The lure of fishing endures even when they're not biting

Jordan and Stephanie Martinez planned to celebrate their one-month wedding anniversary with a night out at their favorite Thai restaurant. But what's a date without fishing? So first, they drove in from Alhambra for a little pole time at Belmont Veterans Memorial Pier in Long Beach.

Carrying folding camp chairs and tackle boxes, the Martinezes joined a handful of lone fishermen and families staking out spots along the pier's metal railing and dropping their lines. From Vietnamese, Filipino, Mexican and African American backgrounds, they shared bait, admired each other's catches flopping around in plastic buckets of ice, and traded fish stories.

What they didn't do is complain about the fish not biting. They didn't care. They came out, even with rain in the forecast, to break away, enjoy the peace and camaraderie.

"We don't even need to fish," Jordan Martinez, 23, a FedEx driver, said. "We're just here for the fun."

Belmont is the homely stepsister to the Redondo Beach and Santa Monica piers, with their restaurants, honky-tonks and vintage arcade games like Zoltar the Fortune Teller. The T-shaped pier doesn't have much in the way of frills — just portable toilets and street lights with metal shades shaped like pith helmets. An American flag flaps over a bait shop at the end.

What the pier, a third of a mile long and as wide as a city street, does have is space. And, on a chilly autumn night this week, a bizarre but strangely enchanting view. Christmas lights hung from a metal frame form a Christmas tree in front of the bait shop. In the distance, the Queen Mary's stacks were also strung for the holidays. The moon rose, spilling ribbons of milky light across the waters.

Way offshore, a twinkling breakwater built by the Navy slashed through the bay. Closer in, several islands were alight. It took a minute to realize the islands weren't real: they were camouflage for oil and gas drilling equipment. With their pastel towers and unnaturally jaunty palms, they looked like where Gilligan pulled up after the S.S. Minnow shipwrecked, or the atoll where castaways slump in old New Yorker cartoons.

I was drawn to the pier by a half-baked desire to start fishing again. While the cool kids worked on their tans in Balboa, my family vacationed at the then-unfashionable Oxnard Beach, which seemed to be socked in solid in dense fog every day of the year. But at dawn, my father would take us fishing off the now-vanished Point Mugu Pier. He was a World War II veteran, but even so, it remains a mystery to me how he got us on the restricted naval base that once included the pier.

Although the ocean perch we caught and fried up remains my favorite breakfast, I had failed to interest my kids in fishing. And without equipment or somebody to tell me what to do, I hadn't fished for decades.

But the Belmont pier was my kind of place. Nobody seemed to know what they were doing. They paid no heed to the "do not eat" list of fish contaminated by DDT, PCBs and mercury posted on the pier in four languages — English, Spanish, Chinese and Khmer. If it's big enough to keep, it's big enough to eat.

"That's for kids," Benilda Badeo, a Long Beach caregiver for the elderly, said as she laughed off the do-not-eat warning and prepared to take home several forbidden smelt. "I'm already an adult."

Several fishermen and women admitted they didn't know one fish species from another. Icie Gibson, 29, of Compton, said she didn't "eat anything with eyes on the same side of the head."

"There was one here came up biting on the line of the pole," Gibson said. "That thing was vicious. I said, oh no, that's not an eater."

The fishing lore they passed around was contradictory. Martin Estrada blamed the near-full moon for his bad luck.

"The moon has to be gone to best catch fish," said the 42-year-old Long Beach gardener. "I just like to waste my time here."

John Colima, on the other hand, held that fish flee the darkness. He said he suspended a light bulb above the water line or threw in glow sticks to attract the little buggers.

Colima, his face obscured behind the light from his headlamp, arrived with a hoop net as well as his pole. The net was for catching lobsters, he said.

Lobstering in Southern California? Granted, they're spiny, strange and altogether different from Maine's finest. But Colima, 40, rhapsodized about their delectability, dipped in soy sauce or melted butter.

And, drawn by mussels bristling off the pier footings, lobsters were easy to catch, said Colima, 40, a phone installer. He assured me he'd caught lobsters a half-foot wide.

Unfolding his camp chair, he sat down and scored several little silver fish with his knife, slipped them into his net and dropped it over the side. Lobsters would be crawling into the net in 15 minutes, he predicted, half an hour tops.

An hour later, with the lobsters still stubbornly refusing to show, I asked another lobster fisherman, Tuan Lai of Anaheim, to report on the catch the next day.

Reached by phone, Lai, 19, a Golden West College student, said he plied his own net for two or three hours but came up with nothing but little blue crabs. And no one else did any better, he added.

"I don't know what happened," said Lai, who, Internet-trained in lobstering, insisted that earlier in the month he'd snagged a small one. Perhaps the gig was up with the lobsters, he theorized. "Maybe the lobsters are just kind of smart," he said.

gale.holland@latimes.com

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Benghazi Violence Beyond Control of Militias

Esam Omran Al-Fetori/Reuters

Libyan police officers carried the body of Faraj Mohammed el-Drissi, the Benghazi security director, after he was gunned down last week.

BENGHAZI, Libya — The killing was not a shock here, in the city where Libyans started their quest to shake off dictatorship and now struggle, nearly two years later, to douse the simmering violence that is a legacy of the revolt.

One evening last week, a car screeched down a residential street. Three men stepped out and with startling ease gunned down Faraj Mohammed el-Drissi, the man whose job it was to ensure this city’s security.

Mr. Drissi, who had been on the job since October, was among roughly three dozen public servants killed over the last year and a half, including army officers, security agents, officials from the deposed government and the United States ambassador, J. Christopher Stevens. In all the cases, no one has been convicted, and in many, no one has even been questioned. That is unlikely to change anytime soon.

Since Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi was killed more than a year ago, Benghazi has in many ways regained its balance, as residents build long-delayed additions to their homes and policemen direct traffic on some streets. But Mr. Drissi’s killing made it hard to ignore a darker rhythm — one that revolves around killing with impunity. The government is still weaker than the country’s militias, and neither is willing, or able to act.

“It is impossible for members of a brigade to arrest another,” said Wanis al-Sharif, the top Interior Ministry official in eastern Libya. “And it would be impossible that I give the order to arrest someone in a militia. Impossible.”

The violence was thrown into sharp relief after the September attack on the United States intelligence and diplomatic villas. Libyan and American officials accused militants associated with Libya’s ubiquitous militias, and specifically, members of Ansar al-Shariah.

“The killing of the ambassador brought back the true reality of this insecure state,” said Ali Tarhouni, a former Libyan finance minister who leads a new political party. “It was a major setback, to this city and its psyche.”

Justice itself is a dangerous notion here and throughout Libya, where a feeble government lacks the power to protect citizens or to confront criminal suspects. It barely has the means to arm its police force, let alone rein in or integrate the militias or confront former rebel fighters suspected of killings.

“Some had to do with personal grudges,” said Judge Jamal Bennor, who serves as Benghazi’s justice coordinator. But most were like the killing of Mr. Drissi. “This was a political assassination,” he said.

Adding to the feeling of lawlessness are the revelations that foreign intelligence services, like the C.I.A., are active around the country without answering to anyone, people here said. Every day, an American drone circles Benghazi, unsettling and annoying residents. Police officers share Kalashnikovs. The courts are toothless. Libyan and American investigators, faced with Benghazi’s insecurity, are forced to interview witnesses hundreds of miles away, in the capital, Tripoli.

And so the government is forced to reckon with the militias, who by virtue of their abundant weapons hold the city’s real power. Men like Wissam bin Hamid, 35, who before the revolution owned an automobile workshop, is now the leader of an umbrella group of former rebel fighters. Some groups, like Mr. Hamid’s, operate with the government’s blessing, while others are called rogue. The distinctions often seem arbitrary, but either way, the militias are effectively a law unto themselves.

Mr. Hamid and others insist that they are loyal to the state. Leading political figures said they respected Mr. Hamid but had concerns about many of the other militia leaders, among them hard-line Islamists.

The militias are called on for crucial tasks, including safeguarding elections. Mr. Hamid’s militia, a branch of a group called Libya Shield, has been called on to enforce order hundreds of miles away from Benghazi, in towns beyond the government’s reach. The militia has also worked with American officials: they escorted intelligence officers and diplomats away from the besieged villas on Sept. 11, and later, provided protection for American investigators visiting the city in search of evidence in the attack, Mr. Hamid said.

Osama al-Fitory and Suliman Ali Zway contributed reporting.

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Matthew McConaughey's Extreme Weight Loss Has Caused 'Body Soreness'

By Stephen M. Silverman

11/29/2012 at 10:55 AM EST

Seen a photo of a rail-thin Matthew McConaughey recently? The actor, who has significantly slimmed down for a new movie role, says there's nothing to worry about.

"I feel fine. I really do," McConaughey, 43, tells The Daily Beast in a new interview, noting that his regime to lose nearly 40 lbs. from his 183-lb. frame was healthy, disciplined and well thought-out.

Nevertheless, that hasn't quelled chatter over the meaty matter of his dramatic weight loss for Dallas Buyers Club, in which he plays the real-life Ron Woodruff, who contracted HIV.

"I'm eating fresh fish. I'm just eating small amounts. I'm not being starved," says the actor, who also says he's sleeping well. "If anything, it's as much a spiritual journey as it is physical."

Though his body's "fine," McConaughey says, "Everything has shrunk quite a bit. ... I don't have the leverage I used to. I have body soreness. ... [But] I'm as healthy as can be. My blood pressure, everything's fine."

Getting back to his normal weight, McConaughey points out, will take special care, or else he may risk a form of diabetes.

"You can't just start eating cheeseburgers and ice cream," the actor, who just nabbed two Independent Spirit Awards for roles in Magic Mike and Bernie, says. "Your body will go into shock."

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Simple measures cut infections caught in hospitals

CHICAGO (AP) — Preventing surgery-linked infections is a major concern for hospitals and it turns out some simple measures can make a big difference.

A project at seven big hospitals reduced infections after colorectal surgeries by nearly one-third. It prevented an estimated 135 infections, saving almost $4 million, the Joint Commission hospital regulating group and the American College of Surgeons announced Wednesday. The two groups directed the 2 1/2-year project.

Solutions included having patients shower with special germ-fighting soap before surgery, and having surgery teams change gowns, gloves and instruments during operations to prevent spreading germs picked up during the procedures.

Some hospitals used special wound-protecting devices on surgery openings to keep intestine germs from reaching the skin.

The average rate of infections linked with colorectal operations at the seven hospitals dropped from about 16 percent of patients during a 10-month phase when hospitals started adopting changes to almost 11 percent once all the changes had been made.

Hospital stays for patients who got infections dropped from an average of 15 days to 13 days, which helped cut costs.

"The improvements translate into safer patient care," said Dr. Mark Chassin, president of the Joint Commission. "Now it's our job to spread these effective interventions to all hospitals."

Almost 2 million health care-related infections occur each year nationwide; more than 90,000 of these are fatal.

Besides wanting to keep patients healthy, hospitals have a monetary incentive to prevent these infections. Medicare cuts payments to hospitals that have lots of certain health care-related infections, and those cuts are expected to increase under the new health care law.

The project involved surgeries for cancer and other colorectal problems. Infections linked with colorectal surgery are particularly common because intestinal tract bacteria are so abundant.

To succeed at reducing infection rates requires hospitals to commit to changing habits, "to really look in the mirror and identify these things," said Dr. Clifford Ko of the American College of Surgeons.

The hospitals involved were Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles; Cleveland Clinic in Ohio; Mayo Clinic-Rochester Methodist Hospital in Rochester, Minn.; North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System in Great Neck, NY; Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago; OSF Saint Francis Medical Center in Peoria, Ill.; and Stanford Hospital & Clinics in Palo Alto, Calif.

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Online:

Joint Commission: http://www.jointcommission.org

American College of Surgeons: http://www.facs.org

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

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As downtown L.A. grows trendier, Spring Street Arcade is left behind

The salesmen at the Spring Street Arcade spend their day gazing out at a city that's passing them by.

All around, a trendy downtown is on the rise — pet stores selling gourmet dog chews, chic bars with ginger and juniper soda cocktails, a new generation of mostly young residents jogging in spandex and cruising on bikes.

But inside the 88-year-old shopping arcade, with its giant curved skylight, arched Spanish Renaissance entryways and Beaux Arts exterior, many of the stores are vacant, and the remaining merchants seem stuck in another era. Bargain-rate clothes, toys, suitcases and DVDs share shelf space with dusty boomboxes and T-shirts from '90s rock bands like Korn and Nirvana.

Mohad Azimi lingers through the morning outside his kitchen appliance shop, chatting with the Taiwanese salesman at the toy store next to him. These days, the jokes focus on a new Starbucks that's just opened at Spring and 6th streets. Maybe that's where all the people are going now, the merchants say.

"Look around here — business is dead," Azimi says as he looks across the arcade's empty corridor, which stretches from Spring to Broadway. "Nobody comes inside."

Azimi opened his business in the early 1990s, after emigrating from Afghanistan. Back then, Los Angeles was still enjoying a boom in immigration from places like Guatemala, Mexico and El Salvador, and the mall was so busy on the weekends that you could barely walk inside. Broadway was a bustling promenade, with shoppers pouring in on bus lines from all over the city.

Families would come to buy kitchenware at Azimi's shop, sometimes shipping the products back to relatives in Latin America. And while they were there, he says, they'd pick up toys and clothes for their children.

Azimi still stacks the same goods on a white plastic table at the front of his shop — toaster ovens, blenders and microwaves in battered cardboard boxes. Inside the cluttered shop, there are old keyboards, calculators and Nintendo GameCube consoles.

But he makes only a few sales each week, he says, and he's not sure he can make it to the end of the year.

"The new residents, they don't have a family, they don't have anyone to cook for," Azimi says. "They just have a dog."

::

When the Spring Street Arcade opened in 1924, it was hailed as Los Angeles' premier shopping center — and celebrated with a bash that brought out Will Rogers and Charlie Chaplin.

Back then, the area was filled with department stores, high-end shops and rows of movie palaces. Even as downtown faded after World War II and the department stores and movie houses closed down, the small merchants along Broadway, Main and other downtown streets managed to find new customers.

By the 1980s, hundreds of them were making a good living catering to the city's rising Latino immigrant community, both new immigrants and Mexicans who would cross the border for shopping runs.

The retail economy was so strong that Broadway storefronts famously commanded rents similar to those of Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills.

But changes in immigration patterns, improved economic conditions in Mexico, competition in other communities and the recession have left many downtown merchants fighting to survive. While new, "500 Days of Summer" residents are frequenting bars and restaurants and coffeehouses, they have little need for the bargain shops that line the arcade.

Joel Kotkin, an urban studies fellow at Chapman University, says the shift is evident all around downtown.

It's the "gradual dissolution of one economy — a really vibrant, unique economy — and an attempt to replace it with another," he says. "The question is, are we just seeing the death of something that will be replaced, or will we have this parallel universe of yuppies alongside the decline?"

::

Inside the arcade, merchants are quick to reminisce about the prosperous years — and lament how it went so wrong.

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Bombings Are Said to Kill Dozens Near Syria’s Capital

Francisco Leong/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Rebels celebrated on top of a downed Syrian jet in Daret Azzeh, 20 miles west of Aleppo, on Wednesday.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Syrian state media said on Wednesday that 34 people and possibly many more had died in twin car bombings in a suburb populated by minorities only a few miles from the center of Damascus, the capital, as the civil war swirls from north to south claiming ever higher casualties. One estimate by the government’s opponents put the death toll at 47.

There were also reports from witnesses in Turkey and anti-government activists in Syria that for the second successive day insurgents had shot down a government aircraft in the north of the country, offering further evidence that the rebels are seeking a major shift by challenging the government’s dominance of the skies. It was not immediately clear how the aircraft, apparently a plane, had been brought down.

Video posted on the Internet by rebels showed wreckage with fires still burning around it. The aircraft appeared to show a tail assembly clearly visible jutting in the debris. Such videos are difficult to verify, particularly in light of the restrictions facing reporters in Syria. However, the episode on Wednesday seemed to be confirmed by other witnesses.

“We watched a Syrian plane being shot down as it was flying low to drop bombs,” said Ugur Cuneydioglu, who said he observed the incident from a Turkish border village in southern Hatay Province. “It slowly went down in flames before it hit the ground. It was quite a scene,” Mr. Cuneydioglu said.

Video posted by insurgents on the Internet showed a man in aviator coveralls being carried away. It was not clear if the man was alive but the video said he had been treated in a makeshift hospital. A voice off-camera says: “This is the pilot who was shelling residents’ houses.”

The aircraft was said to have been brought down while it was attacking the town of Daret Azzeh, 20 miles west of Aleppo and close to the Turkish border. The town was the scene of a mass killing last June, when the government and the rebels blamed one another for the deaths and mutilation of 25 people. The video posted online said the plane had been brought down by “the free men of Daret Azzeh soldiers of God brigade.”

On Tuesday, Syrian rebels said they shot down a military helicopter with a surface-to-air missile outside Aleppo and they uploaded video that appeared to confirm that rebels have put their growing stock of heat-seeking missiles to effective use.

In recent months, rebels have used mainly machine guns to shoot down several Syrian Air Force helicopters and fixed-wing attack jets. In Tuesday’s case, the thick smoke trailing the projectile, combined with the elevation of the aircraft, strongly suggested that the helicopter was hit by a missile.

Rebels hailed the event as the culmination of their long pursuit of effective antiaircraft weapons, though it was not clear if the downing on Tuesday was an isolated tactical success or heralded a new phase in the war that would present a meaningful challenge to the Syrian government’s air supremacy. In Damascus, the official SANA news agency said the explosions in Jaramana outside the city at around 7 a.m. were the work of “terrorists,” the word used by the authorities to denote rebel forces seeking the overthrow of President Bashar al-Assad. Photographs on the SANA Web site showed wreckage and flames in what looked like a narrow alleyway with cars covered in chunks of debris from damaged buildings. The agency said the bombings were in the main square of Jaramana, which news reports said is largely populated by members of the Christian and Druse minorities. Residents said the neighborhood is home to many families who have fled other parts of Syria because of the conflict and to some Palestinian families. The blasts caused “huge material damage to the residential buildings and shops,” SANA said.

The photographs on the Web site showed shattered windows at the Abou Samra coffee house and gurneys laden with injured clogging what seemed to be a hospital corridor.

SANA said two bombings in other neighborhoods caused minor damage. Activists reported that there were four explosions and said they were all “huge.”

Footage broadcast on Syria’s private Addounia channel and state television showed damage scarring gray, six-story apartment houses above tangles of wrecked cars as ambulances arrived to transport the wounded and rescuers playing fire hoses on the damage. The camera panned over bloodstained sidewalks.

The blasts seemed initially at least to shift the focus of the fighting from the north, where insurgents have claimed string of tactical breakthroughs in recent days, to areas ringing Damascus.

In the north in recent days, the insurgents also claimed to have seized air bases and a hydroelectric dam, apparently seeking both to expand their communications lines and to counter the government’s supremacy in the air.

The death toll from Wednesday’s bombings was not immediately confirmed. An activist group, the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, initially said that 29 people had died but revised the figure later to 47, of whom 38 had been identified. Of the 120 injured, the rebel group said, 23 people were in a serious condition, meaning that the tally could climb higher.

The explosions reflected the dramatic shift since Syria’s uprising began in March 2011 as a peaceful protest centered on the southern town of Daraa. It has since spread across the land in a full-blown civil war pitting government forces against a rebel army of Army defectors, disaffected civilians and what the authorities say are foreign jihadists.

Hala Droubi reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and Alan Cowell from Paris. Sebnem Arsu contributed reporting from Istanbul, and Hania Mourtada from Beirut, Lebanon.

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Seattle police plan for helicopter drones hits severe turbulence

SEATTLE (Reuters) – One of the latest crime-fighting gadgets to emerge on the wish lists of U.S. law enforcement agencies – drone aircraft – has run into heavy turbulence in Seattle over a plan by police to send miniature robot helicopters buzzing over the city.

A recent push for unmanned police aircraft in several cities is being driven largely by grants from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, including more than $ 80,000 the city of Seattle used to buy a pair of drone choppers in 2010.

But getting aerial drones off the ground has run into stiff opposition from civil libertarians and others who say the use of stealth airborne cameras by domestic law enforcement raises questions about privacy rights and the limits of police search powers.

The aircraft would never carry weapons, but the use of drones for even mundane tasks raises ire among some because of the association of pilotless crafts with covert U.S. missile strikes in places such as Pakistan and Yemen.

In Seattle last month, a community meeting where police officials presented plans to deploy their two remote-controlled helicopters erupted into yelling and angry chants of “No drones!”

“My question is simple: What’s the return policy for the drones?” said Steve Widmayer, 57, one of numerous citizens who spoke out against the unmanned aircraft. He predicted the City Council would commit “political suicide” if it backed the plan.

Seattle City Councilman Bruce Harrell said he hoped the council would set strict drone policies by January.

Police in Seattle, along with Florida’s Miami-Dade County and Houston, are among a handful of big-city law enforcement departments known to have acquired aerial drones. But those cities have not started operating the robot aircraft.

FEAR OF FLYING ROBOTS

In Oakland, California, this month, an Alameda County sheriff’s application for a federal grant to buy an aerial drone to help monitor unruly crowds and locate illegal marijuana farms drew opposition at a Board of Supervisors meeting.

“I do not want flying spy robots looking into my private property with infrared cameras,” Oakland resident Mary Madden said. “It’s an invasion of my privacy.”

County Board President Nate Miley said the issue would be taken up by the supervisors’ Public Protection Committee.

The two Draganflyer X6 remote-controlled miniature helicopters purchased by Seattle have so far been mostly grounded, restricted to training and demonstration flights.

Equipped to carry video, still and night-vision cameras, they can remain aloft for only 15 minutes at a time before their batteries run out, police said.

Assistant Police Chief Paul McDonagh said the aircraft would not be used in Seattle for surveillance or for monitoring street protests. Instead, his department’s plans to deploy drones to search for missing persons, pursue fleeing suspects, assist in criminal investigations and for unspecified “specific situations” subject to McDonagh’s approval.

Seattle City Councilman Bruce Harrell said he hoped the council would set strict drone policies by January.

Months ago in Texas, Chief Deputy Randy McDaniel of the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office raised eyebrows by saying he hoped to equip his department’s drones with rubber bullets and tear gas, though he told Reuters his thinking on armed aircraft has since evolved.

“From a law enforcement standpoint, that’s never going to happen,” he said. McDaniel said his office received Federal Aviation Administration clearance earlier this month to begin operational drone flights but has not yet had occasion to do so.

Actual U.S. domestic use of law-enforcement drone aircraft remains extremely limited.

The Mesa County Sheriff’s Department in Colorado has been operating two small drones, also bought with Homeland Security funds, since 2010.

It uses them largely to create three-dimensional images of crime scenes, said Benjamin Miller, director of the department’s drone program. They are not used for surveillance, he said.

In North Dakota, the Grand Forks police department last year called in a high-flying Predator drone operated by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to monitor a tense standoff with a rancher over alleged stolen cattle.

The rancher, Rodney Brossart, and five family members are believed to be the first Americans nabbed by police with drone assistance – with the possible exception of operations along the southwest border with Mexico.

The use of drones there by the Customs and Border Protection agency – a part of Homeland Security – led to 7,500 arrests and the seizure of thousands of pounds of drugs up to the end of last year.

The nationality of those arrested in drone assisted operations in the borderlands is not clear, nor is if Customs and Border Protection partnered with local forces in any of those arrests.

(Editing by Steve Gorman and Jackie Frank)

Gadgets News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Christina Aguilera Faces Major Blow on The Voice

TV Watch

The Voice

By Julia Haskins

11/28/2012 at 10:30 AM EST

Dez Duron and Christina Aguilera (inset)

Tyler Golden/NBC (2)

Monday night on The Voice, the coaches were confident, but some of the contestants were seeing green.

After Amanda Brown and Trevin Hunte opened with Lady Gaga's "Marry the Night," the first save was revealed. An ecstatic Cassadee Pope from Team Blake celebrated her win, before Cee Lo Green treated viewers to another surprise – a duet with Kermit the Frog to the signature Muppet tune, "Bein' Green."

Voters also rescued Team Adam's Amanda Brown. After reveling in her victory, Melanie Martinez, Nicholas David, Terry McDermott and Bryan Keith joined her for a rendition of Plain White T's "Rhythm of Love."

Then Team Adam's Melanie Martinez got the good news she was safe for another night, followed by Cassadee Pope and Dez Duron's singing Rihanna's "Hate That I Love You." Team Cee Lo's Nicholas David then found out that he still has a spot on the show.

But with room for only two more singers, Team Cee Lo's Cody Belew said goodbye to The Voice, along with Team Christina's last remaining member, Dez Duron.

"You will always be on Team Xtina, and I will always support you," Aguilera told him.

Trevin Hunte and Terry McDermott rounded out the top six, which means they'll be performing again on Monday's show.

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CDC: HIV spread high in young gay males

NEW YORK (AP) — Health officials say 1 in 5 new HIV infections occur in a tiny segment of the population — young men who are gay or bisexual.

The government on Tuesday released new numbers that spotlight how the spread of the AIDS virus is heavily concentrated in young males who have sex with other males. Only about a quarter of new infections in the 13-to-24 age group are from injecting drugs or heterosexual sex.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said blacks represented more than half of new infections in youths. The estimates are based on 2010 figures.

Overall, new U.S. HIV infections have held steady at around 50,000 annually. About 12,000 are in teens and young adults, and most youth with HIV haven't been tested.

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Online:

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

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27 indicted in Mexican Mafia drug case in Ventura County

From a prison cell outside California, an inmate known as "Evil" was making himself known on Ventura County's streets.

Martin Madrigal, 39, was squeezing drug profits from street gangs for the prison-based Mexican Mafia, according to a grand jury indictment released Tuesday. He was so feared that rival gangs cooperated on extortion schemes, drug deals and violent crimes, according to law enforcement officials.

The 35-count indictment portrays Madrigal as a powerful figure representing an efficient and merciless organization that law enforcement officials believe has been operating for decades, largely from behind bars, calling shots among street gangs. He was one of 27 people named in the indictment, 24 of whom have been arrested. Officials declined to disclose where or why Madrigal is serving time.

The forced cooperation among rival gangs alleged in the indictment may be a sign that Mexican drug cartels are attempting to extend their authority over California drug trafficking, according to Ventura County Assistant Sheriff Gary Pentis.

Madrigal operated as a kind of regional manager, with a Ventura County gang member named Edwin "Sporty" Mora enforcing his decisions on the street with a written hit list from Madrigal and "permission to conduct extortion on behalf of the Mexican Mafia," according to the indictment. In one of the document's counts, Mora is said to have indicated that a gang member named Little Rudy "was going to kick in money by Wednesday and if he can't make that happen, Mora wanted the fool in the dirt."

Dozens of weapons, including an AK47, were confiscated during a series of arrests starting in May and ending earlier this month.

The Ventura County probe, dubbed Operation Wicked Hand, started with two shootings in Moorpark in April and a heroin bust about the same time.

"We soon came to realize the incidents weren't happenstance," Ventura County Sheriff Geoff Dean said.

Sheriff's officials said investigators thwarted several crimes, including two planned killings and a drugstore robbery.

Officials would not reveal details of how the investigation was conducted. The indictment, returned Nov. 14, makes it clear authorities had access to text messages and phone calls that gang members made among themselves.

More than 70 officers from the Sheriff's Department participated in the investigation, as well as officers from the Oxnard Police Department and other agencies.

"This case has dealt a crushing blow to organized crime in Ventura County," Pentis said. "We have incapacitated the organization from the top through its geographic managers."

Bail for those arrested, including two juveniles, ranges from $1 million to $5 million. Dist. Atty. Greg Totten said a number of suspects are facing multiple charges, and three are facing possible life sentences under the state's three-strikes law.

Totten said his office submitted the case to a criminal grand jury rather than opting for a preliminary hearing because of its complexity and the ongoing investigation's need for secrecy.

The indictment names more individuals than any other in Ventura County's history, he said.

steve.chawkins@latimes.com

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