Bell council members took pay for 'sham' board meetings, D.A. says

Opening statements began Thursday in the trial against six former Bell council members accused of paying themselves extraordinarily high salaries for their part-time work, largely by collecting pay for serving on boards and commissions that rarely, if ever, met.

Deputy Dist. Atty Edward Miller walked the jury through a PowerPoint presentation that listed how often the four agencies met. One screen shot read, “Agendas for each had one item. Pay raises.”

Between 2006 and 2007, Miller said the total meeting time for all of the boards was 34 minutes.

FULL COVERAGE: Bell trial

“The evidence will show that they worked less minutes than my opening statement will take this morning,” he said.

He pointed out that the Solid Waste Authority met for just two minutes one year.

“This was a sham from the beginning,” he said. “The two minutes was just to pass a resolution to establish their pay. They did nothing else that year.”

The prosecutor said the former council members cost the city $1.3 million with their inflated salaries.

Later, Miller turned to the jury of eight women and four men and said, “So how did they get away with it? Well, unfortunately, participation by the community in Bell city politics wasn’t very good.”

The corruption case in Bell exploded more than two years ago when The Times revealed that council members were making about $100,000 a year. The town’s chief administrator, Robert Rizzo, was being compensated nearly $1 million for running the largely immigrant city of about 35,000 residents.

Rizzo, along with former assistant city manager Angela Spaccia, will stand trial later this year.

Authorities said their investigation showed that the elected leaders and top administrators had been raiding the city treasury by drawing huge salaries, lending out city money and imposing illegal taxes on residents of the L.A. County city.

Luis Artiga, Victor Bello, George Cole, Oscar Hernandez, Teresa Jacobo and George Mirabal all face potential prison terms if convicted.

The trial drew a few Bell residents, including Donna Gannon, who has lived in the city for more than 35 years. Gannon, 59, said she plans to run for city council and wanted to attend the hearing to learn more about the charges against the defendants. She hopes to relay the information to residents.

“There’s a lot of information we don’t know and are still confused about,” she said. “Right now we’re in the dark. There’s still an elephant in the room, and we’re here to learn the details.”

After the lunch break, opening statements will be heard from all six defense attorneys. One said he was not impressed by Miller’s remarks.

“There were no surprises,” Hernandez’s attorney, Stanley L. Friedman, said. “Where’s the beef?”

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3D-Printed Iron Throne Smartphone Dock Rings True for <em>Game of Thrones</em> Fans

Historically, winning the Iron Throne in the medieval fantasy series Game of Thrones involves Machiavellian political intrigue and brutal, bloody civil warfare. But it’s gotten a lot easier — particularly for smartphone fans —  thanks to a DIY maker known as mstyle183, who created a 3D-printed version of the Westerosi seat of power that also serves as a dock for iPhones and Android devices.

“As many of you guys know the iPhone 5 doesn’t have an official docking station from Apple. This has inevitably created a massive 3rd party race to create successful iPhone 5 docks… made out of Legos, metal, wood, plastic,” said mstyle183 on her Instructables blog. After spotting a $10,000 life-size 3D-printed Iron Throne on line, she “realized that the Iron Throne would make the ultimate docking station for any true geek out there.”

She details her step-by-step process for creating a 3D-printed Iron Throne at Instructables, and has a commercial version available for pre-order at nuPROTO.com. Although she hasn’t published the printable STL file for the project yet, she notes in the comments that she ultimately hopes to release it to the open source community.

Images courtesy nuPROTO

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Fox orders “Sleepy Hollow,” two other drama pilots

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Ichabod Crane will ride again – this time on Fox.

The network has given a pilot order to an adaptation of the “Sleepy Hollow” legend from “Fringe” and “Transformers” team Alex Kurtzman and Bob Orci, the network said Tuesday.

A modern-day supernatural thriller based on the Washington Irving tale, “Sleepy Hollow” will be written and executive-produced by Kurtzman and Orci, with Heather Kadin and Len Wiseman also executive-producing. The series comes from K O Paper Products in association with Twentieth Century Fox TV.

Fox also ordered two other drama pilots on Tuesday, including “Delirium,” from writer/executive producer Karyn Usher (“Bones,” “Prison Break.”). Produced by Chernin Entertainment in association with Twentieth Century Fox TV, “Delirium” is based on a best-selling trilogy “about a world where love is deemed illegal and is able to be eradicated with a special procedure.” With just 95 days to go before undergoing her scheduled procedure, the drama’s protagonist, Lena Holoway “does the unthinkable: she falls in love.”

Peter Chernin and Katherine Pope are also serving as executive producers on “Delirium.”

A third pilot, “The List,” revolves around the murders of members of the Federal Witness Security Program, and the U.S. Marshal who leads the hunt for a person who stole a file with the identities of every member of the program. Paul Zbyszewski (“Lost,” “Hawaii 5-0″) is writing and executive-producing, with “Zombieland” director Ruben Fleischer also executive-producing. “The List” is being produced by Twentieth Century Fox TV.

TV News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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The New Old Age Blog: Grief Over New Depression Diagnosis

When the American Psychiatric Association unveils a proposed new version of its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the bible of psychiatric diagnoses, it expects controversy. Illnesses get added or deleted, acquire new definitions or lists of symptoms. Everyone from advocacy groups to insurance companies to litigators — all have an interest in what’s defined as mental illness — pays close attention. Invariably, complaints ensue.

“We asked for commentary,” said David Kupfer, the University of Pittsburgh psychiatrist who has spent six years as chairman of the task force that is updating the handbook. He sounded unruffled. “We asked for it and we got it. This was not going to be done in a dark room somewhere.”

But the D.S.M. 5, to be published in May, has generated an unusual amount of heat. Two changes, in particular, could have considerable impact on older people and their families.

First, the new volume revises some of the criteria for major depressive disorder. The D.S.M. IV (among other changes, the new manual swaps Roman numerals for Arabic ones) set out a list of symptoms that over a two-week period would trigger a diagnosis of major depression: either feelings of sadness or emptiness, or a loss of interest or pleasure in most daily activities, plus sleep disturbances, weight loss, fatigue, distraction or other problems, to the extent that they impair someone’s functioning.

Traditionally, depression has been underdiagnosed in older adults. When people’s health suffers and they lose friends and loved ones, the sentiment went, why wouldn’t they be depressed? A few decades back, Dr. Kupfer said, “what was striking to me was the lack of anyone getting a depression diagnosis, because that was ‘normal aging.’” We don’t find depression in old age normal any longer.

But critics of the D.S.M. 5 now argue that depression may become overdiagnosed, because this version removes the so-called “bereavement exclusion.” That was a paragraph that cautioned against diagnosing depression in someone for at least two months after loss of a loved one, unless that patient had severe symptoms like suicidal thoughts.

Without that exception, you could be diagnosed with this disorder if you are feeling empty, listless or distracted, a month after your parent or spouse dies.

“D.S.M. 5 is medicalizing the expected and probably necessary process of mourning that people go through,” said Allen Frances, a professor emeritus at Duke who chaired the D.S.M. IV task force and has denounced several of the changes in the new edition. “Most people get better with time and natural healing and resilience.”

If they are diagnosed with major depression before that can happen, he fears, they will be given antidepressants they may not need. “It gives the drug companies the right to peddle pills for grief,” he said.

An advisory committee to the Association for Death Education and Counseling also argued that bereaved people “will receive antidepressant medication because it is cheaper and ‘easier’ to medicate than to be involved therapeutically,” and noted that antidepressants, like all medications, have side effects.

“I can’t help but see this as a broad overreach by the APA,” Eric Widera, a geriatrician at the University of California, San Francisco, wrote on the GeriPal blog. “Grief is not a disorder and should be considered normal even if it is accompanied by some of the same symptoms seen in depression.”

But Dr. Kupfer said the panel worried that with the exclusion, too many cases of depression could be overlooked and go untreated. “If these things go on and get worse over time and begin to impair someone’s day to day function, we don’t want to use the excuse, ‘It’s bereavement — they’ll get over it,’” he said.

The new entry for major depressive disorder will include a note — the wording isn’t final — pointing out that while grief may be “understandable or appropriate” after a loss, professionals should also consider the possibility of a major depressive episode. Making that distinction, Dr. Kupfer said, will require “good solid clinical judgment.”

Initial field trials testing the reliability of D.S.M. 5 diagnoses, recently published in The American Journal of Psychiatry, don’t bolster confidence, however. An editorial remarked that “the end results are mixed, with both positive and disappointing findings.” Major depressive disorder, for instance, showed “questionable reliability.”

In an upcoming post, I’ll talk more about how patients might respond to the D.S.M. 5, and to a new diagnosis that might also affect a lot of older people — mild neurocognitive disorder.

Paula Span is the author of “When the Time Comes: Families With Aging Parents Share Their Struggles and Solutions.”

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This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 24, 2013

An earlier version of this post misspelled the surname of a professor emeritus at Duke who chaired the D.S.M. IV task force. He is Allen Frances, not Francis.

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AT&T Fourth-Quarter Earnings Hurt by Pensions and Storm

Over the holiday season, AT&T sold a record number of smartphones. But its quarterly earnings took a hit from pension costs and Hurricane Sandy.

On Thursday, AT&T reported a loss in the fourth quarter of $3.9 billion, or 68 cents a share, up from a loss of $6.7 billion, or $1.12 a share, from the same quarter a year earlier.

The company said revenue was essentially flat at $32.6 billion.

Its adjusted per-share earnings were 44 cents a share, excluding pension costs, the impact of Hurricane Sandy and the sale of its advertising units. Wall Street analysts had expected 45 cents a share on earnings of $32.2 billion, according to Thomson Reuters.

“We had an excellent 2012,” said Randall Stephenson, AT&T’s chief executive, in a statement. “Looking ahead, our key growth platforms — mobile data, U-verse and strategic business services — all have good momentum with a lot of headroom,” Mr. Stephenson added.

The company, based in Dallas, said that it sold 10.2 million smartphones over the quarter, the most ever sold by any American carrier. A majority of those smartphones were iPhones: AT&T sold 8.6 million iPhones, in contrast with Verizon’s 6.2 million iPhones. AT&T, the second biggest carrier after Verizon Wireless, is in the process of a major network expansion. It said late last year that it would invest an extra $14 billion to expand its wireless and broadband services through 2015. It expects that its fourth-generation network technology, called LTE, will cover 300 million people by the end of next year.

Beyond making upgrades to its wireless network, AT&T has plans to offer new services that might create new revenue streams. In March, it will begin selling its new wireless home security system, Digital Life, which will allow people to use tablets or phones to monitor their homes from afar. If a burglar trips a motion sensor in the house, for example, a user can receive a text message, then call the police. Ralph de la Vega, chief executive of AT&T Mobility, has said that he believes home security will be a big opportunity to increase revenue, because only 20 percent of American homes have security systems, leaving millions of homeowners as potential buyers.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 24, 2013

An earlier version of this article published online misstated the expectation of Wall Street analysts for AT&T’s quarterly per-share earnings. It was 45 cents, not 48 cents.

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Apple reports flat first-quarter earnings; shares drop 5%

Apple Inc. reported flat fiscal first-quarter earnings, sending shares plummeting 5% in after-hours trading.

Apple said revenue increased 18% to $54.5 billion in the first quarter, which ended in December. Profit rose only slightly to $13.08 billion, or $13.81 a share, from $13.06 billion, or $13.87, a year earlier.

Apple had previously told Wall Street analysts that for its first quarter, investors should expect the company to report $52 billion in revenue and $11.75 a share in earnings. The consensus among Wall Street analysts was that Apple would report $54.7 billion in revenue and $13.41 a share in earnings.

LIVE UPDATES: Apple shares plunge as earnings disappoint

In addition, Apple said it sold a record 47.8 million iPhones in the last quarter, up from the 37 million iPhones it sold in the same quarter in 2011. The company sold 22.9 million iPads, also a record, up from 15.4 million.

Despite the record number of iPhones sold, some analysts were expecting more.

“Meeting expectations is not enough for Apple,” said Colin Gillis of BGC Financial. “People are looking on the north side somewhere of 50 million phones. So that’s a little bit of a disappointment…. International sales were a little weaker than people expected. So we’ll see how that shakes out.”

“Overall, compared to other companies, it’s impressive,” said Patrick Moorhead of Moor Insights & Strategy. “But for Apple’s standards, it’s not great, but really good.

“I do think this somewhat fuels the perception that Apple is slowing down a bit, in terms of being able to consistently set expectations. And it’s driven by the fact that some of its competitors are catching up, and in some markets have already caught up.”

Immediately after the numbers were released, Apple's stock fell 4.5% to $490.48 in after-hours trading. During regular trading, shares rose $9.24, or 1.8%, to $514.01.

At 2 p.m., the company began its earnings calls with analysts. The Cupertino, Calif., company could hint at its upcoming plans for cheaper iPhones, new iPads and possibly some long-awaited TV news, although it seems unlikely for the typically tight-lipped company. Still, expect analysts to try their best to finagle information from Chief Executive Tim Cook and other company executives during the question-and-answer portion of the call.

For the current quarter, Apple said it expected revenue of $41 billion to $43 billion, gross margin of 37.5% to 38.5% and operating expenses of $3.8 billion to $3.9 billion.

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Apple Shares Plunge 10 Percent After Hours On Earnings Decline And Revenue Miss

The law of large numbers kicked in Wednesday for Apple, which saw overall revenue just missing analyst estimates, despite the company racking up a record $13.1 billion in profits, the first year-over-year decline in over a decade.

Apple sold 22.9 million iPads and 47.8 million iPhones over the course of its holiday quarter, which spanned October through December, garnering the Cupertino company $13.1 billion in profits. The sales numbers, astonishing by all other counts, just beat analyst expectations of around $12.8 billion.

Investors certainly weren’t wowed by the numbers, sending Apple stock down almost 10 percent in after-hours trading. Since it hit a high of $704 in September, Apple stock has plummeted almost 30 percent on fears that growth for the world’s most valuable company has finally started to slow amid saturation of smartphones in the United States and tougher competition abroad from Samsung in particular.

And even if investors didn’t get everything they wanted in the numbers, Apple CEO Tim Cook put a very positive face on the quarter just reported and the year to come. “We’re thrilled with record revenue… and sales of over 75 million iOS devices in a single quarter,” Cook said in a release. “We’re very confident in our product pipeline as we continue to focus on innovation and making the best products in the world.”

Under Cook’s guidance Apple unleashed a bevy of new products over its Q1: the fourth generation iPad, the smaller iPad mini, new iMacs. The iPhone 5, which went on sale in late September, also rolled out to additional international markets over the period including the world’s largest smartphone market China. The combination added up to massive sales.

But while the holiday season was strong, it may not have been strong enough to convince investors that Apple’s decade-long “hyper growth” period – marked by the launches of three revolutionary products: the iPod, which continues to dominate the MP3 player market; the iPhone, which became the smartphone to own for years; and the iPad, which kickstarted today’s tablet craze – can continue. The question everyone will be looking for Cook to answer this afternoon, is where will the next phase of growth come from?

Apple always provides conservative guidance for the next quarter and year to come, but today investors will be trying to discern whether what Cook says is just typical Apple conservatism or if there are signs that Apple is starting to worry itself.

For long-time tech analyst Cindy Shaw, a managing director with San Francisco-based Discern, this moment in time is reminiscent of another formerly white-hot tech company, Dell. In 2005 and 2006 Dell and its leader, Michael Dell could no wrong. Revenue was then a blistering $50 billion and Wall Street fell over itself with praise. Then the cracks started to show, customers began to voice complaints, and other options in the PC marketplace started to look pretty good. From antenna gate, to Apple’s self aggrandizing and hugely expensive new headquarters and the more recent maps snafu, Shaw is seeing a similar build-up of what she calls “small warning flags.” When the attention at Dell turned from adoration to suspicion, management had a very tough time responding in a way that satisfied investors (a trend that has clearly continued with Dell reportedly in talks to with financiers to take the company private again).

Apple is no Dell, but it’s a useful reminder of how fast and far companies can fall. Cook is in a very tough position because finding meaningful growth for a $156 billion company is going to be very tough. If he goes down market (hard for a high-end brand to do) he sacrifices margin, and the growth guys start screaming again. If he doesn’t deliver a mind-blowing new product that creates a new category, everyone screams innovation by Apple is dead. For investors the question to be asking, and the one that should have been front of mind as soon as Apple became the largest market cap company on the planet is: When do I sell?

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Sundance stars sound off on gun violence in film

PARK CITY, Utah (AP) — The Sundance Film Festival isn’t home to many shoot-em-up movies, but action-oriented actors at the festival are facing questions about Hollywood’s role in American gun violence.

Guy Pearce and Alexander Skarsgard are among those who say Hollywood shares in the blame.

Pearce is in Park City, Utah, to support the family drama “Breathe In,” but he’s pulled plenty of imaginary triggers in violent films such as “Lockdown” and “Lawless.” He says Hollywood may make guns seem “cool” to the broader culture, but there are vast variations in films’ approach to guns.

“Hollywood probably does play a role,” Pearce said. “It’s a broad spectrum though. There are films that use guns flippantly, then there are films that use guns in a way that would make you never want to look at a gun ever again — because of the effect that it’s had on the other people in the story at the time. So to sort of just say Hollywood and guns, it’s a broad palette that you’re dealing with, I think. But I’m sure it does have an effect. As does video games, as do stories on the news. All sorts of things probably seep into the consciousness.”

Skarsgard, who blasted away aliens in “Battleship,” says he agrees that Hollywood has some responsibility for how it depicts violence on-screen.

“When (NRA executive director) Wayne LaPierre blames it on Hollywood and says guns have nothing to do with it, there is a reason,” he said. “I mean, I’m from Sweden. . We do have violent video games in Sweden. My teenage brother plays them. He watches Hollywood movies. We do have insane people in Sweden and in Canada. But we don’t have 30,000 gun deaths a year.

“Yes, there’s only 10 million people in Sweden as opposed to over 300 (million) in the United States. But the numbers just don’t add up. There are over 300 million weapons in this country. And they help. They do kill people.”

Ellen Page, who co-stars with Skarsgard in “The East,” noted that gun restrictions are much more pervasive in her home country, Canada.

“You can’t buy some crazy assault rifle that is made for the military to kill people. And like that to me is just like a no-brainer,” she said. “Why should that just be out and be able to be purchased? That does not make me feel safe as a person.”

Skarsgard says it may be time to revisit the Second Amendment.

“The whole Second Amendment discussion is ridiculous to me. Because that was written over 200 years ago, and it was a militia to have muskets to fight off Brits,” he said. “The Brits aren’t coming. It’s 2013. Things have changed. And for someone to mail-order an assault rifle is crazy to me. They don’t belong anywhere but the military to me. You don’t need that to protect your home or shoot deer, you know.”

___

AP Entertainment Writer Ryan Pearson is on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ryanwrd .

Entertainment News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Well: Long Term Effects on Life Expectancy From Smoking

It is often said that smoking takes years off your life, and now a new study shows just how many: Longtime smokers can expect to lose about 10 years of life expectancy.

But amid those grim findings was some good news for former smokers. Those who quit before they turn 35 can gain most if not all of that decade back, and even those who wait until middle age to kick the habit can add about five years back to their life expectancies.

“There’s the old saw that everyone knows smoking is bad for you,” said Dr. Tim McAfee of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “But this paints a much more dramatic picture of the horror of smoking. These are real people that are getting 10 years of life expectancy hacked off — and that’s just on average.”

The findings were part of research, published on Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine, that looked at government data on more than 200,000 Americans who were followed starting in 1997. Similar studies that were done in the 1980s and the decades prior had allowed scientists to predict the impact of smoking on mortality. But since then many population trends have changed, and it was unclear whether smokers today fared differently from smokers decades ago.

Since the 1960s, the prevalence of smoking over all has declined, falling from about 40 percent to 20 percent. Today more than half of people that ever smoked have quit, allowing researchers to compare the effects of stopping at various ages.

Modern cigarettes contain less tar and medical advances have cut the rates of death from vascular disease drastically. But have smokers benefited from these advances?

Women in the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s had lower rates of mortality from smoking than men. But it was largely unknown whether this was a biological difference or merely a matter of different habits: earlier generations of women smoked fewer cigarettes and tended to take up smoking at a later age than men.

Now that smoking habits among women today are similar to those of men, would mortality rates be the same as well?

“There was a big gap in our knowledge,” said Dr. McAfee, an author of the study and the director of the C.D.C.’s Office on Smoking and Public Health.

The new research showed that in fact women are no more protected from the consequences of smoking than men. The female smokers in the study represented the first generation of American women that generally began smoking early in life and continued the habit for decades, and the impact on life span was clear. The risk of death from smoking for these women was 50 percent higher than the risk reported for women in similar studies carried out in the 1980s.

“This sort of puts the nail in the coffin around the idea that women might somehow be different or that they suffer fewer effects of smoking,” Dr. McAfee said.

It also showed that differences between smokers and the population in general are becoming more and more stark. Over the last 20 years, advances in medicine and public health have improved life expectancy for the general public, but smokers have not benefited in the same way.

“If anything, this is accentuating the difference between being a smoker and a nonsmoker,” Dr. McAfee said.

The researchers had information about the participants’ smoking histories and other details about their health and backgrounds, including diet, alcohol consumption, education levels and weight and body fat. Using records from the National Death Index, they calculated their mortality rates over time.

People who had smoked fewer than 100 cigarettes in their lifetimes were not classified as smokers. Those who had smoked at least 100 cigarettes but had not had one within five years of the time the data was collected were classified as former smokers.

Not surprisingly, the study showed that the earlier a person quit smoking, the greater the impact. People who quit between 25 and 34 years of age gained about 10 years of life compared to those who continued to smoke. But there were benefits at many ages. People who quit between 35 and 44 gained about nine years, and those who stopped between 45 and 59 gained about four to six years of life expectancy.

From a public health perspective, those numbers are striking, particularly when juxtaposed with preventive measures like blood pressure screenings, colorectal screenings and mammography, the effects of which on life expectancy are more often viewed in terms of days or months, Dr. McAfee said.

“These things are very important, but the size of the benefit pales in comparison to what you can get from stopping smoking,” he said. “The notion that you could add 10 years to your life by something as straightforward as quitting smoking is just mind boggling.”

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Media Decoder Blog: Adding Subscribers, Netflix Posts Surprise Profit

Netflix on Wednesday announced a surprise profit in the fourth quarter of 2012 and a new total of 27 million streaming subscribers in the United States, a jump of more than two million from the third quarter.

The company also added nearly two million new subscribers in other countries, though it continued to lose money overseas, as expected. Overall, however, the company reported $8 million in net income and $945 million in revenue. Analysts had expected a slight loss, not a profit, due to the rising costs of acquiring must-see streaming content.

Netflix’s fourth-quarter earnings exceeded not just Wall Street’s expectations but also its own, as the chief executive, Reed Hastings, and chief financial officer, David Wells, noted in a letter to investors. Revenues, they said, were driven in part by holiday season sales of new tablets and television sets.

Investors cheered the news, and at one point sent Netflix shares soaring more than 30 percent in after-hours trading.

The growth spurt in the fourth quarter attested to the popularity of on-demand libraries of television shows and movies. Streaming services by Amazon, Hulu, and Redbox are competing on the same playing field as Netflix, but for now Netflix is the biggest such service by far.

“The fact that our growth remains this strong despite intensifying competition, and our already substantial U.S. market penetration, underlines the large opportunity ahead,” Mr. Hastings and Mr. Wells wrote.

Netflix ended 2012 with 27.1 million streaming subscribers in the United States and 6.1 million elsewhere. On Wednesday it predicted that it would end the first quarter of 2013 with somewhere between 28.5 and 29.2 million in the United States and somewhere between 6.6 and 7.3 million elsewhere.

Net income will be about in line with the fourth quarter, Netflix said, since the revenue from new subscribers will be offset by licensing expenses and continuing declines in its DVD-by-mail business.

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