California plans to drop warrants for some parole violators

SACRAMENTO — State corrections officials are poised to drop the arrest warrants of thousands of parole violators, releasing them from state supervision at a time when their detention would complicate efforts to ease crowding in state and county lockups.

The Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation intends to begin a massive review next week of more than 9,200 outstanding warrants, starting with individuals who were convicted of nonviolent crimes and absconded from supervision. Over the next eight months, parole field offices across the state will be given lists of missing felons, 200 at a time, to review and determine if retaining them on parole "would not be in the interest of justice."

The mass purge is an attempt to ease the burden on counties in July, when the state hands off responsibility for parole revocations to local courts, said agency spokesman Jeffrey Callison. Weeding out cases that are years old, or of parolees nobody is looking for, will make it easier to focus on those who pose a threat, he said.

It will not, Callison said, "allow some paroles to 'get off the hook.' "

"I have been told that discharging people is not the point of the exercise," he said Friday.

Which is exactly the claim of some victims' advocates who are infuriated by the state's so-called warrant review project.

"It's mass amnesty for felons," said Assemblyman Jim Nielsen (R-Gerber), a vocal opponent of Gov. Jerry Brown's plans to ease state prison crowding by shifting responsibility for low-level offenders to counties.

When inmates are released from state prison, they are required to report to a parole officer. When a felon does not appear, or disappears later, an arrest warrant is issued. With low-level offenders now serving time in county jails, the state's parole population is shrinking dramatically because those released from jail go to county probation, not state parole.

But the same law that shifted responsibility for low-level offenders also requires county courts to take over most revocation hearings for parole violators. The warrant review will remove many of those potential cases.

The plan calls for parole agents to review about 7,000 warrants against low-level offenders to determine if those parolees have violent offenses or multiple felonies, belong to gangs or committed new crimes. Agents will then decide whether to drop the warrant and release the felon from parole.

Once that review is completed, the agency may undertake a similar study of outstanding warrants against missing parolees who committed serious or violent offenses, indicating that they too might be released from state supervision.

Sexual offenders are excluded from the reviews.

Callison said the state has no idea how many parolees may be released from supervision. Nielsen, former chairman of the Board of Prison Terms, estimated it would be 70%.

"This is as close as just letting people go as we've come," said Todd Gillam, a Northern California parole agent and vice president of the Parole Agent Assn. of California.

Gillam said the mass reviews overlook the value of leaving outstanding warrants in law enforcement computer systems, especially for routine matters such as traffic stops. "The warrant is a warning, to alert the officer that this guy is a problem," he said.

Gillam and others said parole agents are under pressure to release felons from state supervision as soon as possible.

Those criticisms come as the corrections department reacted to a report in the Fresno Bee on Friday that the man who killed two people at a chicken processing plant in Fresno earlier this week, then killed himself, was released from parole over the objections of his parole agent. The gunman, Lawrence Jones, was freed from prison in June 2011 and discharged from parole in May, even though his parole agent deemed him a danger.

The state corrections department "greatly regrets the tragedy," spokesman Luis Patino said, "but it must be noted that Jones had been out in the community for almost a full year and a half when he apparently committed this heinous crime.... Neither CDCR, nor any other law enforcement agency, can guarantee that someone will not commit a crime out in the community once they have been released from prison."

The newspaper's report also came on the same day that the governor named a new state parole chief: Daniel Stone, a longtime agency employee and former parole officer. Stone's appointment over the Division of Adult Parole requires state Senate confirmation.

paige.stjohn@latimes.com

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Philip Roth Is Retiring; Amazon Glitch Disables Buy Buttons

Today in books and publishing: Philip Roth confirms his retirement; Amazon‘s mysteriously vanishing buy buttons; Kobo expands to Italy, Kindle considers China; cities in literature.

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Philip Roth wraps it up. One of America’s most celebrated living novelists has been hinting at retirement for a while now. But he didn’t choose to make a big announcement in a prominent stateside literary organ like The New York Review of Books. He chose instead to let it out in interviews with the foreign press over recent weeks. Last month he told Nelly Kaprièlian of French magazine Les Inrockuptibles that he hasn’t written new material in three years, and doesn’t plan to write any new novels. “To tell you the truth, I’m done,” he said frankly, “Nemesis will be my last book … Enough is enough! I no longer feel this fanaticism to write that I have experienced in my life.” He said the same thing in an interview with Italian magazine La Repubblica earlier this month. His publisher Houghton Mifflin confirmed that Roth is entering retirement. It looks the 74-year-old writer will have plenty of time to go over his life story and thoughts on literature with his new biographer, Blake Bailey. [Salon]

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Where did Amazon‘s buy buttons go? Late last night, customers looking to replenish their Kindles with fresh e-books were probably quite frustrated. No matter how hard anyone clicked, there was no way to purchase e-books from Penguin, Random House, Macmillan, Simon & Schuster, Hachette, and HarperCollins through Amazon. A company spokesperson later confirmed that it was just a technical slip-up, and buy buttons were quickly restored. But given Amazon’s propensity to punish publishers that don’t bend to its will with disabled buy buttons, this brief black-out set off a minor panic in publishing land. Why were only Big Six publishers affected? Did it have anything to do with the ongoing agency pricing legal battles or the Penguin Random House merger? Though it seems to have been nothing more serious than a technical goof, it’s a stark reminder that Amazon has the ability—as well as the leverage—to shut down publishers’ most important connection with consumers at the click of a mouse. [New York Observer]

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E-reading takes a global turn. E-books may be taking firm holds in the U.S., but they have a long way to go before they became the global format of choice for readers. Italy may be going in an increasingly digital direction soon, with the country’s largest bookseller Mondadori Group partnering with Kobo to stock Touch e-readers in its hundreds of stores. 34,000 e-books will be available for Italian readers. China is another largely untapped market, one that Amazon is eyeing enviously. ZDNet’s Liau Yun Qing reports that Kindles may become available there as early as this month. “If Amazon brings its e-reader to China, it will face competition from Chinese e-commerce player Dangdang which launched its e-reader in July at a retail price of 599 yuan (US$ 79),” she writes. “In comparison, the cheapest Kindle Paperwhite e-reader, which includes “Special Offers”, retails at US$ 119 in the United States.” [ZDNet]

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Cities in literature. Mark Binelli’s new book Detroit City Is the Place to Be is all about the Motor City—its ascent during America’s industrial golden age, and its struggle to redefine itself. Given his obsession with the urban, Publishers Weekly decided to tap Binelli for a list of his favorite books that take specific cities as a central theme. It’s more interesting than most lists on this subject might have been. For instance, he shines a light on Joan Didion not for her classic takes on San Francisco or New York, but for her book Miami. And his favorite books to take on New York—Ben Katchor’s The Jew of New York and Joseph Mitchell’s Up in the Old Hotel—are refreshing inclusions. His favorite book about Detroit, Elmore Leonard’s City Primeval, is also a bit surprising. [Publishers Weekly]

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Madonna fan guilty in NYC resisting arrest trial

NEW YORK (AP) — A former firefighter with a crush on Madonna has been convicted of resisting arrest outside her former New York City apartment building as he spray-painted poster boards with love notes.

A jury delivered its verdict Friday in Robert Linhart's trial. He could face up to a year in jail.

Defense lawyer Lawrence LaBrew tells the New York Post (http://bit.ly/ZgI4jl) that Linhart will appeal.

Linhart was arrested in September 2010. Police say he parked his SUV outside the singer's Manhattan apartment, laid out a tarp and wrote out such messages as "Madonna, I need you."

Jurors told the Post they felt it was fine for Linhart to express himself to the Material Girl. But they said they believed police testimony that he resisted arrest by flailing his arms.

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The New Old Age Blog: The Emotional Aftermath of Hurricane Sandy

Let’s talk about the emotional aftermath of the storm that left tens of thousands of older people on the East Coast without power, bunkered down in their homes, chilled to the bone and out of touch with the outside world.

Let’s name the feelings they may have experienced. Fear. Despair. Hopelessness. Anxiety. Panic.

Linda Leest and her staff at Services Now for Adult Persons in Queens heard this in the voices of the older people they had been calling every day, people who were homebound and at risk because of medical conditions that compromise their physical functioning.

“They’re afraid of being alone,” she said in a telephone interview a few days after the storm. “They’re worried that if anything happens to them, no one is going to know. They feel that they’ve lost their connection with the world.”

What do we know about how older adults fare, emotionally, in a disaster like that devastating storm, which destroyed homes and businesses and isolated older adults in darkened apartment buildings, walk-ups and houses?

Most do well — emotional resilience is an underappreciated characteristic of older age — but those who are dependent on others, with pre-existing physical and mental disabilities, are especially vulnerable.

Most will recover from the disorienting sense that their world has been turned upside down within a few weeks or months. But some will be thrown into a tailspin and will require professional help. The sooner that help is received, the more likely it is to prevent a significant deterioration in their health.

The best overview comes from a November 2008 position paper from the American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry that reviewed the effects of Hurricane Katrina and other disasters. After Katrina, “the elderly had the highest mortality rates, health decline and suicide rates of any subgroup,” that document notes. “High rates of psychosomatic problems were seen, with worsening health problems and increased mortality and disability.”

This is an important point: Emotional trauma in older adults often is hard to detect, and looks different from what occurs in younger people. Instead of acknowledging anxiety or depression, for instance, older people may complain of having a headache, a bad stomachache or some other physical ailment.

“This age group doesn’t generally feel comfortable talking about their feelings; likely, they’ll mask those emotions or minimize what they’re experiencing,” said Dr. Mark Nathanson, a geriatric psychiatrist at Columbia University Medical Center.

Signs that caregivers should watch out for include greater-than-usual confusion in an older relative, a decline in overall functioning and a disregard for “self care such as bathing, eating, dressing properly and taking medication,” Dr. Nathanson said.

As an example, he mentioned an older man who had “been sitting in a cold house for days and decided to stop taking his water pill because he felt it was just too much trouble.” Being distraught or distracted and forgetting or neglecting to take pills for chronic conditions like diabetes or heart disease can have immediate harmful effects.

Especially at risk of emotional disturbances are older adults who are frail and advanced in age, those who have cognitive impairments like Alzheimer’s disease, those with serious mental illnesses like schizophrenia or major depression, and those with chronic medical conditions or otherwise in poor physical health, according to the geriatric psychiatry association’s position paper.

A common thread in all of the above is the depletion of physical and emotional reserves, which impairs an older person’s ability to adapt to adverse circumstances.

“In geriatrics, we have this idea of the ‘geriatric cascade’ that refers to how a seemingly minor thing can set in motion a functional, cognitive and psychological downward spiral” in vulnerable older adults, said Dr. Mark Lachs, chief of the division of geriatrics at Weill Cornell Medical College. “Well, the storm was a major thing — a very large disequilibrating event — and its impact is an enormous concern.”

Of special concern are older people who may be in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease or other types of dementia who are living alone. For this group, the maintenance of ordinary routines and the sense of a dependable structure in their lives is particularly important, and “a situation like Sandy, which causes so much disruption, can be a tipping point,” Dr. Lachs said.

Also of concern are older people who may have experienced trauma in the past, and who may suffer a reignition of post-traumatic stress symptoms because of the disaster.

Most painful of all, for many older adults, is the sense of profound isolation that can descend on those without working phones, electricity or relatives who can come by to help.

“That isolation, I can’t tell you how disorienting that can be,” said Bobbie Sackman, director of public policy for the Council of Senior Centers and Services of New York City. “They’re scared, but they won’t tell you because they’re too proud and ashamed to ask for help.”

The best remedy, in the short run, is the human touch.

“Now is the time for people to reach out to their neighbors in high-rises or in areas where seniors are clustered, to knock on doors and ask people how they are doing,” said Dr. Gary Kennedy, director of the division of geriatric psychiatry at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx.

Don’t make it a one-time thing; let the older person know you’ll call or come by again, and set up a specific time so “there’s something for them to look forward to,” Dr. Kennedy said. So-called naturally occurring retirement communities with large concentrations of older people should be organizing from within to contact residents who may not be connected with social services and find out how they’re doing, he recommended.

In conversations with older adults, offer reassurance and ask open-ended questions like “Are you low on pills?” or “Can I run out and get you something?” rather than trying to get them to open up, experts recommended. Focusing on problem-solving can make people feel that their lives are being put back in order and provide comfort.

Although short-term psychotherapy has positive outcomes for older adults who’ve undergone a disaster, it’s often hard to convince a senior to seek out mental health services because of the perceived stigma associated with psychological conditions. Don’t let that deter you: Keep trying to connect them with services that can be of help.

Be mindful of worrisome signs like unusual listlessness, apathy, unresponsiveness, agitation or confusion. These may signal that an older adult has developed delirium, which can be extremely dangerous if not addressed quickly, Dr. Nathanson said. If you suspect that’s the case, call 911 or make sure you take the person to the nearest hospital emergency room.

This is a safe place to talk about all kinds of issues affecting older adults. Would you be willing to share what kinds of mental health issues you or family members are dealing with since the storm so readers can learn from one another?

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Indoor trampoline parks spring up throughout Southland

Indoor trampoline parks are springing into action throughout Southern California, along with leaping games of dodge ball, highflying basketball and rigorous calisthenics.

Just ask Akory Coates, who lived out his basketball dreams for an hour recently at a Sky Zone trampoline park in Torrance. He jumped, he twirled in the air, his fingertips grazed the rim and he made four baskets. Not an easy feat for a 9-year-old, but a series of trampolines beneath his feet gave him all the lift he needed.

"Hey, Dad, look at me," Akory said as he went up for a basket and made it. His father took the fourth-grader at Major Lynn Mokler Elementary in Paramount and friends to the park for the boy's birthday. Across the warehouse a SkyRobics exercise class was underway, and a small group of parents watched their kids tumble.

The indoor trampoline business is booming, with dozens of parks open or in the works across America. "Since early to mid-2010 the whole industry has exploded," said Jeff Platt, chief executive of Sky Zone Indoor Trampoline Park, a Los Angeles company that opened its first location in Las Vegas in 2004. "People started feeling a little bit better about the economy and were looking for something new to do."

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At a time when the Southland economy is still struggling, experts say trampoline parks appeal to people of all ages eager for a relatively inexpensive activity and exercise. An hour at these parks typically ranges from $10 to $15. Many of them offer birthday parties, aerobics classes, corporate events and dodge ball games. There are also foam pits for people to jump into, and there are pizzas and hot dogs at the snack bar.

"We've seen them take off," said Dennis Speigel, president of International Theme Park Services Inc., an industry consultant. "They're not taking off like the space shuttle, but we are seeing a reemergence of them."

Speigel said trampoline parks came into existence in the late '50s and early '60s but fell out of favor because of liability. Today's trampoline parks, he said, are attractive to teens and preteens who like extreme sports such as skateboarding, BMX and snowboarding.

Sky Zone has opened 27 parks — three company owned and 24 franchises. Four are in Southern California, in Torrance, Anaheim, Corona-Riverside and Chula Vista near San Diego.

At least four other companies have opened trampoline parks across the country. Sky High Sports has 15 outlets including ones in Valencia, Woodland Hills, San Diego, Costa Mesa, Ontario and Camarillo.

Jump Street has nine locations combined in Arizona, Colorado and Texas, with plans to open two more. Xtreme Trampolines has two locations in the Chicago suburbs. Rebounderz has one outlet in Florida.

Jerry Raymond, CEO of Sky High Sports and a founding member of the International Assn. of Trampoline Parks, estimates there are just over 100 facilities in the United States and expects that number to grow. Most of the parks are franchises; none of the companies involved released profitability information.

Franchises for bigger companies such as Sky High and Sky Zone typically cost more than $1 million each to open, including insurance coverage, fees and facility costs.

Platt, Sky Zone's CEO, said the key to a successful trampoline franchise is introducing new activities.

After Sky Zone's revenue started to decline in 2009, five years after opening, it introduced dodge ball, then workout classes and basketball hoops. The moves paid off. Last year Sky Zone posted about $16 million in revenue and it's projecting $70 million for 2013.

Park operators say they make special effort to keep trampoline parks as safe as possible, but they acknowledge that injuries and liability are always a concern. "Injuries aren't something that we'll ever be able to eliminate, but we can try," Platt said.

As trampoline parks continue to multiply so will injuries, said Seattle lawyer Sim Osborn, who has represented clients who have injured themselves at trampoline parks. He said bodies can't absorb the impact of accidentally landing on the pads that border the trampolines, the facilities can get overcrowded and employees can't always supervise jumpers.

"Frankly, the way they're designed and built, you cannot make them safe," he said.

Although trampoline injury rates have decreased every year since 2004, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission found there were almost 98,000 injuries in 2009, the latest year data were available.

In September, the American Academy of Pediatrics issued a warning about possible safety hazards involving trampoline use. The group also recommended that operators inform participants of possible risks. Park operators said they provide instructional videos and safety brochures, and have supervisors monitoring participants.

Trampoline parks aren't monitored by any state agency, said Peter Melton, spokesman for the California Department of Industrial Relations.

At the Torrance park where young Akory was showing off his basketball potential, Shannon Brown was leading the SkyRobics class, her ponytail bopping through a series of jumping jacks. Soon she had the four participants running across 24 trampolines, then doing push-ups and a dodge ball scrimmage.

"I've had kids as young as 8 years old and older people in their 50s and 60s," Brown said, adding that she tailors the classes to participants' skill level. "It's definitely a lot harder than it looks."

Law firm intern David Moussa, 21, of Torrance was among the participants. Moussa, who tore a knee ligament during a basketball game, said he enjoys the trampoline workouts because they impact his joints less than running.

"At first it was a little weird," Moussa said, as beads of perspiration formed on his forehead. "When I first did this I thought, 'I'm this big macho guy who plays basketball,'" he said, "but after the first couple of minutes I was done."

Deon Coates, 29, of Bellflower has taken his son Akory to the Torrance Sky Zone three times.

"The place is extremely clean and never understaffed; it really gives you a sense of safety," Coates said. "Plus, it's a perfect way to get the kids to sleep versus NyQuil."

adolfo.flores@latimes.com

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Conjoined twin girls successfully separated in 7-hour surgery

Surgeons and a 40-member medical team in Philadelphia have successfully completed the separation of 8-month-old twin girls who were joined at the lower chest and abdomen, according to the hospital where the procedure took place.

Children's Hospital of Philadelphia said the seven-hour operations were completed on Wednesday. It was the 21st time surgeons at the hospital had separated a set of conjoined twins. Other hospitals have also reported successful separations.

The twins, Allison June and Amelia Lee Tucker, of Adams, N.Y., shared a chest wall, diaphragm, pericardium and liver, according to a hospital statement.

Led by Dr. Holly L. Hedrick, pediatric general, thoracic and fetal surgeon, a multidisciplinary team of about 40 members, including physicians, nurses and other medical staff from general surgery, plastic and reconstructive surgery, cardiac surgery, anesthesiology, radiology, and neonatology, participated in the separation.

“Like all separations of conjoined twins, this was a very complex surgery, but it went very well and as expected,” said Hedrick, who led the team that worked on the patients. “Allison and Amelia are currently recovering in the Newborn/Infant Intensive Care Unit (N/IICU) and will be monitored closely by CHOP’s expert clinical teams for the duration of their recovery,” she stated.

“We expect that, with this complex surgery behind them, Allison and Amelia will receive the care, therapy and support to allow them to live full, healthy and independent lives,” Hedrick stated.

Conjoined twins occur once in every 50,000 to 60,000 births, and most are stillborn. About three-quarters of such twins are female and are joined at least partially in the chest, sharing organs. Chances of successful surgery and survival are greater if the twins have separate sets of organs, the hospital said.

The Tucker family has not commented. The hospital asked the media to respect the family’s privacy.

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‘NBA 2K13′ tops video games titles in October

NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. retail sales of new video game hardware, software and accessories fell 25 percent in October, marking the 11th straight month of declining sales for physical game products, according to a report from NPD Group.

Many gamers are waiting for big holiday releases such as Activision‘s “Call of Duty: Black Ops II.”

NPD said sales fell to $ 755.5 million from $ 1 billion a year earlier. Sales of video games themselves, excluding PC titles, fell 25 percent to $ 432.6 million. Sales of hardware such as Microsoft‘s Xbox 360 fell 37 percent to $ 187.3 million. Sales of accessories, meanwhile, grew 5 percent to $ 135.6 million.

Thursday’s study from NPD Group tracks sales of new physical products — about 50 percent of the total spending. Excluded are sales of used games and rentals as well as digital and social-network spending.

NPD also listed the top-selling games in October:

1. “NBA 2K13,” Take-Two Interactive Software Inc.

2. “Resident Evil 6,” Capcom USA

3. “Pokemon Black Version 2,” Nintendo Co.

4. “Dishonored,” Bethesda Softworks

5. “Pokemon White Version 2,” Nintendo Co.

6. “Madden NFL 13,” Electronic Arts Inc.

7. “FIFA Soccer 13,” Electronic Arts Inc.

8. “Medal of Honor: Warfighter,” Electronic Arts Inc.

9. “Borderlands 2,” Take-Two Interactive Software Inc.

10. “Skylander Giants,” Activision Blizzard Inc.

Gaming News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Roger Waters plays with band of wounded veterans

NEW YORK (AP) — Roger Waters honored wounded veterans in New York by performing with them at the annual Stand Up for Heroes benefit, Thursday night.

The founding member of Pink Floyd took to the stage of the Beacon Theater with 14 wounded soldiers he met recently at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. He rehearsed with them at the hospital, and for the past few days in New York.

The event benefited the Bob Woodruff Foundation, which helps returning veterans and their families, and featured Waters, Bruce Springsteen, Ricky Gervais, Robin Williams, and others.

Before the show, Waters chatted with veterans and called the experience "fantastic." He says he's "looking forward to pulling for the rest of these guys with their comrades" during the healing process.

He says that he shares "enormous empathy with the men."

"I lost my grandfather in 1916 and my father in 1944, so I've been around the sense of loss and what loss from war can do to people," Waters said.

"I never talk about the politics because it's not relevant to me. I'm not interested in it," he said. "What I am interested in is the burdens these guys bear and would never question motive or even dream of talking about any of the politics."

He added: "If any of us have a responsibility in our lives it is to tear down the walls of indifference and miscommunication between ourselves and our fellow men."

Waters said he rehearsed with many of the soldiers at the hospital in between their medical procedures. Before the show, he walked the red carpet with Staff Sgt. Robert Henline, who was not in the band. In 2007, Henline was the sole survivor of a roadside bombing north of Baghdad. As a result, he suffered burns over 38 percent of his body and his head was burned to the skull.

Henline, who fought for his life after the attack, has endured more than 40 surgeries.

Still, he maintains a sense of humor. On the open red carpet on a chilly night, Waters pushed closer to Henline for warmth.

"Get next to the burn guy. I'm good. I'm heated up," Henline joked.

No surprise. The retired soldier says he's been doing stand-up comedy for the past year and a half.

Waters performed three songs with the veterans, including the Pink Floyd classic, "Wish You Were Here."

Waters said he didn't think there would be a reunion with his former band.

"I think David (Gilmour) is retired by and large. I shouldn't speak for him. But that's the impression I get."

Waters then added: "Hey whatever. All good things come to an end."

While his mammoth tour of "The Wall" ended this summer, Waters promised the theatrical version would hit the Broadway stage in the near future.

The Bob Woodruff Foundation has supported more than 1 million veterans, service members, and their families since it began in 2008.

_____

John Carucci covers entertainment for The Associated Press. Follow him at —http://www.twitter.com/jcarucci_ap

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Malaria Vaccine Candidate Produces Disappointing Results in Clinical Trial

The latest clinical trial of the world’s leading malaria vaccine candidate produced disappointing results on Friday. The infants it was given to had only about a third fewer infections than a control group.

But researchers said they wanted to press on, assuming they keep getting financial support, because the number of children who die of malaria is so great that even an inefficient vaccine can save thousands of lives.

Three shots of the vaccine, known as RTS, S or Mosquirix and produced by GlaxoSmithKline, gave babies fewer than 12 weeks old 31 percent protection against detectable malaria and 37 percent protection against severe malaria, according to an announcement by the company at a vaccines conference in Cape Town.

Last year, in a trial in children up to 17 months old, the same vaccine gave 55 percent protection against detectable malaria and 47 percent against severe malaria.

The new trial “is less than we’d hoped for,” Moncef Slaoui, Glaxo’s chairman of research and development said in a telephone interview. “But if a million babies were vaccinated, we would prevent 260,000 cases of malaria a year. This is a disease that kills 655,000 babies a year — 31 percent of that is a very large number.”

The company, which has already spent more than $300 million on the vaccine, wants to keep forging ahead, he said, “but it is not just our decision.”

It also depends on the PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative, which has put more than $200 million of its Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation financing into the vaccine, and on the World Health Organization, which has helped talk seven African countries into allowing the vaccine to be tested on their children.

The Gates Foundation declined to say how much money it was ultimately prepared to spend on an imperfect vaccine; this set of trials is set to go into 2014.

“The efficacy came back lower than we had hoped, but developing a vaccine against a parasite is a very hard thing to do,” Bill Gates said in a prepared statement. “The trial is continuing, and we look forward to getting more data to help determine whether and how to deploy this vaccine.”

All the families in the trial were given insecticide-impregnated mosquito nets and encouraged to use them; 86 percent did, so the vaccine worked despite other anti-malaria measures.

RTS, S contains a protein found on the parasite’s surface that provokes an immune reaction. It was first identified decades ago by two New York University scientists, Ruth and Victor Nussenzweig. The vaccine was developed by Glaxo in Belgium and initially tested on American volunteers by the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research. When the Gates Foundation began focusing on global health in the early part of this century, it was one of the first projects the foundation adopted. Different ways to make the vaccine more effective, including adding different boosters and giving more shots, are being experimented with. Other vaccines using different ways to provoke an immune reaction exist, but none are as far along in clinical trials.

Like an H.I.V. vaccine, one against malaria has proved an elusive goal. The parasite morphs several times, exhibiting different surface proteins as it goes from mosquito saliva into blood and then into and out of the liver. Also, even the best natural “vaccine” — catching the disease itself — is not very effective. While one bout of measles immunizes a child for life, it usually takes several bouts of malaria to confer even partial immunity. Pregnancy can cause women to stop being immune, and immunity can fade out if someone moves away from a malarial area — presumably because they no longer get “boosters” from repeated mosquito bites.

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Liberty and Cherokee SUVs recalled to fix air bag problem

By Jerry Hirsch

November 9, 2012, 8:35 a.m.

Chrysler Group is recalling about 750,000 Jeep sport utility vehicles in the U.S. because the air bags can inflate without warning.

The recall includes model year 2002 and 2003 Jeep Liberty vehicles and 2002 through 2004 Jeep Grand Cherokees.

The recall includes an additional 170,000 of the vehicles globally.

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Chrysler said a component in the air bag control module can fail and cause the front air bags, side curtain air bags and seatbelt pretensioners to deploy while the vehicle is being operated.

That’s happened more than 200 times, causing 81 injuries but no reported crashes, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. In most cases, the air bags deploy only partially rather than with the full force that occurs when they are triggered by a crash.

A NHTSA investigation found that the inadvertent air bag deployment is caused by an electrical problem.

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Gabrielle Giffords expected to attend Jared Loughner sentencing

Victims in the Tucson shooting rampage will get a chance to confront gunman Jared Lee Loughner, who will be  sentenced Thursday for killing six and wounding 13 people, including then-Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.

Giffords and her retired astronaut husband Mark Kelly are expected to be in court and make a statement before Loughner is sentenced by U.S. District Court Judge Larry A. Burns in Tucson. Other victims are also expected to appear.

Giffords was making a routine political appearance mid-morning on Jan. 8, 2011 at a supermarket parking lot in her Tucson district when Loughner opened fire, shooting her in the head. Passers-by rushed to help Giffords and wrestled Loughner to the ground. Before Loughner was subdued, he fired 31 more shots.

TIMELINE: Deadliest mass shootings in the U.S.

The nation then waited as doctors worked to save Giffords’ life in what has been described as a miraculous recovery. She then turned to her long-term and inspirational rehabilitation. Her first visit to Congress before stepping down from office led to a prolonged ovation from her colleagues.

The facts in the case were never in doubt. Loughner was the only suspect and the question focused on whether he would avoid the death penalty because of his mental health. After the shooting, Loughner was diagnosed with schizophrenia and underwent forcible psychotropic drug treatments.

Burns ruled that Loughner, now 24, was able to understand the charges against him, which eventually paved the way for a plea bargain designed to ensure that he would spend the rest of his life in prison without possibility of parole.

Three months ago, Loughner pleaded guilty to 19 federal charges. The agreement includes the dismissal of 30 other charges and a sentence of seven consecutive life terms, followed by 140 years in prison.

Giffords and some of the other victims said at the time that they welcomed the agreement because it meant that they could avoid a long and emotionally challenging court process that would have demanded they relive the events of that day.

Christina Pietz, the court-appointed psychologist who treated Loughner, had warned that although he was competent to plead guilty, he remained severely mentally ill and that he could deteriorate if forced to stand trial. Loughner, who has been in a prison medical facility in Springfield, Mo., for more than a year, is expected to serve his sentence in prison wards for the mentally ill.

Other victims are expected to make comments. Rep. Ron Barber, a former top aide to Giffords who replaced his boss in Congress, is expected to issue a statement. Barber is still awaiting word on whether he was re-elected to the seat on Tuesday.

Thursday’s proceedings end the federal case against Loughner. Pima County officials are still deciding whether to bring state charges.

Killed in the attack were:  John Roll, 63, presiding U.S. District Court judge for Arizona; Gabe Zimmerman, 30, one of Giffords' staffers; Christina-Taylor Green, a 9-year-old attending Giffords' event with an adult neighbor;  Dorwan Stoddard, 76; Dorothy Morris, 76; and Phyllis Schneck, 79, three retirees at the event.

In addition to Giffords and Barber, the wounded were: Mavy Stoddard (Dorwan's wife); George Morris (Dorothy's husband); Susan Hileman (Christina-Taylor's neighbor); Pam Simon, another Giffords staffer; and event attendees Bill Badger, Kenneth Dorushka, Eric Fuller, Randy Gardner, Mary Reed, James Tucker and Kenneth Veeder.

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Exclusive: Google Ventures beefs up fund size to $300 million a year

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Songwriter Diane Warren's music optioned for stage

NEW YORK (AP) — The big hooks and soaring melodies of Grammy-winning songwriter Diane Warren are heading to Broadway.

Tony Award-winning producer Dede Harris tells The Associated Press on Thursday that she has optioned Warren's entire 2,000-song music catalog with an eye to getting her hits into a musical. The creative team and a timeline for the project will be announced at a later date.

A formal announcement was to be made later Thursday.

"We're starting with a blank canvas and the beauty of the development of this process is that we can let our imaginations run wild," Harris said Thursday. "We have so many different songs that we can pull from and create a story from so many of her songs that it's just too early to say."

Warren's writing credits include Aerosmith's "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing," Celine Dion's "Because You Loved Me," Toni Braxton's "Un-Break My Heart," LeAnn Rimes' "How Do I Live" and "I Was Here" for Beyonce.

She's scored multiple Academy Award nominations and has won a Grammy and a Golden Globe award. Warren is the first songwriter in the history of Billboard to have seven hits, all by different artists, on the singles chart at the same time.

Although Harris has her favorite songs, she says she won't insist on their inclusion. "Obviously we want to put in her more popular songs, but we're not going to do it just to do it. It has to work with the story," she said.

Harris, who declined to say how much the catalog cost, has produced such hits as "Hairspray," ''Dirty Rotten Scoundrels" and "A Raisin in the Sun." Her recent hits include "One Man, Two Guvnors," ''War Horse" and "Clybourne Park" and she's producing the upcoming "Hands on a Hardbody."

Warren, who also has expressed interest in writing new songs for the project, would be the latest rocker to lend their music to Broadway-bound projects, joining the likes of Sheryl Crow, Glen Ballard, Cyndi Lauper, Dave Stewart and Melissa Etheridge.

___

Follow Mark Kennedy on Twitter at http://twitter.com/KennedyTwits

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Well: The Presidential Health Quiz

Whether it’s George Washington’s teeth or Bill Clinton’s former hamburger habit, Americans have always been fascinated by the health of the president and presidential candidates.

With help from the Web site DoctorZebra, which has compiled an exhaustive list of the medical history of American presidents, we’ve created an Election Day quiz to test your knowledge of presidential fitness and health.

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Amazon.com opens online wine marketplace, partners with wineries

As if shopping on Amazon.com needed to get any more dangerous: The online retailer will now start selling wine in a dedicated section on its site, just in time for the holidays.

Visitors to Amazon Wine will have access to more than 1,000 wines from wineries nationwide. Bottle prices range from less than $10 to more than $100, plus shipping costs of $9.99 for up to six bottles.

Amazon will serve as a sort of middle man and discovery center, partnering with wineries that provide the wine and use the online marketplace to raise awareness for their brands and make sales.

The wineries will provide tasting notes, recommended food pairings, alcohol content data and other information to be posted on the site. Customers can fine-tune their wine searches by filtering results for winery location, professional ratings and more.

“It is rare to have detailed information and opinions located all in one place,” Tom Hedges of Hedges Family Estate in Washington said in a statement. “What Amazon has done with their new wine store is take the experience of hundreds of tasting rooms and put them online.”

For now, wines will be shipped only to a dozen states, including California, as well as to Washington, D.C. Each winery operates under an distinct set of permits, which determines the states to which it can ship.

And underage drinkers can forget about using the service for an illegal binge. Amazon Wine requires both buyer and recipient to be over age 21 and will deliver only to adults, not to P.O. boxes or Amazon Lockers.

Wine has been available online for years through purveyors such as Wine.com, Winex.com and more.

This week, as if preparing to compete with Amazon Wine, Wine.com announced the similar Wine.com Marketplace after a soft launch earlier this year.

The wine retailer, currently the largest of its kind online with more than 2.5 million shipments a year, will handle all marketing, customer service, sales and delivery for participating wines.  

Most of the wines come from wineries with limited distribution ability who through Wine.com Marketplace will now have access to consumers in 20 states. Wine.com has traditionally bought its stock from wholesalers.

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Questions linger following Obama's reelection victory

President Obama celebrates his victory Wednesday, and plans a meeting with Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

President Barack Obama has won re-election. The Republican Party faces a reckoning about its identity. In Florida, however, the election goes on.

The state whose dysfunctional voting methods traumatized the nation 12 years ago, is still up in the air.  The state was supposed to have been a major presidential battleground, but the morning after election day, it was still a question mark.

Instead of butterfly ballots and hanging chads, the problem appears to have been caused by a long ballot, high turnout and some mechanical failures.

Even the president, in his victory speech in Chicago, acknowledged the problem:

“I want to thank every American who participated in this election, whether you voted for the very first time or waited in line for a very long time--by the way, we have to fix that.”

PHOTOS: America goes to the polls

On Wednesday morning, all precincts in Florida had finished reporting, and the totals gave an edge of more than 46,000 votes to Obama, about half of one percent.  Even without Florida’s 29 electoral votes, Obama accrued far more than the 270 he needed to secure re-election. (Without Florida, the total was 303 electoral votes for the president to GOP challenger Mitt Romney’s 206.)

The worst of the problems occurred in Miami-Dade, the state's largest county. Long lines began before the polls opened Tuesday and never let up; when the election was called for Obama, people were still standing in line at dozens of precincts. The Miami Herald reported that the last Miami-Dade voter finished just after 1 a.m.

A number of counties had not yet counted their absentee ballots. In Miami-Dade, elections workers still had to count 20,000 absentees. In Pinellas County, which includes St. Petersburg, there were about 9,000 absentees yet to be counted. Elections officials said it would be Wednesday afternoon before the results would be final.

John Card, an attorney heading the Elections Protections monitoring effort in Miami-Dade on Tuesday, said voting actually went smoothly in much of the county. But in some precincts, he said, it was a "debacle."

Voters faced a ballot filled with complicated constitutional amendments and local issues. For some, it was 12 pages long. In some crowded precincts, scanners malfunctioned. In others, poll workers were confused about the state's new rules on address changes, Card said. Some voters were told they were ineligibleto vote, others may have been purged from rolls improperly.

LIVE: Presidential election results

"I do think they were a little overwhelmed in some places," he said. "A number of people got frustrated and left," said Card, whose organization is a coalition of advocacy groups. "The system played out in a way that denied them the right to vote."

The president’s victory may not have packed the same emotional punch as his historic 2008 win as the first African-American to win the presidency. But early Wednesday morning, as he stood on a Chicago stage to address the nation, he seemed to reconjure the conciliatory, high-minded politician the country first got to know four years ago.

That man—with the inspiring speeches and the ability to make Americans believe in their better angels--had sometimes disappeared under the fatigue, stress or just plain aversion to the brutal  campaign process.

The president attempted to set a peaceable tone for a country inflamed by hot partisan sentiment, stoked by the stunning amounts of money that had flowed unimpeded into the race.

Though his first term accomplishments, such as health care reform and a stimulus bill that most economists say helped stave off a second Great Depression, were accomplished with almost no Republican support, he vowed to be a better bi-partisan in his second term.

“I am looking forward to reaching out and working with leaders of both parties to meet the challenges we can only solve together:  reducing our deficit;  reforming our tax code; fixing our immigration system; freeing ourselves from foreign oil.”

PHOTOS: President Obama’s past

He also said he planned to meet with Romney “to talk about where we can work together to move this country forward.”

Before the president spoke, Romney, 65, the former Massachusetts governor, had conceded the election in a gracious but wistful speech before downcast supporters in Boston.

“I so wish that I’d been able to fulfill your hopes to consider as a course in a different direction,” Romney said in his brief speech, “but the nation chose another leader and so Ann and I join with you to earnestly pray for him and this great nation.” 

Meanwhile, in Washington, Republicans began to grapple with the party’s future. The party kept control of the House, but despite its hopes for much of the election cycle did not wrest control of the Senate from Democrats. Montana incumbent Jon Tester was declared the victor over Republican Denny Rehberg Wednesday morning, saving for Democrats one of Republicans’ biggest pick-up hopes.

With Romney vanquished, the party’s putative leaders are its top legislators, House Speaker John Boehner, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor.

But Romney’s running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan, often touted as the ideological leader of the party’s conservative wing, will have solidified his importance as the GOP grapples with its ideological future, as well as with the demographic changes that contributed to its failure to recapture the White House.

PHOTOS: Mitt Romney’s past

In a statement released after midnight Tuesday, Boehner congratulated the president, noted that the Republicans have maintained their majority in the House of Representatives, and cautioned the president.

“If there is a mandate,” said Boehner, “it is a mandate for both parties to find common ground and take steps together to help our economy grow and create jobs, which is critical to solving our debt.”

Follow Politics Now on Twitter and Facebook

Joseph.tanfani@latimes.com

Twitter: @jtanfani

Robin.abcarian@latimes.com

Twitter: @robinabcarian

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Apple's shares slide 4 percent to five-month low

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ABC's Diane Sawyer spurs jokes from Twitterverse

NEW YORK (AP) — Diane Sawyer's Election Night performance left some viewers asking if she had begun celebrating Tuesday's election a bit early.

Co-anchoring ABC News' coverage, the veteran journalist struck a different manner from her practiced, straight-news-delivering style.

Sawyer spoke more slowly than usual while seeming to prop herself on outstretched arms at the anchor desk she shared with George Stephanopoulos.

"OK," she said at one point around 10 p.m. EST, "I wanna — can we have our music, because this is another big one here? Minnesota, we're ready to project Minnesota, rrright now. ... Well, tonight we know that President Barack has won Minnesota," she rambled on, stumbling over the president's name.

Maybe Sawyer was just weary from the recent torrent of news.

In any case, the Twitterverse took quick notice and began cracking wise.

Her name was soon trending with unflattering posts, while a new Twitter handle, Drunk Diane Sawyer, collected hundreds of followers. An ABC spokesman did not comment.

"A bit tipsy," ''hammered" or "on pain killers, muscle relaxers, benzos or some combination" were among the jeering explanations. Another likened it to an episode of HBO's drama "The Newsroom," where Will McAvoy, the fictitious anchorman, had eaten a couple of pot brownies before unexpectedly being summoned to his anchor desk to report a news story.

Some tweeters joked that a more fun-loving Sawyer was a ploy by ABC to boost viewership. Several Twitter followers said they were drawn to the network by word that Sawyer was behaving, by one description, "a bit wacky."

"Bad night for Romney," one tweeter summed up. "Worse night for Diane Sawyer?"

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Alarm Over India’s Dengue Fever Epidemic

Enrico Fabian for The New York Times

A man at the Yamuna River, an ideal breeding ground for mosquitoes. Filthy standing water abounds in New Delhi. More Photos »

NEW DELHI — An epidemic of dengue fever in India is fostering a growing sense of alarm even as government officials here have publicly refused to acknowledge the scope of a problem that experts say is threatening hundreds of millions of people, not just in India but around the world.

India has become the focal point for a mosquito-borne plague that is sweeping the globe. Reported in just a handful of countries in the 1950s, dengue (pronounced DEN-gay) is now endemic in half the world’s nations.

“The global dengue problem is far worse than most people know, and it keeps getting worse,” said Dr. Raman Velayudhan, the World Health Organization’s lead dengue coordinator.

The tropical disease, though life-threatening for a tiny fraction of those infected, can be extremely painful. Growing numbers of Western tourists are returning from warm-weather vacations with the disease, which has reached the shores of the United States and Europe. Last month, health officials in Miami announced a case of locally acquired dengue infection.

Here in India’s capital, where areas of standing water contribute to the epidemic’s growth, hospitals are overrun and feverish patients are sharing beds and languishing in hallways. At Kalawati Saran Hospital, a pediatric facility, a large crowd of relatives lay on mats and blankets under the shade of a huge banyan tree outside the hospital entrance recently.

Among them was Neelam, who said her two grandchildren were deathly ill inside. Eight-year-old Sneha got the disease first, followed by Tanya, 7, she said. The girls’ parents treated them at home but then Sneha’s temperature rose to 104 degrees, a rash spread across her legs and shoulders, and her pain grew unbearable.

“Sneha has been given five liters of blood,” said Neelam, who has one name. “It is terrible.”

Officials say that 30,002 people in India had been sickened with dengue fever through October, a 59 percent jump from the 18,860 recorded for all of 2011. But the real number of Indians who get dengue fever annually is in the millions, several experts said.

“I’d conservatively estimate that there are 37 million dengue infections occurring every year in India, and maybe 227,500 hospitalizations,” said Dr. Scott Halstead, a tropical disease expert focused on dengue research.

A senior Indian government health official, who agreed to speak about the matter only on the condition of anonymity, acknowledged that official figures represent a mere sliver of dengue’s actual toll. The government only counts cases of dengue that come from public hospitals and that have been confirmed by laboratories, the official said. Such a census, “which was deliberated at the highest levels,” is a small subset that is nonetheless informative and comparable from one year to the next, he said.

“There is no denying that the actual number of cases would be much, much higher,” the official said. “Our interest has not been to arrive at an exact figure.”

The problem with that policy, said Dr. Manish Kakkar, a specialist at the Public Health Foundation of India, is that India’s “massive underreporting of cases” has contributed to the disease’s spread. Experts from around the world said that India’s failure to construct an adequate dengue surveillance system has impeded awareness of the illness’s vast reach, discouraged efforts to clean up the sources of the disease and slowed the search for a vaccine.

“When you look at the number of reported cases India has, it’s a joke,” said Dr. Harold S. Margolis, chief of the dengue branch at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.

Neighboring Sri Lanka, for instance, reported nearly three times as many dengue cases as India through August, according to the World Health Organization, even though India’s population is 60 times larger.

Hari Kumar contributed reporting.

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Airlines cancel more flights ahead of nor'easter

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Airlines have canceled more than 1,500 flights ahead of a nor'easter. (WPIX.com / November 7, 2012)

By Hugo Martin

November 7, 2012, 9:56 a.m.

As a nor'easter storm threatens the East Coast, the nation's airlines have canceled more than 1,500 flights scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday.

The cancellations, about 1,200 for Wednesday and 313 on Thursday, were primarily scheduled to fly in and out of Newark Liberty International in New Jersey and La Guardia and John F. Kennedy International airports in New York.

Cancellations were also made for flights in and out of Philadelphia International, Chicago's O'Hare International and Dallas/Fort Worth International airports, according to the flight-monitoring site Flightaware.com.

The nor'easter bearing down on the East Coast is expected to be much weaker than Superstorm Sandy. But experts say airlines are being cautious by moving planes out of harm's way and avoiding stranding thousands of passengers on delayed flights.

The U.S. Department of Transportation adopted stiff penalties in 2010 for airlines that keep passengers stuck on a delayed flight for more than three hours.

Several airlines, including United, Delta and American airlines, have announced they will waive change fees for passengers whose flights were canceled. The airlines urge fliers to check the status of their flights online.

ALSO:

FAA recommends seat inspections on some airlines

United Airlines becomes first U.S. carrier to fly Dreamliner

Fliers in December and January are more likely to lose luggage

Follow Hugo Martin on Twitter at @hugomartin

Comments are filtered for language and registration is required. The Times makes no guarantee of comments' factual accuracy. Readers may report inappropriate comments by clicking the Report Abuse link next to a comment. Here are the full legal terms you agree to by using this comment form.

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