Relatives of singer Jenni Rivera’s co-passengers sue over plane crash

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Family members of four passengers who died with singer Jenni Rivera when her plane crashed in northern Mexico last year sued her corporation and the current and former owners of the aging Learjet they called a “bucket of bolts” on Thursday.

The plaintiffs alleged in their Los Angeles Superior Court lawsuit that the 43-year-old aircraft was unsafe and being flown by two unqualified pilots when it nosedived from 28,000 feet into mountainous terrain.

“We are trying to unravel the mystery of how this came to be. Who selected this plane, what condition was this plane in and how did these pilots get behind the stick of this aircraft?” plaintiffs’ attorney Paul Kiesel said.

“We want to provide answers for my clients and for the community mourning these brilliant lives,” he said.

Rivera and her fellow passengers were flying from Monterrey, Mexico, to an airport in the Mexico City suburb of Toluca in the early morning hours of December 9 when the Learjet 25 went down.

The 43-year-old California-born singer, best known for her work in the Mexican folk Nortena and Banda genres, had been headed to Mexico City for an appearance on the TV singing competition “The Voice Mexico.”

Killed with her were publicist Arturo Rivera (no relation), make-up artist Jacobo Yebale, attorney Mario Macias Pacheco and hair stylist Jorge Armando “Gigi” Sanchez Vasquez, along with the pilot and co-pilot.

Since the plane was registered in the United States, members of the National Transportation Safety Board are taking part in the investigation, which was expected to last a year.

Representatives for Jenni Rivera Enterprises and for Starwood Management, the charter company that owned the aircraft at the time of the crash, could not be reached by Reuters for comment on the lawsuit.

A Starwood executive previously told the Los Angeles Times that the plane was properly maintained and suggested that the 78-year-old pilot, Miguel Perez Soto, might have suffered a heart attack or become incapacitated in some way.

According to the 22-page lawsuit, the multi-engine plane involved in the crash had been built in 1969 and “was such an old airplane that it was referred to as a ‘bucket of bolts.’”

The lawsuit says it struck a runway marker at an airport in Texas in 2005, which left the plane with structural damage.

The plaintiffs also say in the court papers that Soto was not licensed to fly the Learjet above 18,000 feet or with paying passengers. The co-pilot, 20-year-old Alejandro Jose Torres, also lacked certification for flying the plane under those conditions, according to the lawsuit.

(Editing by Cynthia Johnston and Peter Cooney)

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Parental Consent Rule May Proceed for a Circumcision Ritual, a Judge Says

New York City health officials may proceed temporarily with a plan to require parental consent before an infant may undergo a particular Jewish circumcision ritual, a federal judge ruled Thursday.

City officials say 12 cases of herpes simplex virus have likely resulted from the procedure, known as metzitzah b’peh, since 2000, including one Brooklyn case reported this week. Two infants died, and two suffered permanent brain damage. Most Jews no longer practice metzitzah b’peh, in which the circumciser uses his mouth to suck blood from the wound, but it remains common among some ultra-Orthodox communities.

Citing the risk of infection, health officials in September introduced a regulation that would require parents to provide written consent stating that they were aware of the health risks.

But the Central Rabbinical Congress of the United States and Canada, Agudath Israel of America, and the International Bris Association sued in October to stop the rule from taking effect, calling it an infringement of their constitutional rights. They also denied the procedure posed a risk and asked a federal court to put the rule on hold while the litigation proceeded.

In denying the request for a preliminary injunction, Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald of the United States District Court for the Southern District wrote that the risks were clear.

“In light of the quality of the evidence presented in support of the regulation, we conclude that a continued injunction against enforcement of the regulation would not serve the public interest,” she wrote.

City lawyers said they were gratified by the ruling, but Andrew Moesel, a spokesman for the plaintiffs, said the groups would appeal. “We continue to believe that this case is a wrongful and unnecessary intrusion into the rights of freedom of religion and speech,” he said.

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Japan Approves $116 Billion in Emergency Economic Stimulus

TOKYO — The Japanese government approved emergency stimulus spending of more than $100 billion on Friday, part of an aggressive push by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to kick-start growth in Japan’s long-moribund economy.

Mr. Abe also reiterated pressure on Japan’s central bank to make a firmer commitment to stopping deflation by pumping more money into the economy — a measure the prime minister says is crucial to getting businesses to invest and consumers to spend.

“We will put an end to this shrinking, and aim to build a stronger economy where earnings and incomes can grow,” Mr. Abe told a televised news conference. “For that, the government must first take the initiative to create demand, and boost the entire economy.”

Under the plan, the Japanese government will spend about 10.3 trillion yen (about $116 billion) on public works and disaster mitigation projects, subsidies for companies that invest in new technology and financial aid to small businesses.

The government will seek to raise real economic growth by 2 percentage points and add 600,000 jobs to the economy, Mr. Abe said. The measures announced Friday amount to one of the largest spending plans in Japan’s history, he stressed.

By simply talking about stimulus measures, Mr. Abe, who took office late last month, has already driven down the value of the yen, much to the relief of Japanese exporters whose competitiveness benefits from a weaker currency.

But the government’s promises to spend its way out of economic stagnation also raise concerns over Japan’s public debt, which has already mushroomed to twice the size of its economy and is the largest in the industrialized world.

At the root of Japan’s debt woes was a similar attempt in the 1990s by Mr. Abe’s own Liberal Democratic Party to stimulate economic growth through government spending on extensive public works projects across the country.

Mr. Abe said, however, that the spending this time around would be better focused to bring about growth through investment in innovation. He said the government would also invest in measures that would help mitigate the fall in Japan’s population, by encouraging families to have more children.

“To grow in a sustainable way, we must help create a virtuous cycle where companies actively borrow and invest, and in so doing raise employment and incomes,” Mr. Abe said.

“For that, it is extremely important that we adopt a growth strategy that gives everyone solid hope that the future of the Japanese economy lies in growth.”

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Irvine City Council overhauls oversight, spending on Great Park

Capping a raucous eight-hour-plus meeting, the Irvine City Council early Wednesday voted to overhaul the oversight and spending on the beleaguered Orange County Great Park while authorizing an audit of the more than $220 million that so far has been spent on the ambitious project.

A newly elected City Council majority voted 3 to 2 to terminate contracts with two firms that had been paid a combined $1.1 million a year for consulting, lobbying, marketing and public relations. One of those firms — Forde & Mollrich public relations — has been paid $12.4 million since county voters approved the Great Park plan in 2002.

"We need to stop talking about building a Great Park and actually start building a Great Park," council member Jeff Lalloway said.

The council, by the same split vote, also changed the composition of the Great Park's board of directors, shedding four non-elected members and handing control to Irvine's five council members.

The actions mark a significant turning point in the decade-long effort to turn the former El Toro Marine base into a 1,447-acre municipal park with man-made canyons, rivers, forests and gardens that planners hoped would rival New York's Central Park.

The city hoped to finish and maintain the park for years to come with $1.4 billion in state redevelopment funds. But that money vanished last year as part of the cutbacks to deal with California's massive budget deficit.

"We've gone through $220 million, but where has it gone?" council member Christina Shea said of the project's initial funding from developers in exchange for the right to build around the site. "The fact of the matter is the money is almost gone. It can't be business as usual."

The council majority said the changes will bring accountability and efficiencies to a project that critics say has been larded with wasteful spending and no-bid contracts. For all that has been spent, only about 200 acres of the park has been developed and half of that is leased to farmers.

But council members Larry Agran and Beth Krom, who have steered the course of the project since its inception, voted against reconfiguring the Great Park's board of directors and canceling the contracts with the two firms.

Krom has called the move a "witch hunt" against her and Agran. Feuding between liberal and conservative factions on the council has long shaped Irvine politics.

"This is a power play," she said. "There's a new sheriff in town."

The council meeting stretched long into the night, with the final vote coming Wednesday at 1:34 a.m. Tensions were high in the packed chambers with cheering, clapping and heckling coming from the crowd.

At one point council member Lalloway lamented that he "couldn't hear himself think."

During public comments, newly elected Orange County Supervisor Todd Spitzer chastised the council for "fighting like schoolchildren." Earlier this week he said that if the Irvine's new council majority can't make progress on the Great Park, he would seek a ballot initiative to have the county take over.

And Spitzer angrily told Agran that his stewardship of the project had been a failure.

"You know what?" he said. "It's their vision now. You're in the minority."

mike.anton@latimes.com

rhea.mahbubani@latimes.com

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A Google-a-Day Puzzle for Jan. 10

Our good friends at Google run a daily puzzle challenge and asked us to help get them out to the geeky masses. Each day’s puzzle will task your googling skills a little more, leading you to Google mastery. Each morning at 12:01 a.m. Eastern time you’ll see a new puzzle posted here.

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We leave the comments on so people can work together to find the answer. As such, if you want to figure it out all by yourself, DON’T READ THE COMMENTS!

Also, with the knowledge that because others may publish their answers before you do, if you want to be able to search for information without accidentally seeing the answer somewhere, you can use the Google-a-Day site’s search tool, which will automatically filter out published answers, to give you a spoiler-free experience.

And now, without further ado, we give you…

TODAY’S PUZZLE:

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Ken is a husband and father from the San Francisco Bay Area, where he works as a civil engineer. He also wrote the NYT bestselling book "Geek Dad: Awesomely Geeky Projects for Dads and Kids to Share."

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Award winning U.S. reporter Richard Ben Cramer dies of lung cancer

(Reuters) – Pulitzer-Prize winning correspondent and author Richard Ben Cramer, best known for his chronicle of the 1988 U.S. presidential election, died on Monday in Baltimore.

The cause of death was lung cancer, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer, where Cramer worked for seven years. He was 62.

Cramer won the 1979 Pulitzer Prize in international reporting for his coverage of Middle Eastern affairs for the Philadelphia Inquirer. Esquire named his 1986 profile of Boston Red Sox slugger Ted Williams one of the seven greatest stories published in the magazine’s history.

“What It Takes: The Way to the White House,” Cramer’s 1,000-page account of the 1988 presidential campaign, painted a rich portrait of American political luminaries such as former U.S. President George H. W. Bush, former Democratic presidential nominee Michael Dukakis, former Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole and current U.S. Vice President Joe Biden.

Though it received tepid reviews at the time of its 1992 publication, it was ultimately hailed as one of the best books of political journalism. New York University’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute named “What It Takes” one of the top 100 works of U.S. journalism in the 20th century.

Cramer’s prolific writing career included stints at the Inquirer and Baltimore Sun newspapers, contributions to magazines like Esquire and Sports Illustrated, and multiple books on topics as diverse as the Israel-Palestine conflict and the life of New York Yankees legend Joe DiMaggio.

A native of Rochester, New York, Cramer earned degrees from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. At the time of his death, he was living in Chestertown, Maryland in an old white farmhouse that he picked out with the help of Biden, Politico reported in 2010.

Cramer had been working on a book about New York Yankee third baseman Alex Rodriguez, tentatively titled “The Importance of Being Alex: A Life with the Yankees,” before taking a hiatus in 2012, the New York Daily News reported in June.

(Reporting by Peter Rudegeair; Editing by Paul Thomasch and Andrew Hay)

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Americans Under 50 Fare Poorly on Health Measures, New Report Says

Younger Americans die earlier and live in poorer health than their counterparts in other developed countries, with far higher rates of death from guns, car accidents and drug addiction, according to a new analysis of health and longevity in the United States.

Researchers have known for some time that the United States fares poorly in comparison with other rich countries, a trend established in the 1980s. But most studies have focused on older ages, when the majority of people die.

The findings were stark. Deaths before age 50 accounted for about two-thirds of the difference in life expectancy between males in the United States and their counterparts in 16 other developed countries, and about one-third of the difference for females. The countries in the analysis included Canada, Japan, Australia, France, Germany and Spain.

The 378-page study by a panel of experts convened by the Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council is the first to systematically compare death rates and health measures for people of all ages, including American youths. It went further than other studies in documenting the full range of causes of death, from diseases to accidents to violence. It was based on a broad review of mortality and health studies and statistics.

The panel called the pattern of higher rates of disease and shorter lives “the U.S. health disadvantage,” and said it was responsible for dragging the country to the bottom in terms of life expectancy over the past 30 years. American men ranked last in life expectancy among the 17 countries in the study, and American women ranked second to last.

“Something fundamental is going wrong,” said Dr. Steven Woolf, chairman of the Department of Family Medicine at Virginia Commonwealth University, who led the panel. “This is not the product of a particular administration or political party. Something at the core is causing the U.S. to slip behind these other high-income countries. And it’s getting worse.”

Car accidents, gun violence and drug overdoses were major contributors to years of life lost by Americans before age 50.

The rate of firearm homicides was 20 times higher in the United States than in the other countries, according to the report, which cited a 2011 study of 23 countries. And though suicide rates were lower in the United States, firearm suicide rates were six times higher.

Sixty-nine percent of all American homicide deaths in 2007 involved firearms, compared with an average of 26 percent in other countries, the study said. “The bottom line is that we are not preventing damaging health behaviors,” said Samuel Preston, a demographer and sociologist at the University of Pennsylvania, who was on the panel. “You can blame that on public health officials, or on the health care system. No one understands where responsibility lies.”

Panelists were surprised at just how consistently Americans ended up at the bottom of the rankings. The United States had the second-highest death rate from the most common form of heart disease, the kind that causes heart attacks, and the second-highest death rate from lung disease, a legacy of high smoking rates in past decades. American adults also have the highest diabetes rates.

Youths fared no better. The United States has the highest infant mortality rate among these countries, and its young people have the highest rates of sexually transmitted diseases, teen pregnancy and deaths from car crashes. Americans lose more years of life before age 50 to alcohol and drug abuse than people in any of the other countries.

Americans also had the lowest probability over all of surviving to the age of 50. The report’s second chapter details health indicators for youths where the United States ranks near or at the bottom. There are so many that the list takes up four pages. Chronic diseases, including heart disease, also played a role for people under 50.

“We expected to see some bad news and some good news,” Dr. Woolf said. “But the U.S. ranked near and at the bottom in almost every heath indicator. That stunned us.”

There were bright spots. Death rates from cancers that can be detected with tests, like breast cancer, were lower in the United States. Adults had better control over their cholesterol and high blood pressure. And the very oldest Americans — above 75 — tended to outlive their counterparts.

The panel sought to explain the poor performance. It noted the United States has a highly fragmented health care system, with limited primary care resources and a large uninsured population. It has the highest rates of poverty among the countries studied.

Education also played a role. Americans who have not graduated from high school die from diabetes at three times the rate of those with some college, Dr. Woolf said. In the other countries, more generous social safety nets buffer families from the health consequences of poverty, the report said.

Still, even the people most likely to be healthy, like college-educated Americans and those with high incomes, fare worse on many health indicators.

The report also explored less conventional explanations. Could cultural factors like individualism and dislike of government interference play a role? Americans are less likely to wear seat belts and more likely to ride motorcycles without helmets.    

The United States is a bigger, more heterogeneous society with greater levels of economic inequality, and comparing its health outcomes to those in countries like Sweden or France may seem lopsided. But the panelists point out that this country spends more on health care than any other in the survey. And as recently as the 1950s, Americans scored better in life expectancy and disease than many of the other countries in the current study.

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Chinese Firm Buys an American Solar Technology Start-Up

Alexander F. Yuan/Associated Press

The chief of MiaSolé, John Carrington, left, at the announcement of the company’s purchase by Hanergy Holding Group, for which Zhou Jiesan is an executive.

Just a few years ago, Silicon Valley investors were pouring money into solar technologies and talking about how they would bring the same kind of innovation to green energy that they had to the computer chip.

But few anticipated that prices for silicon, the main component of traditional solar panels, would plummet or that Chinese manufacturers, backed by enormous subsidies from their government, would increase solar production capacity by a factor of 17 in just four years.

The resulting plunge in solar panel prices wiped out the dream of a new Solar Valley. Despite making advances in the new technology, known as thin-film solar, the American companies just couldn’t compete.

The federal government’s imposition of steep tariffs last year on Chinese conventional panels helped, but the industry had waited so late to apply for the tariffs that balance sheets had already been crippled with accumulated losses and investors had lost interest.

Some thin-film companies went bankrupt, including Solyndra, which had received half a billion dollars in federal subsidies. Others, like Stion, licensed their technology or formed strategic partnerships with large corporations.

On Wednesday, the chief executive of MiaSolé, one of the most promising Silicon Valley solar start-ups, appeared in Beijing for the announcement that Hanergy Holding Group of China had completed the purchase of his company and its technology for a fraction of what investors had put in. Hanergy made its money building hydroelectric dams.

Hanergy’s purchase of the 100-employee MiaSolé, based in Santa Clara, Calif., follows its acquisition in September of the 400-employee thin-film solar unit of Q.Cells, an insolvent German solar company. The two deals have allowed Hanergy to acquire at low cost an array of patents developed for hundreds of millions of dollars of venture capital investments.

“Going head to head against the Asian low-cost, mass-volume crystalline silicon manufacturers is not a wise strategy if you’re trying to produce an ultracheap module in the United States or in high-cost markets,” said Neil Z. Auerbach, managing partner of Hudson Clean Energy Partners, a SoloPower investor. “But if you’re adopting advanced technology, you have a niche strategy in which those incumbents do not have a competitive edge because they don’t really have a product that suits.”

The industry’s broad competitive challenges have prompted American investors to shun the sector. Last year, venture capital financing in the solar sector plummeted nearly 50 percent to $992 million in 103 deals from $1.9 billion in 108 deals in 2011, according to Mercom Capital Group, a clean-tech research and communications company.

Chinese regulators, too, have begun trying to deal with the overcapacity, discouraging their banks from making more large loans to the solar panel sector.

Li Hejun, the chairman of Hanergy, said at the news conference in Beijing that the company’s hydroelectric dams produce several hundred million dollars a year in free cash flow, so it can finance its own investments in solar, which already include six thin-film solar factories, plus three more under construction.

“Everyone knows about the overcapacity in solar energy industry in China, but for us industrial insiders, this overcapacity is but a relative one,” he said. “For those who have technology, the situation is the opposite.”

The thin-film technology championed by the Silicon Valley start-ups uses more exotic materials than conventional solar panels, which are made from crystalline silicon.

Most thin-film modules are slightly less efficient at converting sunlight into electricity than conventional panels, but they are much lighter, which makes them easier to mount in locations that may not support the weight of conventional panels.

Supporters of thin-film technology contend that it has the potential for considerable further efficiency gains that may not be possible for conventional panels, which have been researched for decades. And some research has shown that thin-film can outperform conventional silicon-based panels at high temperatures, such as in deserts, where solar farms are often located.

The technology’s promise attracted the attention of the Obama administration, which provided clean-energy grants and loans to some of the companies, although not to MiaSolé.

Diane Cardwell reported from New York and Keith Bradsher from Hong Kong. Patrick Zuo contributed research from Beijing.

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Judge rejects bid to shut Oakland pot dispensary

OAKLAND — The nation's largest medical marijuana dispensary won a round in federal court this week, with a judge rejecting efforts by Harborside Health Center's landlords in Oakland and San Jose to immediately shut down operations.

The property owners have been under pressure since federal prosecutors last summer threatened to seize the buildings, arguing that pot sales were in violation of federal law. But in her ruling, Chief Magistrate Judge Maria-Elena James said that "any argument about the urgency of stopping Harborside's activity rings hollow" — since the landlords had known for years that it was a medical cannabis dispensary.

Allowing Harborside to stay open while a fuller legal airing of the issues took place, James continued, would not cause the landlords irreparable harm.

In her ruling in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, James also found that the property owners had no legal standing to seek an immediate end to sales at the dispensary by contending they violated the federal Controlled Substances Act.

Harborside — which serves more than 108,000 patients — now will have the opportunity to battle the federal civil forfeiture actions in court.

"We look forward to proving our case in front of a jury, and continue to believe we will prevail," Harborside's executive director, Steve DeAngelo, said in a statement.

The city of Oakland also has sued to prevent the property forfeiture, contending that federal prosecutors had missed a five-year statute of limitations and misled city officials with promises that they would not go after dispensaries complying with state and local laws.

In her ruling, James ordered Oakland's case be coordinated with the forfeiture cases.

Monday's ruling sets the stage for what could be a precedent-setting battle over clashing federal and state marijuana laws.

Cedric Chao, an attorney for Oakland, has argued that closure of the dispensaries would deprive the city of tax revenue and force Harborside's patients into the underground market, driving up crime.

"The city of Oakland could not be more pleased" by James' ruling, Chao said. "The patients can continue to get the medicine. They won't be thrown in the streets. There won't be an immediate public health crisis. There won't be a public safety crisis."

The U.S. attorney's office repeatedly has declined to comment on the ongoing litigation. Prosecutors have filed a motion to toss Oakland's suit, contending the city has no legal standing to weigh in. That issue will be heard at a hearing on Jan. 31.

lee.romney@latimes.com

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A Google-a-Day Puzzle for Jan. 9

Our good friends at Google run a daily puzzle challenge and asked us to help get them out to the geeky masses. Each day’s puzzle will task your googling skills a little more, leading you to Google mastery. Each morning at 12:01 a.m. Eastern time you’ll see a new puzzle posted here.

SPOILER WARNING:
We leave the comments on so people can work together to find the answer. As such, if you want to figure it out all by yourself, DON’T READ THE COMMENTS!

Also, with the knowledge that because others may publish their answers before you do, if you want to be able to search for information without accidentally seeing the answer somewhere, you can use the Google-a-Day site’s search tool, which will automatically filter out published answers, to give you a spoiler-free experience.

And now, without further ado, we give you…

TODAY’S PUZZLE:

Note: Ad-blocking software may prevent display of the puzzle widget.

Ken is a husband and father from the San Francisco Bay Area, where he works as a civil engineer. He also wrote the NYT bestselling book "Geek Dad: Awesomely Geeky Projects for Dads and Kids to Share."

Read more by Ken Denmead

Follow @fitzwillie and @wiredgeekdad on Twitter.

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