansion of a small cholera vaccination campaign that Partners in Health and a Haitian health care group, Gheskio, undertook last year.

Donors have pledged $215 million. The United Nations said it would contribute $23.5 million — 1 percent of the initiative’s cost, Dr. Ivers said.

In contrast, she said, this year’s budget for the United Nations peacekeeping mission, $648 million, “could more than fund the entire cholera elimination initiative for two years.”

Expressing his “deep sorrow and solidarity with the many Haitian families who lost loved ones in this terrible epidemic,” Nigel Fisher, the new head of the peacekeeping mission, nonetheless said that the United Nations had “mobilized resolutely to combat the disease.” It spent some $118 million on cholera before the initiative was announced, officials have said.

Mr. Ban, through his spokesman, also expressed “his profound sympathy” while announcing on Thursday that the legal claim had been rejected.

Mario Joseph, lead lawyer for the cholera victims, said, “While these sympathies are welcome, they will not stop cholera’s killing or ensure that survivors can go on living after losing breadwinners to cholera.”

The demand, filed in an internal United Nations claims unit, had sought $100,000 for each bereaved family and $50,000 for each cholera survivor.

Mr. Joseph described the United Nations’ terse rejection of a claim filed over a year ago as “disgraceful,” and he and his American colleagues at the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti said they would file a lawsuit in Haiti or abroad.

Though the death rate from cholera has declined significantly since the epidemic initially devastated Haiti, the disease is still coursing through the country. National statistics show a spike of reported cases in December 2012 over that same month in 2011 — 11,220 compared with 8,205.

“The U.N. will not pay,” said a headline Friday on the Web site of Haiti’s Le Nouvelliste newspaper.

“It’s not surprising,” a reader responded.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 23, 2013

An earlier version of this article misrendered a quotation from an Op-Ed article by Dr. Louise C. Ivers. The quotation should have read “largely, though not wholly,” not “largely, if not wholly.”

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Reeva Steenkamp's Father: If Oscar Pistorius Speaks the Truth, 'I Can Perhaps Someday Forgive Him'

By Stephen M. Silverman

02/23/2013 at 09:30 AM EST

Oscar Pistorius and Reeva Steenkamp

Elite/EMPICS Entertainment/ABACA

Having been freed on bail Friday as he awaits trial for the premeditated murder of his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp, Oscar Pistorius "will have to live with his conscience," her father said Saturday.

Speaking to the Beeld newspaper (and translated by the BBC), Barry Steenkamp – referring to Pistorius's claim that he fatally fired his gun four times at Reeva because he thought an intruder had broken into his house – said: "If it didn't happen the way he says it did, he must suffer and he will suffer."

Steenkamp also said, "It does not matter how much money he has and how good his legal team is, he will have to live with his conscience. But if he speaks the truth, I can perhaps someday forgive him."

The next hearing for the Paralympian, 26, is scheduled for June 4.

Besides setting bail at $114,000 – the amount is considered high for a murder trial in South Africa, reports The New York Times – Magistrate Nair Desmond also ordered Pistorius to relinquish firearms and passports, and to stay away from his home, because it is an official crime scene.

In addition, he is not permitted to contact witnesses, leave Pretoria without official permission or use drugs or alcohol. He is to report to a police station twice every week.

Arnold Pistorius, an uncle speaking on behalf of the family, told reporters Friday, "We are relieved by the fact that Oscar got bail today, but at the same time, we are in mourning for Reeva Steenkamp and her family."

Oscar Pistorius is reportedly staying at Arnold's home in an upscale part of Pretoria. News photos showed the athlete being picked up from the courtroom and driven away by his sister, Aimee.

Reeva Steenkamp's mother June told Beeld that the Pistorius family had sent a bouquet of flowers.

"But what does it mean?" she said. "Nothing."

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FDA approves new targeted breast cancer drug

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Food and Drug Administration has approved a first-of-a-kind breast cancer medication that targets tumor cells while sparing healthy ones.

The drug Kadcyla from Roche combines the established drug Herceptin with a powerful chemotherapy drug and a third chemical linking the medicines together. The chemical keeps the cocktail intact until it binds to a cancer cell, delivering a potent dose of anti-tumor poison.

Cancer researchers say the drug is an important step forward because it delivers more medication while reducing the unpleasant side effects of chemotherapy.

"This antibody goes seeking out the tumor cells, gets internalized and then explodes them from within. So it's very kind and gentle on the patients — there's no hair loss, no nausea, no vomiting," said Dr. Melody Cobleigh of Rush University Medical Center. "It's a revolutionary way of treating cancer."

Cobleigh helped conduct the key studies of the drug at the Chicago facility.

The FDA approved the new treatment for about 20 percent of breast cancer patients with a form of the disease that is typically more aggressive and less responsive to hormone therapy. These patients have tumors that overproduce a protein known as HER-2. Breast cancer is the second most deadly form of cancer in U.S. women, and is expected to kill more than 39,000 Americans this year, according to the National Cancer Institute.

The approval will help Roche's Genentech unit build on the blockbuster success of Herceptin, which has long dominated the breast cancer marketplace. The drug had sales of roughly $6 billion last year.

Genentech said Friday that Kadcyla will cost $9,800 per month, compared to $4,500 per month for regular Herceptin. The company estimates a full course of Kadcyla, about nine months of medicine, will cost $94,000.

FDA scientists said they approved the drug based on company studies showing Kadcyla delayed the progression of breast cancer by several months. Researchers reported last year that patients treated with the drug lived 9.6 months before death or the spread of their disease, compared with a little more than six months for patients treated with two other standard drugs, Tykerb and Xeloda.

Overall, patients taking Kadcyla lived about 2.6 years, compared with 2 years for patients taking the other drugs.

FDA specifically approved the drug for patients with advanced breast cancer who have already been treated with Herceptin and taxane, a widely used chemotherapy drug. Doctors are not required to follow FDA prescribing guidelines, and cancer researchers say the drug could have great potential in patients with earlier forms of breast cancer

Kadcyla will carry a boxed warning, the most severe type, alerting doctors and patients that the drug can cause liver toxicity, heart problems and potentially death. The drug can also cause severe birth defects and should not be used by pregnant women.

Kadcyla was developed by South San Francisco-based Genentech using drug-binding technology licensed from Waltham, Mass.-based ImmunoGen. The company developed the chemical that keeps the drug cocktail together and is scheduled to receive a $10.5 million payment from Genentech on the FDA decision. The company will also receive additional royalties on the drug's sales.

Shares of ImmunoGen Inc. rose 2 cents to $14.32 in afternoon trading. The stock has ttraded in a 52-wek range of $10.85 to $18.10.

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New toll lanes open on 10 Freeway

Los Angeles County's venture into toll roads advanced early Saturday with the opening of 14 miles of express lanes on the San Bernardino Freeway — the second project of its type to begin operation in the region since November.

At 12:01 a.m., the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority allowed drivers to travel the 10 Freeway's new high occupancy toll lanes — so-called HOT lanes — between Interstate 605 in El Monte and Alameda Street in downtown Los Angeles.

"This shows we are willing to address traffic, gridlock and congestion in the region," said Los Angeles Mayor and MTA board member Antonio Villaraigosa at a dedication ceremony in El Monte on Friday. "Other cities are going to do this across the county. We are going to see smarter use of highways."

The two westbound and two eastbound "Metro ExpressLanes" will be open to solo motorists who pay a toll, but they will be free for cars carrying at least two passengers.

During peak travel times, however, only carpools of three or more people will be able to use the lanes without paying. Van pools and motorcyclists also can enter the lanes toll free.

Using congestion pricing, motorists will pay anywhere from $0.25 a mile during off-peak periods to $1.40 a mile during the height of rush hour. MTA officials estimate that the average one-way cost should range between $4 and $7.

Setting tolls based on the volume of traffic is designed to maintain speeds of no less than 45 mph in the lanes. If the speed falls below that level, solo motorists will be prohibited from entering the lanes until the minimum speed resumes.

Motorists interested in the express lanes must open a FasTrak account with the MTA and make a $40 deposit to obtain a transponder, an electronic device that automatically bills their accounts whenever the lanes are used. Drivers can adjust the transponder to show how many people are in the vehicle, so the charges can be adjusted. Information is available online at metroexpresslanes.net.

The county marked its entry into the use of tollways on Nov. 10, when the MTA opened its first express lanes along 11 miles of the Harbor Freeway between Adams Boulevard in Los Angeles and the Harbor Gateway Transit Center in the South Bay.

The lanes on both freeways are part of a $210-million demonstration project funded largely by the federal government. It includes upgrading transit and rail stations, 59 new clean-fuel buses, the $60-million El Monte Bus Station, highway ramp improvements and 100 new vanpools.

MTA officials said the express lanes on the 10 and 110 will cost $7 million to $10 million a year to operate, but should generate $18 million to $20 million in revenue, money that can be reinvested in both freeway corridors. So far, more than 100,000 people have obtained transponders for the lanes, officials said.

During the next year, the express-lane projects will be evaluated to determine whether the program should be continued and expanded to other freeways in the county.

"We expect it will be totally successful," said Victor Mendez, head of the Federal Highway Administration. "The project offers commuters a variety of choices, not just the highway."

dan.weikel@latimes.com

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BBC Leaders Have Harsh Words for Own Corporation

LONDON (AP) — The BBC is a bloated, top-heavy, and poorly-led corporation staffed by dull executives — and that's just what the company's leadership says.

In 3,000 pages of emails and interviews published Friday, the BBC's top officials have harsh words for the institutional culture of their respected media group, whose reputation has been tarnished by a pedophilia scandal.

Leading BBC presenter Jeremy Paxman says it has recruited many people "who are clearly not the most creative." BBC Trust Chairman Chris Patten says the organization once had "more senior leaders than China."

The comments are contained in the BBC's probe of its handling of sex crime allegations against the late entertainer Jimmy Savile. It concluded that chaos and miscommunication were to blame for a bungled response to the sex abuse revelations.

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Music Mogul Clive Davis: My Lucky Life

By Kevin O'Donnell

02/22/2013 at 10:00 AM EST

On a late January afternoon, Clive Davis is sitting in his wood-paneled office in Sony Music's Manhattan headquarters. Soon he'll be off to catch the opening night of his pal Barry Manilow's new Broadway show.

But right now he's gazing at his wall, which holds photos of him with just about every superstar musician through the years: Whitney Houston, Alicia Keys, Aretha Franklin.

Growing up in Brooklyn in the '30s and '40s, the legendary music mogul, now 80, was never obsessed with music – "My charts were baseball charts!" – and today sometimes even he can't believe his enormous success. "Luck played a part," he says.

Luck and a phenomenal gift for recognizing, nurturing and selling talent. In his new memoir, The Soundtrack of My Life, the five-time Grammy-winning Hall of Famer reflects on his nearly five decades as a record producer and executive, discovering and guiding performers like Houston and Alicia Keys, overseeing the careers of, at one time, Barbra Streisand and Bob Dylan and helping Santana make a huge comeback in 1999.

"The breadth of styles he can bring to the top – no one can touch that," says Bill Werde, Billboard's editorial director. "Clive deeply feels the music."

His memoir also pulls back the curtain on his personal life. Though married twice and father to four grown children, he reveals that he is bisexual and that his current relationship is with a man.

Though he says he never hid his sexual orientation from those closest to him, he's telling the rest of the world in his book because "this is the story of my life," he says. "I knew I was going to include that important part of it."

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Govs to hear Oregon health care plan

SALEM, Ore. (AP) — Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber will brief other state leaders this weekend on his plan to lower Medicaid costs, touting an overhaul that President Barack Obama highlighted in his State of the Union address for its potential to lower the deficit even as health care expenses climb.

The Oregon Democrat leaves for Washington, D.C., on Friday to pitch his plan that changes the way doctors and hospitals are paid and improves health care coordination for low income residents so that treatable medical problems don't grow in severity or expense.

Kitzhaber says his goal is to win over a handful of other governors from each party.

"I think the politics have been dialed down a couple of notches, and now people are willing to sit down and talk about how we can solve the problem" of rising health care costs, Kitzhaber told The Associated Press in a recent interview.

Kitzhaber introduced the plan in 2011 in the face of a severe state budget deficit, and he's been talking for two years about expanding the initiative beyond his state. Now, it seems he's found people ready to listen.

Hospital executives from Alabama visited Oregon last month to learn about the effort. And the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced Thursday that it's giving Oregon a $45 million grant to help spread the changes beyond the Medicaid population and share information with other states, making it one of only six states to earn a State Innovation Model grant.

Kitzhaber will address his counterparts at a meeting of the National Governors Association. His talk isn't scheduled on the official agenda, but a spokeswoman confirmed that Kitzhaber is expected to present.

"The governors love what they call stealing from one another — taking the good ideas and the successes of their colleagues and trying to figure out how to apply that in their home state," said Matt Salo, director of the National Association of Medicaid Directors.

There's been "huge interest" among other states in Oregon's health overhaul, Salo said, not because the concepts are brand new, but because the state managed to avoid pitfalls that often block health system changes.

Kitzhaber persuaded state lawmakers to redesign the system of delivering and paying for health care under Medicaid, creating incentives for providers to coordinate patient care and prevent avoidable emergency room visits. He has long complained that the current financial incentives encourage volume over quality, driving costs up without making people healthier.

Obama, in his State of the Union address this month, suggested that changes such as Oregon's could be part of a long-term strategy to lower the federal debt by reigning in the growing cost of federally funded health care.

"We'll bring down costs by changing the way our government pays for Medicare, because our medical bills shouldn't be based on the number of tests ordered or days spent in the hospital — they should be based on the quality of care that our seniors receive," Obama said.

The Obama administration has invested in the program, putting up $1.9 billion to keep Oregon's Medicaid program afloat over the next five years while providers make the transition to new business models and incorporate new staff and technology.

In exchange, though, the state has agreed to lower per-capita health care cost inflation by 2 percentage points without affecting quality.

The Medicaid system is unique in each state, and Kitzhaber isn't suggesting that other states should adopt Oregon's specific approach, said Mike Bonetto, Kitzhaber's health care policy adviser. Rather, he wants governors to buy into the broad concept that the delivery system and payment models need to change.

That's not a new theory. But Oregon has shown that under the right circumstances massive changes to deeply entrenched business models can gain wide support.

What Oregon can't yet show is proof the idea is working — that it's lowering costs without squeezing on the quality or availability of care. The state is just finishing compiling baseline data that will be used as a basis of comparison.

One factor driving the Obama administration's interest in Oregon's success is the president's health care overhaul. Under the Affordable Care Act, millions more Americans will join the Medicaid rolls after Jan. 1, and the health care system will have to be able to absorb the influx of patients in a logistically and financially sustainable way.

The federal government will pay 100 percent of the costs for those additional patients in the first three years before scaling back to 90 percent in 2020 and beyond.

"There are a lot of governors who are facing the same challenges we're facing in Oregon," Kitzhaber said. "They recognize that the cost of health care is something they're going to have to get their arms around."

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Eric Garcetti's role in L.A. budget fixes is in dispute

Pressed in the race for mayor of Los Angeles to say how he would fix a persistent budget gap that has led to the gutting of many city services, Eric Garcetti urges voters to look at what he has done in the past.

The onetime City Council president claims credit for reforms that he said cut the City Hall shortfall to just over $200 million from more than $1 billion. He sees "tremendous progress," principally in reducing pension and healthcare costs, and asserts: "I delivered that."

But the truth is in dispute. Although there is not a singular view about any aspect of the city's troubled finances, most of those in the thick of recent budget fights depict Garcetti not as a fiscal hard-liner but as a conciliator who used his leadership position to chart a middle ground on the most significant changes.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, city administrative officer Miguel Santana and one of Garcetti's rivals in the mayoral race, Councilwoman Jan Perry, were among those who pushed for bigger workforce reductions and larger employee contributions toward pensions and healthcare. Labor leaders and their champions on the City Council, including Paul Koretz and Richard Alarcon, sought to cushion the blow for workers.

Garcetti and his supporters say he moderated between those extremes. His critics said he worried too much about process and airing every viewpoint rather than focusing relentlessly on shoring up the city's bottom line.

"It was through the mayor's persistence and steadfast position that we got ongoing concessions," said Santana, the chief budget official for Los Angeles. "It was in collaboration with the council leadership that we finally reached agreements with labor."

The $1-billion-plus deficit Garcetti speaks of shrinking refers not to a single year but to the total of budget gaps that confronted Los Angeles over four years if no corrective action had been taken. The city's fiscal crisis worsened during that time because Garcetti and his fellow council members — including Perry and mayoral candidate Wendy Greuel — approved a city employee pay raise of 25% over five years just before the country stumbled into the recession. (Greuel left the council in 2009 when she was elected city controller.)

Although Garcetti focuses on his role, a portion of the financial improvements were outside his control. The state's elimination of redevelopment agencies in 2012 returned millions to L.A.'s general fund. Tax revenue also ticked upward with the economic recovery.

Garcetti's position as council president from 2006 through 2011 did put him at the center of debate about annual shortfalls that ranged to more than $400 million.

In 2009, he supported an early retirement plan that knocked 2,400 workers off the payroll. "I really pushed that through," the councilman said in an interview. Two participants in confidential contract talks at the heart of the deal had diametrically opposed views. "He made it happen, period," one said; the other offered: "I wouldn't say he was a major mover."

The plan saves the city a maximum of $230 million a year in salary and pension reductions in the short run. But Los Angeles borrowed to spread the costs of the program over 15 years, with current employees and retirees expected to shoulder the cost of the early exits.

The early retirements are expected to do nothing to resolve the long-term "structural deficit" — the $200 million to $400 million a year that Los Angeles spends above what it takes in. And early retirements could even be a net negative in the long run if, as city revenue recovers, new employees are put in those 2,400 empty positions too quickly.

In 2010 the city completed a budget fix that did attack the structural imbalance.

Garcetti's initial proposal called for upping the retirement age for new city employees to 60 from 55 and requiring workers to contribute a minimum of 2% of salary toward their retiree health care.

Budget chief Santana offered a markedly tougher plan. It required a 4% retiree health contribution, halved the health subsidy for retirees and capped pension benefits at 75% of salary instead of 100%. Santana's plan, also for new employees, became the basis of the reform.

Some who served with Garcetti on the council committee that leads employee negotiations pushed for even greater sacrifices. But Garcetti fought against ratcheting up demands on workers, saying it would be useless to approve a plan that would not survive subsequent union votes.

The councilman's greatest contribution may have come after city leaders set their position on pensions. Garcetti took the unusual step of visiting groups of workers. Some employees booed. Some asked him why city lawmakers, among the highest paid in the nation at $178,000 a year, didn't cut their own salaries.

"There was a lot of anger," said a labor leader who spoke on condition of anonymity because that union has not endorsed in the race. "But Eric talked to people as if they were adults and stayed until he answered all their questions. People appreciated him ... taking that kind of heat."

Matt Szabo, a former deputy mayor who helped negotiate with labor, said Garcetti deserved "every bit of credit" he has claimed for deficit reduction. "He knew he was running for mayor, and he was doing the right thing, but it was something that was going to cost him later" in terms of union support, said Szabo, who is running to replace Garcetti on the council.

Most of the employee groups that have endorsed thus far in the mayor's race have come out for Greuel. One political advantage for the controller: She left the council in 2009, before the city began making its toughest demands on workers.

Garcetti found himself stuck the middle again with another 2010 vote, this one over the elimination of 232 jobs — most of them in libraries and day care operations at city parks. Garcetti voted for the layoffs. Later he voted to reconsider, though he said recently that he intended only to re-air the issue, not to keep the workers on the job.

Labor leaders faulted Garcetti for giving the appearance he might be ready to save the jobs when he really wasn't. The reductions remain a sore point, because a "poison pill" in the contract required that any layoffs be accompanied by immediate pay raises for remaining city employees. Fierce disagreement remains over whether the layoffs saved the city any money.

"That became part of the negative picture" of Garcetti, said one labor leader, who asked not to be named out of concern about alienating a possible future mayor. The candidate said in an interview that he frequently found himself hewing a middle ground between some colleagues "who simply hope more revenue would come in" and others who wanted to use an "ax," making indiscriminate cuts. He added: "To me, both views were equally unacceptable."

Critics find Garcetti too malleable, ready to shift to the last argument he has heard. But others appreciate his quest for the middle, saying the fact he sometimes irritated both budget hard-liners and unions showed he had taken a reasoned approach.

"The criticism of Eric is also sort of the good news," said one of the union reps. "He has this very process-y, kumbaya, can't-we-all-get-along style. It drove us all crazy. But now I really miss it because it seems to be all politics over policy."

james.rainey@latimes.com

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Police Replace Pistorius Detective in Embarrassing Setback

PRETORIA, South Africa — The South Africa police replaced the lead investigator in the Oscar Pistorius homicide case on Thursday after embarrassing revelations that he was under investigation himself for seven criminal charges of attempted murder.

The decision by the national police commissioner to remove the investigator, Hilton Botha, was the latest in a series of abrupt twists and setbacks in the prosecution of Mr. Pistorius, the double amputee track star accused of killing his girlfriend. It caused a further delay in the defendant’s hearing on his request to go free on bail in the case that has riveted South Africa and much of the world.

The commissioner, Riah Phiyega, said Mr. Botha would be relieved by Lt. Gen Vinesh Moonoo, whom Ms. Phiyega described as the country’s “top detective,” The Associated Press reported.

The attempted-murder accusations hanging over Mr. Botha only compounded questions about his work on the Pistorius case. Under cross-examination on Wednesday, Mr. Botha was forced to acknowledge sloppy police work and to concede that he could not rule out Mr. Pistorius’s version of events in the shooting death of his girlfriend based on the existing evidence.

“The poor quality of evidence presented by chief investigating officer Botha exposed the disastrous shortcomings in the state’s case,” Mr. Pistorius’s defense lawyer, Barry Roux, said on Thursday.

The courtroom itself became part of the drama on Thursday when the magistrate hearing the case ordered an abrupt and brief suspension because of an unexplained “threat to the court.” The case was later adjourned until Friday.

While the prosecution has accused Mr. Pistorius, 26, of premeditated murder in the killing, Mr. Pistorius has said he opened fire through a locked bathroom door thinking there was an intruder in his home in a gated community and had no intention of killing his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, 29, a model and law-school graduate.

When the bail hearing resumed on Thursday — Mr. Pistorius’s fourth court appearance since the shooting on Feb. 14 — the chief prosecutor, Gerrie Nel, began by acknowledging the attempted murder charges against Mr. Botha, but said prosecutors did not realize that the case had been reinstated when Mr. Botha testified against Mr. Pistorius on Wednesday.

Mr. Nel went on to assail Mr. Pistorius’s defense of his actions in the early hours of Thursday one week ago, when, the athlete has said, he did not realize Ms. Steenkamp was no longer in bed as he rose to investigate the supposed intruder, shouting to her to call the police.

“You want to protect her, but you don’t even look at her. You don’t even ask: Reeva, are you all right?” Mr. Nel said. “His version is so improbable.”

Earlier, the hearing dwelt for some time on the absence of urine from Ms. Steenkamp’s bladder when she died, consistent, the defense said, with the suggestion that she simply went to the toilet rather than fled from Mr. Pistorius after an argument as the prosecution asserts.

Mr. Roux, the defense lawyer, said she may have locked the toilet door after hearing Mr. Pistorius call out that an intruder was in the house.

The case has continued to take a toll on Mr. Pistorius’s global reputation as an emblem of athletic prowess and of triumph over adversity. On Thursday, Nike became the latest corporate sponsor to suspend ties with him. “We believe Oscar Pistorius should be afforded due process, and we will continue to monitor the situation closely,” the company said in a statement on its Web site.

Here in Pretoria, in a development that seemed as bewildering as it was sensational on Thursday, a police brigadier, Neville Malila, said earlier that Detective Botha was set to appear in court in May facing attempted murder charges relating to an episode in October 2011, when Mr. Botha and two other police officers were accused of firing at a minivan carrying seven people.

“Botha and two other policemen allegedly tried to stop a minibus taxi with seven people. They fired shots,” Brigadier Malila said.

South African news reports said the 2011 shooting happened when the officers were pursuing a man accused of killing and dismembering a woman.

Medupe Simasiku, a spokesman for the National Prosecuting Authority, said “the decision to reinstate was taken on Feb. 4, way before the issue of Pistorius” or the shooting death of Ms. Steenkamp “came to light.”

“It’s completely unrelated to this trial,” the spokesman said.

Mr. Botha was quoted in South African news reports as denying claims that he was drunk during the episode in question. He said he and other officers had aimed at the wheels of the minivan without causing injuries and he was convinced that the case had been withdrawn.

The Pistorius case has riveted South Africa and fascinated a wider audience, reflecting Mr. Pistorius’s status as one of the world’s most renowned athletes, whose distinctive carbon-fiber running blades inspired the nickname Blade Runner.

He was born without fibula bones in both legs and underwent amputation before he was one year old. Yet he went on to become a global Paralympic champion and the first Paralympic sprinter to compete against able-bodied runners in the 2012 London Olympics.

The questions surrounding Detective Botha surfaced on Wednesday after he explained how preliminary ballistic evidence supported the prosecution’s assertion that Mr. Pistorius had been wearing prosthetic legs when he shot at a locked bathroom door early on Feb. 14. Ms. Steenkamp wasbehind it at the time.

Mr. Pistorius said in an affidavit read to the court on Tuesday that he had hobbled over from bed on his stumps and had felt extremely vulnerable to a possible intruder as a result.

Lydia Polgreen reported from Pretoria, South Africa, and Alan Cowell from London.

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Prince Harry Rekindles Romance with Cressida Bonas: Report

By Tim Nudd

02/21/2013 at 10:50 AM EST

Prince Harry and Cressida Bonas

Bauer-Griffin; Splash News Online

Has he found his princess this time?

Prince Harry has reportedly rekindled his romance with Cressida Bonas, a British model and society girl with whom he was briefly linked to last summer, according to the Daily Mail, which published a photo of them embracing during a recent ski vacation.

According to various British papers, the couple have been enjoying a PDA-filled trip in the Swiss Alps this week – joining Harry's uncle, Prince Andrew, for his 53rd birthday celebrations.

Andrew's daughter, Princess Eugenie, who is also along for the trip – along with her sister Beatrice and her mother Sarah, Duchess of York – was the one who introduced Bonas to Harry in the first place.

Blonde like Chelsy Davy, Harry's most notable ex, Bonas, 24, is the daughter of Lady Mary-Gaye Georgiana Lorna Curzon, the half-sister of actress Isabella Anstruther-Gough-Calthorpe, who is engaged to Richard Branson's son Sam.

Harry and Bonas also flew together to the Caribbean island of Necker last summer for Sam Branson's birthday.

Their relationship cooled after Harry's notorious naked antics in Las Vegas last August, according to the British press.

Harry, 28, returned last month from Afghanistan, where he had been serving as a captain and Apache helicopter co-pilot gunner.

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Adults get 11 percent of calories from fast food

ATLANTA (AP) — On an average day, U.S. adults get roughly 11 percent of their calories from fast food, a government study shows.

That's down slightly from the 13 percent reported the last time the government tried to pin down how much of the American diet is coming from fast food. Eating fast food too frequently has been seen as a driver of America's obesity problem.

For the research, about 11,000 adults were asked extensive questions about what they ate and drank over the previous 24 hours to come up with the results.

Among the findings:

— Young adults eat more fast food than their elders; 15 percent of calories for ages 20 to 39 and dropping to 6 percent for those 60 and older.

— Blacks get more of their calories from fast-food, 15 percent compared to 11 percent for whites and Hispanics.

— Young black adults got a whopping 21 percent from the likes of Wendy's, Taco Bell and KFC.

The figures are averages. Included in the calculations are some people who almost never eat fast food, as well as others who eat a lot of it.

The survey covers the years 2007 through 2010 and was released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The authors couldn't explain why the proportion of calories from fast food dropped from the 13 percent found in a survey for 2003 through 2006.

One nutrition professor cast doubts on the latest results, saying 11 percent seemed implausibly low. New York University's Marion Nestle said it wouldn't be surprising if some people under-reported their hamburgers, fries and milkshakes since eating too much fast food is increasingly seen as something of a no-no.

"If I were a fast-food company, I'd say 'See, we have nothing to do with obesity! Americans are getting 90 percent of their calories somewhere else!'" she said.

The study didn't include the total number of fast-food calories, just the percentage. Previous government research suggests that the average U.S. adult each day consumes about 270 calories of fast food — the equivalent of a small McDonald's hamburger and a few fries.

The new CDC study found that obese people get about 13 percent of daily calories from fast food, compared with less than 10 percent for skinny and normal-weight people.

There was no difference seen by household income, except for young adults. The poorest — those with an annual household income of less than $30,000 — got 17 percent of their calories from fast food, while the figure was under 14 percent for the most affluent 20- and 30-somethings with a household income of more than $50,000.

That's not surprising since there are disproportionately higher numbers of fast-food restaurants in low-income neighborhoods, Nestle said.

Fast food is accessible and "it's cheap," she said.

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Doctor sexually assaulted unconscious patients, police say

An Orange County anesthesiologist convicted of sexually assaulting three unconscious female patients  has been sentenced to six months in jail and five years probation, despite the objections of prosecutors who wanted state prison time.

Yashwant Balgiri Giri, 60, pleaded guilty to a court offer to multiple felony counts related to the sexual battery of patients, including a 16-year-old, according to a statement from the Orange County district attorney's office.

Giri will have to register as a lifetime sex offender and will have his medical license revoked, in addition to the jail time and probation.

Prosecutors sought a state prison sentence, citing a violation of his "position of power and trust" with the women at a particularly vulnerable time.

Giri, who lives in Cypress, was working at Placentia-Linda Hospital at the time of the crimes, prosecutors said. He previously worked at several hospitals in Anaheim and Lakewood.

Through a spokeswoman, Placentia-Linda Hospital declined to comment.

Prosecutors said that in February 2009,  while a 16-year-old was unconscious from medication, Giri assaulted the girl when a scrub nurse preparing surgery tools had her back turned. The nurse witnessed the assault, prosecutors said, and reported it immediately to a hospital official.

Prosecutors allege that the hospital did not report the incident to police at the time.

In March 2011, prosecutors said, a hospital employee witnessed Giri fondling the breasts of a 36-year-old woman while she was under anesthesia for an outpatient surgery procedure.

An employee allegedly witnessed the incident  Prosecutors said the fondling continued for an extended period of time, as his actions were concealed from the surgeon and nurse.

The alleged assault was reported to a hospital official and then to Placentia police, prosecutors said.

Soon after an investigation began, Giri resigned from his duties at the hospital.

After he was arrested in May 2011, a third alleged victim stepped forward, saying she had been assaulted by Giri.

In April 2010, prosecutors said, Giri assaulted a 27-year-old woman while she was being put under anesthesia but before she was unconscious. Prosecutors said he touched the woman under the pretense of performing an examination, although it had no legitimate medical purpose.

During a sentencing hearing, a statement from the then-36-year-old woman, who was fondled, was read by prosecutors.

"His actions make me question every single doctor, nurse, medical decision and procedure I encounter within my everyday life," she said. "I not only fear for myself, I fear for my child, my friends, my family. This is a burden caused by the perverted actions of this predator."

ALSO:

 O.C. shootings: Listen to frantic 911 call

Hollywood Park Casino might lay off all 600 workers

San Diego sheriff confident 2 wounded deputies will fully recover

-- Rick Rojas

Photo: Yashwant Balgiri Giri. Credit: Orange County district attorney's office.

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IHT Rendezvous: True or False? The Tussle Over Ping Fu's Memoir

Did Ping Fu, a prominent Chinese-American businesswoman and author of a recent memoir, “Bend, not Break,” make up her horrible experiences during the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution in order to gain United States citizenship? Did they help her become an American by claiming political asylum?

That’s what her critics, many of them fellow Chinese-Americans, say. It’s an accusation that can stick. As a recent New York Times investigation showed, claiming persecution has spawned an immigration industry involving lawyers prepping clients to make false asylum claims.

As I write in my Letter from China this week, Ms. Fu is being accused of making up a lot of things in her memoir. She’s also a successful entrepreneur: the U.S. government honored Ms. Fu, the founder of the software company Geomagic (in the process of being sold to 3D Systems), with a “2012 Outstanding American by Choice” award.

Ms. Fu is on the board of the White House’s National Advisory Council on Innovation and Entrepreneurship, and is a member of the National Council on Women in Technology, according to the Web site of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Ms. Fu, who says in her memoir she was “quietly deported” to the U.S. in 1984 for writing about female infanticide while still a college student, denies the accusations. But until now she hadn’t explained in public how she became an American.

In an interview with the International Herald Tribune, she said, apparently for the first time, the reason she kept quiet was she was trying to protect her first husband, an American, whom she does not mention in her memoir. The marriage took place while she was living in California, she said.

“I had a first marriage and that’s how I got my green card,” she said by telephone. She married on Sept. 1, 1986 and divorced three years later. Until now she had kept silent because of a “smear” campaign against her online, mostly by fellow Chinese who accuse her of lying, which extended to real-life harassment, she said: “They smear my name, they try to get my daughter’s name on the Internet, they sent people to Shanghai to surround my family and to Nanjing to harass my neighbors.” She said the accusers, who are “angry” for reasons she doesn’t really understand, contacted U.S. immigration authorities to challenge her award and her citizenship, as well as shareholders of 3D Systems to warn them she was a “liar,” and not to buy Geomagic. Her second husband, Herbert Edelsbrunner, whom she has since divorced, received many “hate e-mails,” she said. “I just don’t want to hurt innocent people.”

If a first, unpublicized marriage might lay to rest one contentious issue, there are others. Some were the result of exaggeration or unclear communication with her ghostwriter, MeiMei Fox of Los Angeles, she said.

In the interview, she volunteered an example of an error: a widely criticized account of the ‘‘period police,’’ the authorities who checked a woman’s menstrual cycle to ensure she wasn’t pregnant in the early days of the one-child policy. To stop women substituting others’ sanitary pads for inspection, they were sometimes required to use their own finger to show blood. Through a misunderstanding with Ms. Fox, Ms. Fu said this was portrayed as the use of other people’s fingers — an invasion of the woman’s body.

Ms. Fox “wrote it wrong,’’ she said. ‘‘I corrected it three times but it didn’t get corrected.’’ Women used their own finger to show blood, she said, but the mistake went into print anyway.

In general, Ms. Fox may have ‘‘just made some searches on the Internet that maybe weren’t correct,’’ Ms. Fu said.

Chiefly the errors involved use of the words ‘‘all, never, any,’’ that generalized unacceptably, Ms. Fu said. And, ‘‘She doesn’t know China’s geography,’’ she said.

At the beginning of her memoir, Ms. Fu writes of being kidnapped by a Vietnamese-American on arrival in the U.S. state of New Mexico and locked in his apartment to care for his very young children, whose mother had left, in a bizarre incident. A spokeswoman at the Albuquerque Police Department’s Records Office, where the alleged kidnapping took place, said she could not locate such an incident in their records. Asked about it, Ms. Fu repeated that she did not press charges as, fresh from China, she was terrified of all police, “So I don’t know how they keep records, if there is no criminal charges or record.”

And in an e-mail to me, she admitted she made mistakes about a magazine she said she helped edit, called Wugou, or “No Hook,” produced in 1979 by students at her college, then called the Jiangsu Teacher’s College (later it changed its name to Suzhou University, she said.) It was not that magazine but another one, This Generation, that was taken to a meeting in Beijing of student magazine writers from around the country, she wrote in the e-mail. “A good case that shows everyone’s memory can be wrong,” she wrote.

But bigger questions about the scale of the online vitriol from parts of the Chinese and Chinese-American community remain. “I really haven’t known China for 20-something years, and it didn’t occur to me that what I wrote would generate so much anger,” she said. In the last years, “as China got stronger, nationalistic views got stronger,” she said, making a “civil conversation” about disagreements apparently harder.

Additional reporting by Cindy Hao in Seattle.

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Why Miranda Lambert's First Rescue Dog Won't Tour with Her Anymore

People Pets

02/20/2013 at 10:45 AM EST

Miranda Lambert with her six dogs

Courtesy Miranda Lambert

Miranda Lambert has no shortage of groupies when she takes her act on the road. But there's one special fan she won't be seeing anymore when on tour: her dog Delilah.

"Delilah was my first rescue dog, and she went everywhere," Lambert tells CMT of her terrier mix. "But she's kind of retired from the road at this point."

These days, Delilah, just one member of Lambert's ever-expanding menagerie of mutts, stays with the country crooner's grandmother. "[Delilah]'s just over it," Lambert says.

Still hanging onto their backstage passes: Cher the Chihuahua and Delta the Chihuahua-pug mix. "They're little bitty dogs," she says, "so it's easy to maneuver them."

Her furry fans are a testament to her love of animals; just last month, the singer helped launch The Pedigree Feeding Project, a new initiative to supply one pet shelter in a worthy community with a year's supply of dog food.

"Our dogs probably run our life a little more than they should, truth be known," adds Lambert, who's married to fellow country star Blake Shelton. "But with rescues, you make up for lost time. And ours have the best life now."

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Future science: Using 3D worlds to visualize data

CHICAGO (AP) — Take a walk through a human brain? Fly over the surface of Mars? Computer scientists at the University of Illinois at Chicago are pushing science fiction closer to reality with a wraparound virtual world where a researcher wearing 3D glasses can do all that and more.

In the system, known as CAVE2, an 8-foot-high screen encircles the viewer 320 degrees. A panorama of images springs from 72 stereoscopic liquid crystal display panels, conveying a dizzying sense of being able to touch what's not really there.

As far back as 1950, sci-fi author Ray Bradbury imagined a children's nursery that could make bedtime stories disturbingly real. "Star Trek" fans might remember the holodeck as the virtual playground where the fictional Enterprise crew relaxed in fantasy worlds.

The Illinois computer scientists have more serious matters in mind when they hand visitors 3D glasses and a controller called a "wand." Scientists in many fields today share a common challenge: How to truly understand overwhelming amounts of data. Jason Leigh, co-inventor of the CAVE2 virtual reality system, believes this technology answers that challenge.

"In the next five years, we anticipate using the CAVE to look at really large-scale data to help scientists make sense of that information. CAVEs are essentially fantastic lenses for bringing data into focus," Leigh said.

The CAVE2 virtual world could change the way doctors are trained and improve patient care, Leigh said. Pharmaceutical researchers could use it to model the way new drugs bind to proteins in the human body. Car designers could virtually "drive" their new vehicle designs.

Imagine turning massive amounts of data — the forces behind a hurricane, for example — into a simulation that a weather researcher could enlarge and explore from the inside. Architects could walk through their skyscrapers before they are built. Surgeons could rehearse a procedure using data from an individual patient.

But the size and expense of room-based virtual reality systems may prove insurmountable barriers to widespread use, said Henry Fuchs, a computer science professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who is familiar with the CAVE technology but wasn't involved in its development.

While he calls the CAVE2 "a national treasure," Fuchs predicts a smaller technology such as Google's Internet-connected eyeglasses will do more to revolutionize medicine than the CAVE. Still, he says large displays are the best way today for people to interact and collaborate.

Believers include the people at Marshalltown, Iowa-based Mechdyne Corp., which has licensed the CAVE2 technology for three years and plans to market it to hospitals, the military and in the oil and gas industry, said Kurt Hoffmeister of Mechdyne.

In Chicago, researchers and graduate students are creating virtual scenarios for testing in the CAVE2. The Mars flyover is created from real NASA data. The brain tour is based on the layout of blood vessels in a real patient.

Brain surgeon Ali Alaraj remembered the first time he viewed the brain using the CAVE2.

"You can walk between the blood vessels," said the University of Illinois College of Medicine neurosurgeon. "You can look at the arteries from below. You can look at the arteries from the side.... That was science fiction for me."

Would doctors process information faster with fewer errors using CAVE2? That's the question behind a proposed study that would compare CAVE2 to conventional methods of detecting brain aneurysms and determining proper treatment, said Andreas Linninger, UIC professor of bioengineering, chemical engineering and computer science.

But it's not all serious business at the lab.

In his spare time during the past two years, research assistant Arthur Nishimoto has been programming the CAVE2 computer with the specifications for the fictional Starship Enterprise. He now can walk around his life-size recreation of the TV spacecraft.

The original technology, introduced in the early 1990s, was called CAVE, which stood for Cave Automatic Virtual Environment and also cleverly referred to Plato's cave, the philosopher's analogy about shadows and reality. It was named by former lab co-directors Tom DeFanti and Dan Sandin.

The second generation of the CAVE, invented by Leigh and his collaborator Andy Johnson, has higher resolution. The project was funded by the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy.

"It's fantastic to come to work. Every day is like getting to live a science fiction dream," Leigh said. "To do science in this kind of environment is absolutely amazing."

___

AP Medical Writer Carla K. Johnson can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/CarlaKJohnson.

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L.A. Regional Food Bank is thriving at 40

David Navarro drove south from the Los Angeles Boys & Girls Club in Lincoln Heights on a recent sun-drenched day, headed to his weekly destination in a dust-gray Ford pickup.

As usual, he couldn't simply cruise into the crowded parking lot of the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank on 41st Street near Alameda. He was stopped by an employee who works miracles in the lot, arranging rigs in jigsaw patterns as drivers wait their turn to make food pickups.

The Salvation Army was already there, along with the Good News Central Church and the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles. Hollywood West Tenant Action Council was pulling in behind Navarro.

"I'll go in now and see what they have today," said Navarro, who told me that back at the Boys & Girls Club, people would be lining up for whatever he brought back.

Once inside the sprawling warehouse, Navarro moved as if he was in a race, trying to get his hands on as many perishables as he could before other drivers claimed them.

"They like any nice vegetables like this," he said, hoisting several crates of firm, stout zucchini onto his pushcart.

Over the course of an hour, Navarro worked up a sweat gathering boxes of bread and mounds of bananas, apples, lettuce and tomatoes. All of this tipped the scales at 556 pounds, and Navarro pushed the teetering cargo outside and loaded it onto his truck.

I thought he was done, but no.

"Now I go back," he said, "and fill the cart again."

In a region of staggering abundance, there is still desperate need. In a culture that wastes tons of food, there is still considerable hunger. And no charitable organization does more to balance the scales than the food bank, which began exactly 40 years ago, on Feb. 20, 1973.

It all began with a Pasadena cook named Tony Collier, who hated seeing perfectly good food getting thrown out at the recovery center where he worked. He began redistributing it to those in need, and the operation just kept growing. Today, it distributes some 200,000 pounds of food daily. A staff of 106 is backed up by 32,000 volunteers who pitch in at least one day a year, sorting food that includes non-perishables such as canned corn, as well as foods such as navel oranges and frozen chicken that have to be turned around quickly, before they go bad.

Each morning, a convoy of food bank trucks retrieves surplus food from farms, supermarket chains and other donors and brings it back to the warehouse, where it is picked up by about 650 agencies. Another 600 groups are on a waiting list to be included in the daily giveaway.

"Four hundred thousand of the 1 million people we serve each year are kids," said Michael Flood, president and chief executive of the food bank.

The challenge of the food bank has been to hook up with farmers whose harvest is sometimes bigger than the demand, or with supermarkets that have stocked more perishable food than they can sell. Ralphs and Vons are among the biggest donors to the food bank.

Still, billions of dollars worth of food ends up in dumpsters every year in the U.S., Flood said. He encourages citizens to be more conscious of waste and get involved in food donations or volunteering at a local pantry or the food bank (for more information, http://www.lafoodbank.org).

If you do happen to wander into the food bank, watch your step or you could get run over by a forklift. They zip around like bumper cars, honking horns as they wheel hulking loads toward the exits. And one of the employees who supervises the flow from delivery trucks to conveyor belts to palates is Valerie Rodriguez.

Rodriguez, like the food she processes, didn't get where she was supposed to go on the first try. The food bank is her second chance. As a teen growing up in South El Monte, she got it all wrong, becoming a drug addict, getting married way too young, losing kids she couldn't care for, and ending up in rehab at several skid row agencies, including the L.A. Mission and Union Rescue Mission.

But then she began straightening herself out, and as part of a welfare-to-work program, Rodriguez was assigned to volunteer at the food bank, not knowing anything about it. That's when she saw the trucks roll in from the missions and made the connection:

The food she'd eaten at the missions came from the food bank. She'd gone from recipient to supplier. And the food bank liked her so much that she was offered a temp job.

"It was after about a year of volunteering here," Rodriguez said.

Later, she was promoted to full time, and she's since remarried and regained custody of her children.

"It's still a struggle," she said. "But my hope and dream and desire is to save and buy a home. I want to have a home for my kids to grow up in."

While Rodriguez supervised volunteers, David Navarro finished loading his pickup and drove north from the food bank with more than 1,000 pounds of food. That evening, volunteers bagged the goods as men and women inched closer to the door of the Boys & Girls Club, eagerly awaiting their care packages.

Jo Ellen Kitchen, a volunteer at the club since the 1980s, told me she'd heard that the country has started to see an economic recovery.

"But it never really seems to get here."

It was Valentine's Day, and 20 people were in line. As dusk drew in around them, Alvina Rodriguez and Teresa Olmeda talked about the challenges of temporary work, low pay and hungry children. On this night, they and the others would go home with dinner because a simple act of compassion 40 years ago keeps rippling across the city.

steve.lopez@latimes.com

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For His Second Act, Japanese Premier Plays It Safe, With Early Results

Toru Hanai/Reuters

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, whose policies have sent the Tokyo stock market up, will visit Washington this week.

TOKYO — Since taking office less than two months ago, Japan’s outspokenly hawkish new prime minister, Shinzo Abe, has been in what some political analysts are calling “safe driving mode.” He has carefully avoided saying or doing anything to provoke other Asian nations, while focusing instead on wooing voters with steps to revive the moribund domestic economy.

So far, his approach seems to be working. His plans for public-works projects, stimulus measures called “Abenomics,” have sent the Tokyo stock market surging along with Mr. Abe’s own approval rating, which is now at 71 percent, according to the latest poll by Yomiuri Shimbun. On Friday, he will seek to build on his strong start when he meets President Obama at a Washington summit meeting aimed at improving relations with the United States, which regards Japan as its most important ally in Asia.

Mr. Abe, 58, has said he wants to be what Japan has not seen in almost a decade: a steady-handed leader who lasts long enough in office to actually get things done. Analysts say his success hinges on whether he can lead his Liberal Democratic Party to victory in upper house elections in July, and end the split Parliament that undermined many of his predecessors.

What is less clear is what he will do if he wins that election. One trait that makes Mr. Abe a bit of an enigma, some analysts say, is that he seems to have two sides: the realist and the right-wing ideologue. In analysts’ view, if he does jettison some of his current caution, for instance by trying to revise Japan’s antiwar Constitution to allow a full-fledged military instead of its current Self-Defense Force, he risks provoking a standoff with China over disputed islands, and possibly isolating Japan in a region still sensitive to its early-20th-century militarism.

“In his first six weeks, he has done everything he can to show he is a moderate,” said Andrew L. Oros, director of international studies at Washington College in Chestertown, Md. “But after July, he might feel he has a freer rein to do things that he thinks are justified.”

Part of the problem, Mr. Oros and others say, is that Mr. Abe faces conflicting political pressures. His base in the governing party’s most conservative wing expects bold steps to end what it sees as Japan’s overly prolonged displays of contrition for World War II. But he must also convince the broader public that he is a coolheaded, competent steward of a declining nation that also depends on China for its economic future.

There is also the ghost of his past failure. The last time he was prime minister, six years ago, he stepped down amid criticism that he had been “clueless” for having pursued a nationalistic agenda of revising the Constitution and history textbooks, and for not doing more to reduce unemployment and spur the economy.

This time, Mr. Abe is acting with the determined carefulness of a man given a second chance. He has focused on extricating Japan from its recession with steps that have quickly buoyed the country’s economy, the world’s third-largest. Since being named prime minister after his party’s election victory in December, Mr. Abe has promised $215 billion in public works spending to create jobs and promote growth.

He has also publicly pressured the central bank, the Bank of Japan, to move more aggressively to end years of corrosive price declines known as deflation — threatening, for example, to amend the law on the bank’s independence if it does not reach its target of 2 percent inflation. The bank’s governor, Masaaki Shirakawa, announced this month that he would step aside to allow Mr. Abe to appoint a new chief who will work more closely with the government by pumping more money into the economy to prompt banks to lend more and companies to spend more.

“Mr. Abe has clearly learned the lessons of his past failure,” said Norihiko Narita, a political scientist at Surugadai University, near Tokyo. “And the biggest lesson is that voters care more about the economy.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 19, 2013

An earlier version of this article referred incorrectly to a request for a meeting in January that the Obama administration declined. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was proposing traveling to the United States; the Japanese did not ask President Obama to visit.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 19, 2013

An earlier version of this article misspelled part of the name of the Japanese newspaper whose latest poll gave Mr. Abe an approval rating of 71 percent. It is Yomiuri Shimbun, not Shimbum.

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Michelle Obama: My Bangs Were a 'Midlife Crisis'

Stylewatch
Style News Now

02/19/2013 at 10:04 AM ET

Taylor Hill/WireImage

When you’re the First Lady of the United States, you don’t have many options if you’re looking to act on a midlife crisis.

So Michelle Obama did what any woman looking to shake things up (within Secret Servce-approved parameters, of course) would do: cut her bangs.

“This is my midlife crisis, the bangs,” Obama joked on The Rachael Ray Show. “I couldn’t get a sports car. They won’t let me bungee-jump. So instead, I cut my bangs.”

And unlike many midlife crises, this one has gotten a big thumbs up from her spouse. “I love her bangs!” President Barack Obama said shortly after she cut them on her 49th birthday. “She always looks good.”

Not that she needed her husband’s approval, of course; though President Obama may be the leader of the free world, his wife is strictly the boss of her own hair. “I can do this,” she told Ray, smiling and gesturing to her new cut. “This is all mine.”

Tell us: Have you ever changed up your look impulsively? What do you think of Obama’s “midlife crisis”?

–Alex Apatoff

PHOTOS: SEE MORE SURPRISING STAR HAIR CHANGES HERE!

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UK patient dies from SARS-like coronavirus

LONDON (AP) — A patient being treated for a mysterious SARS-like virus has died, a British hospital said Tuesday.

Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, central England, said the coronavirus victim was also being treated for "a long-term, complex unrelated health problem" and already had a compromised immune system.

A total of 12 people worldwide have been diagnosed with the disease, six of whom have died.

The virus was first identified last year in the Middle East. Most of those infected had traveled to Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Jordan or Pakistan, but the person who just died is believed to have caught it from a relative in Britain, where there have been four confirmed cases.

The new coronavirus is part of a family of viruses that cause ailments including the common cold and SARS. In 2003, a global outbreak of SARS killed about 800 people worldwide.

Health experts still aren't sure exactly how humans are being infected. The new coronavirus is most closely related to a bat virus and scientists are considering whether bats or other animals like goats or camels are a possible source of infection.

Britain's Health Protection Agency has said while it appears the virus can spread from person to person, "the risk of infection in contacts in most circumstances is still considered to be low."

Officials at the World Health Organization said the new virus has probably already spread between humans in some instances. In Saudi Arabia last year, four members of the same family fell ill and two died. And in a cluster of about a dozen people in Jordan, the virus may have spread at a hospital's intensive care unit.

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Garcetti and Greuel trade shots in mayoral candidates debate

Los Angeles City Councilman Eric Garcetti disparaged rival Wendy Greuel's record as city controller and mocked her campaign platform Monday night in a feisty debate that highlighted the intensifying clash between the top two contenders in the race for mayor.

Greuel defended her record and agenda, but declined to take direct shots at Garcetti. Instead, she accused the entire City Council of failing to act on her findings of waste, fraud and abuse at City Hall.

"They can attack me," she said. "They can attack my numbers. They can attack my auditors. But the one thing they haven't done is attack the problem."

Garcetti's aggressive posture in the Cal State L.A. debate reflects the increasing pressure he faces as Greuel reaps the benefits of more than $1 million in advertising by independent committees funded by public employee unions and other supporters.

It also overshadowed efforts by three other candidates — Councilwoman Jan Perry, entertainment lawyer Kevin James and former tech executive Emanuel Pleitez — to decisively break from the pack during the 90-minute debate, televised live on KABC-TV Channel 7. Voters go to the polls in two weeks.

Garcetti began his assault by challenging as "simply not true" Greuel's frequent statements that she identified $160 million in squandered city money.

"It rests on an accounting maneuver and on unrealistic projections," he said, citing a Times review of audits by Greuel's office.

"What is real," he added, "is real pension reform like we've done the last few years, real cuts and consolidations — the tough choices — not just identifying potential savings, but actually enacting them."

Greuel told viewers that two former controllers, Laura Chick and Rick Tuttle, were supporting her.

"They told me that City Hall would try and kill the messenger, and that's what they're trying to do," she said. "And apparently my opponents don't feel there is any waste. I know there is and I'm going to do something about it."

Garcetti's offensive left James, a former federal prosecutor, in the unfamiliar role of watching another candidate play attack dog.

Nonetheless, he said large raises for city employees — approved by Garcetti, Perry and Greuel when she was on the City Council — show that three longtime officials were "too cozy with the union leaders that have run City Hall."

"We'll talk about cozy later, Mr. James," Perry responded. She too portrayed herself as independent.

"I'm not the favorite of the political power-brokers or insiders because I've never been willing to cut backroom deals or make promises to special interests," said Perry, whose campaign mailers have accused Greuel of selling out to the union representing DWP workers in return for support.

Pleitez struck similar notes, saying he was "tired of the same politicians saying what they're doing, yet the results — there's nothing to show for them."

"Let's take our city in a new direction," said Pleitez.

But it was Garcetti's attacks that stood out.

Alluding to $700,000 spent by the city utility employees' union to benefit Greuel, Garcetti asked, "Do you want a DWP union to buy this election by spending a million dollars on Ms. Greuel's campaign? Or do you want a mayor who is independent enough to make the right decisions and to preserve our democracy?"

Taking aim at her plan to hire more than 2,000 new police officers and 700 new firefighters and paramedics by 2020, Garcetti cited Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky's criticism of the plan as unrealistic, given the city's budget troubles.

Greuel defended her plan and attacked the council for cutting the Fire Department's budget after the recession hit. She also noted her endorsements by public safety unions.

"The police officers and the firefighters had a choice," she said. "They chose me."

michael.finnegan@latimes.com

david.zahniser@latimes.com

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Anti-Apartheid Leader Forms New Party in South Africa

JOHANNESBURG — Mamphela Ramphele, a respected veteran of the struggle against apartheid, announced on Monday that she had formed a new political party to compete against the governing African National Congress, calling on South Africans to “join me on a journey to build the country of our dreams.”

The party is called Agang, a Sotho word meaning “build,” said Dr. Ramphele, 65, a medical doctor who became an anti-apartheid activist and a leader of the Black Consciousness movement. In recent years, Dr. Ramphele has focused on social activism and business, serving until last week as the chairwoman of Gold Fields, a major mining firm.

The new party is the latest in a string of challengers to the dominance of the A.N.C., which has handily won every national election since apartheid ended in 1994 but has come under increasing scrutiny over charges of corruption and poor governance. In addition, inequality has grown in South Africa since the end of apartheid despite the party’s pledge to bring “A Better Life for All.” The country’s education system is in shambles.

Dr. Ramphele argued forcefully to an audience at the old Women’s Jail in Johannesburg that the government had failed to deliver, and vowed to tackle corruption head on.

“The country of our dreams has unfortunately faded,” she said in a speech. “The dream has faded for the many living in poverty and destitution in our increasingly unequal society. And perhaps worst of all, my generation has to confess to the young people of our country: we have failed you. We have failed to build for you an education and training system to prepare you for life in the 21st century.”

It is a refrain that echoes the criticisms of other opposition parties, including the Democratic Alliance, the main opposition, which was reported to have courted Dr. Ramphele, seeking to put a prominent and well-respected black leader atop what is still perceived as a largely white party despite its gains in urban black townships.

In an interview, Dr. Ramphele said she opted to start her own movement because South Africa needs a fresh start.

“The country needs a new beginning,” she said, dressed in a embroidered traditional outfit from her home state, Limpopo. “It is not going to happen with the current players.”

Dr. Ramphele has been a fixture in South African public life for decades. She had a close relationship with the Black Consciousness activist Steve Biko, who died in police custody in 1977, having two children with him. She was banished for seven years to the village of Lenyenye in a bleak northern corner of the country by the apartheid regime for her political activism. Undeterred, she started a small clinic that treated thousands of rural residents. She also earned degrees in anthropology and business.

When apartheid ended she was named Vice Chancellor of the University of Cape Town, the first black person to hold that post. She later became a managing director of the World Bank, and in recent years has been sought after as a corporate board member.

While her career has given her sterling international credentials, it remains to be seen whether she can muster a mass following in a country where populist appeal has proved essential to political success. Asked about the size of her team, she responded that “we are an energetic team of five.” Hobnobbing with corporate titans and global leaders has left Dr. Ramphele open to charges of elitism, some say.

Bantu Holomisa, leader of the United Democratic Movement, which he started after leaving the A.N.C. in 1997, said in a statement that he welcomed Dr. Ramphele to politics and signaled a willingness to join forces.

“We look forward to working with Dr. Ramphele in our efforts to build a strong political alternative for the people of South Africa,” he said.

But efforts to blunt A.N.C. dominance have struggled in the past. The Congress of the People, a breakaway party started in 2008 by supporters of former president Thabo Mbeki and other disgruntled A.N.C. members, has seen its power wane.

The A.N.C. has been rocked by scandal and tragedy over the past year. President Jacob Zuma has faced repeated investigations over $27 million in government money spent on security upgrades to his private residence in his home village of Nkandla. The police killing of 33 striking workers at a platinum mine in August 2012 caused many to question the A.N.C.’s commitment to helping the poor. The crisis led credit agencies to slash the country’s debt rating, which has hurt already slowing economic growth.

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Reeva Steenkamp's Mom Wants Answers: 'Why My Little Girl?'

By Andrea Billups and Peter Cox

02/18/2013 at 10:30 AM EST

Reeva Steenkamp and Oscar Pistorius

Gallo Images/REX USA

As "Blade Runner" Oscar Pistorius prepares to return to court on Tuesday, where he will likely seek bail, the grieving mother of his dead girlfriend, model Reeva Steenkamp, has called for answers in the case, asking, "Why my little girl?"

June Steenkamp, in an interview with the Times newspaper of South Africa, wonders "Why did he do this? … She loved like no one else could love. Just like that, she is gone."

Pistorius's agent, Pete van Zyl, visited him in jail over the weekend and told PEOPLE it was too early to determine what the charges might mean for the star's running career. He would not comment on the case and said he was there to lend support to Pistorius and update him on sponsorship, contracts and future races.

"I can tell you that we have had overwhelming support from Oscar from a lot of fans on a global scale, really on a global scale. South African fans, international fans from literally all over the world," van Zyl told PEOPLE. "He knows it. I have given him that message."

Meanwhile, new details continue to emerge surrounding Steenkamp's death. Citing a police official close to the case, CNN reports that Steenkamp, 30, was shot through the bathroom door inside Pistorius's house.

She reportedly also was alive after the shooting, with Pistorius carrying her downstairs in a frantic effort to save her life. Local media in his hometown of Pretoria have reported that Pistorius, 26, thought Steenkamp was an intruder and shot her by accident.

Monday's Today show reported that Pistorius called friends around 4 a.m. the day of the shooting to ask for help, telling them there had been a terrible accident and that Steenkamp had been shot. (Neighbors who had reportedly heard commotion at the Olympian's home, called police.)

Reuters, citing an eyewitness account published in the Sunday Argus of a paramedic on the scene, said Steenkamp was already dead when he arrived.

The reports said she had been shot once in the head and in the arm, where the bullet broke the bone, and was lying at the bottom of the stairs wearing a black sweatshirt and long pants, but without shoes. When told she could not be revived, Pistorius began to cry, the medic said.

Through his agent, Pistorius has rejected any suggestion that Steenkamp was murdered. The couple had been dating since November. Her publicist told Today that the couple had "seemed happy."

Prosecutors said on Friday that they planned to pursue a charge of premeditated murder. If convicted on that charge, Pistorius would face life in prison.

Pistorius' father, Henke Pistorius, told the Sunday Telegraph that his family thinks the shooting was an accident based on their son's thinking Steenkamp was an intruder inside his home.

"When you are a sportsman, you act even more on instinct," said Henke Pistorius. "It's instinct – things happen and that's what you do."

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Study: Better TV might improve kids' behavior

SEATTLE (AP) — Teaching parents to switch channels from violent shows to educational TV can improve preschoolers' behavior, even without getting them to watch less, a study found.

The results were modest and faded over time, but may hold promise for finding ways to help young children avoid aggressive, violent behavior, the study authors and other doctors said.

"It's not just about turning off the television. It's about changing the channel. What children watch is as important as how much they watch," said lead author Dr. Dimitri Christakis, a pediatrician and researcher at Seattle Children's Research Institute.

The research was to be published online Monday by the journal Pediatrics.

The study involved 565 Seattle parents, who periodically filled out TV-watching diaries and questionnaires measuring their child's behavior.

Half were coached for six months on getting their 3-to-5-year-old kids to watch shows like "Sesame Street" and "Dora the Explorer" rather than more violent programs like "Power Rangers." The results were compared with kids whose parents who got advice on healthy eating instead.

At six months, children in both groups showed improved behavior, but there was a little bit more improvement in the group that was coached on their TV watching.

By one year, there was no meaningful difference between the two groups overall. Low-income boys appeared to get the most short-term benefit.

"That's important because they are at the greatest risk, both for being perpetrators of aggression in real life, but also being victims of aggression," Christakis said.

The study has some flaws. The parents weren't told the purpose of the study, but the authors concede they probably figured it out and that might have affected the results.

Before the study, the children averaged about 1½ hours of TV, video and computer game watching a day, with violent content making up about a quarter of that time. By the end of the study, that increased by up to 10 minutes. Those in the TV coaching group increased their time with positive shows; the healthy eating group watched more violent TV.

Nancy Jensen, who took part with her now 6-year-old daughter, said the study was a wake-up call.

"I didn't realize how much Elizabeth was watching and how much she was watching on her own," she said.

Jensen said her daughter's behavior improved after making changes, and she continues to control what Elizabeth and her 2-year-old brother, Joe, watch. She also decided to replace most of Elizabeth's TV time with games, art and outdoor fun.

During a recent visit to their Seattle home, the children seemed more interested in playing with blocks and running around outside than watching TV.

Another researcher who was not involved in this study but also focuses his work on kids and television commended Christakis for taking a look at the influence of positive TV programs, instead of focusing on the impact of violent TV.

"I think it's fabulous that people are looking on the positive side. Because no one's going to stop watching TV, we have to have viable alternatives for kids," said Dr. Michael Rich, director of the Center on Media and Child Health at Children's Hospital Boston.

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Online:

Pediatrics: http://www.pediatrics.org

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Contact AP Writer Donna Blankinship through Twitter (at)dgblankinship

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Major donor to GOP helping L.A. mayoral candidate Kevin James

Dallas billionaire Harold Simmons and Los Angeles mayoral candidate Kevin James crossed paths just once.

It was an intimate cocktail fundraiser for James in the tony Montecito enclave near Santa Barbara, where Simmons owns a weekend retreat and counts Oprah Winfrey among his neighbors. Simmons, one of the top donors to Republican "super PACs" in 2012, turned to the candidate and asked, "What on Earth can you do to save L.A.?"

James, recounting the exchange, said he launched into his political pitch, railing against the city's flirtation with bankruptcy and the power of its labor unions. "I remember him telling me he was impressed," James said.

Later, when James made formal remarks to the group, which included a few of Simmons' fellow Texans, the industrial magnate stood up and announced that he would give. By mid-January, Simmons had given $600,000 to an independent group backing James, making him the largest single contributor to any political committee affiliated with the L.A. mayor's race — a sphere most often dominated by labor unions.

His contributions made it possible for a super PAC known as Better Way LA, created by GOP ad man Fred Davis, to buy half a million dollars of TV ad time last week promoting James, the only Republican in the race.

But that political help could come at a price in a city as liberal and Democratic as Los Angeles, where James needs to win over moderates, as well as conservatives, to reach a two-way runoff in May. In recent years, Simmons has funded some of the most controversial conservative groups in presidential politics, and last year he called President Obama "the most dangerous American alive."

Simmons' interest in city politics and a long shot like James remains something of a mystery. A corporate investor whose net worth was valued at $7.1 billion by Forbes last September, Simmons declined to be interviewed. He votes in Texas and has not contributed to any other Los Angeles city candidates in recent years, according to election records.

By the standards of his past political giving, Simmons' support for the pro-James super PAC has been small.

In last year's presidential race, Simmons, his wife, his companies and their employees gave $31 million to a network of super PACs that proliferated after the Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United ruling, which loosened the reins on political spending by corporations and labor unions, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

"This is one of a handful of mega-donors in U.S. politics who has given extraordinary sums of money over many, many years," said Sheila Krumholz, the center's executive director who has monitored Simmons' political giving for two decades. "He's a savvy donor, somebody who is very familiar with how this game is played at the highest levels and on down."

James, an openly gay Republican, said he knew of no specific business that Simmons has before the city. And Simmons did not mention any particular Los Angeles issue, he said.

James suggested that Simmons, 81, may be interested in elevating a moderate Republican voice statewide. Simmons has contributed to another California moderate, former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, and told the Wall Street Journal last year that he was "probably pro-choice."

"For donors who are looking for the Republican Party to be able to plant a flag again in California," James said, "I'm the kind of Republican that's a bigger-tent Republican."

In that rare interview he granted the Wall Street Journal last year, Simmons said he wanted to make the U.S. tax and regulatory structure more friendly to business by electing Republicans at all levels of government. He said he hoped like-minded individuals would make political donations to help counter spending by labor unions.

In 2004, Simmons donated $3 million to Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a group that ran ads accusing then-Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry of exaggerating his record in the Vietnam War. And during President Obama's first run, Simmons was the sole funder of the American Issues Project, which ran TV ads tying Obama to a founder of the Weather Underground, which planned a series of bombings to protest the Vietnam War.

In his interview with the Journal, Simmons described Obama as "a socialist" who "would eliminate free enterprise in this country."

At times, Simmons' political contributions have tracked closely with his business interests — a network of companies that include hazardous waste disposal and metal component manufacturers.

He was a generous backer of Texas Gov. Rick Perry at a time when one of those companies, Waste Control Specialists, needed the governor's backing to build a low-level radioactive waste disposal site, the nation's first such new facility in three decades.

After a fierce lobbying campaign, Perry signed a law opening the way for the proposal. Perry appointees later approved the license for the $500-million site in West Texas despite concerns of some state environmental experts about potential harm to aquifers near the site. Simmons' spokesman has said that Simmons' connections to Perry did not work to his company's advantage and in fact increased the state's scrutiny of the deal.

Krumholz said Simmons' companies span so many fields that it has been difficult to trace possible ties between his business interests and his giving even at the federal level.

"He's kind of like the AT&T of individual donors," said Krumholz, noting that the telecommunications giant has interests in defense contracting and other industries. "He might have reason to be involved at various levels of government and in specific races because his investments are so diverse."

maeve.reston@latimes.com

Molly Hennessy-Fiske contributed to this report.

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