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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Pap Test May Prove Useful at Detecting More Types of Cancer, Study Suggests

The Pap test, which has prevented countless deaths from cervical cancer, may eventually help to detect cancers of the uterus and ovaries as well, a new study suggests.

For the first time, researchers have found genetic material from uterine or ovarian cancers in Pap smears, meaning that it may become possible to detect three diseases with just one routine test.

But the research is early, years away from being used in medical practice, and there are caveats. The women studied were already known to have cancer, and while the Pap test found 100 percent of the uterine cancers, it detected only 41 percent of the ovarian cancers. And the approach has not yet been tried in women who appear healthy, to determine whether it can find early signs of uterine or ovarian cancer.

On the other hand, even a 41 percent detection rate would be better than the status quo in ovarian cancer, particularly if the detection extends to early stages. The disease is usually advanced by the time it is found, and survival rates are poor. About 22,280 new cases were expected in the United States in 2012, and 15,500 deaths. Improved tests are urgently needed.

Uterine cancer has a better prognosis, but still kills around 8,000 women a year in the United States.

These innovative applications of the Pap test are part of a new era in which advances in genetics are being applied to the detection of a wide variety of cancers or precancerous conditions. Scientists are learning to find minute bits of mutant DNA in tissue samples or bodily fluids that may signal the presence of hidden or incipient cancers.

Ideally, the new techniques would find the abnormalities early enough to cure the disease or even prevent it entirely. But it is too soon to tell.

“Is this the harbinger of things to come? I would answer yes,” said Dr. Bert Vogelstein, director of the Ludwig Center for Cancer Genetics and Therapeutics at Johns Hopkins University, and a senior author of a report on the Pap test study published on Wednesday in the journal Science Translational Medicine. He said the genomes of more than 50 types of tumors had been sequenced, and researchers were trying to take advantage of the information.

Similar studies are under way or are being considered to look for mutant DNA in blood, stool, urine and sputum, both to detect cancer and also to monitor the response to treatment in people known to have the disease.

But researchers warn that such tests, used for screening, can be a double-edged sword if they give false positive results that send patients down a rabbit hole of invasive tests and needless treatments. Even a test that finds only real cancers may be unable to tell aggressive, dangerous ones apart from indolent ones that might never do any harm, leaving patients to decide whether to watch and wait or to go through surgery, chemotherapy and radiation with all the associated risks and side effects.

“Will they start recovering mutations that are not cancer-related?” asked Dr. Christopher P. Crum, a professor at Harvard Medical School who was not involved in the research.

But he also called the study a “great proof of principle,” and said, “Any whisper of hope to women who suffer from endometrial or ovarian cancer would be most welcome.”

DNA testing is already performed on samples from Pap tests, to look for the human papillomavirus, or HPV, which causes cervical cancer. Dr. Vogelstein and his team decided to try DNA testing for cancer. They theorized that cells or DNA shed from cancers of the ovaries and the uterine lining, or endometrium, might reach the cervix and turn up in Pap smears.

The team picked common mutations found in these cancers, and looked for them in tumor samples from 24 women with endometrial cancer and 22 with ovarian cancer. All the cancers had one or more of the common mutations.

Then, the researchers performed Pap tests on the same women, and looked for the same DNA mutations in the Pap specimens. They found the mutations in 100 percent of the women with endometrial cancer, but in only 9 of the 22 with ovarian cancer. The test identified two of the four ovarian cancers that had been diagnosed at an early stage.

Finally, the team developed a test that would look simultaneously for cancer-associated mutations in 12 different genes in Pap samples. Used in a control sample of 14 healthy women, the test found no mutations — meaning no false-positive results.

Dr. Luis A. Diaz, the other senior author of the report and an associate professor of oncology at Johns Hopkins, called the research a step toward a screening test that at first blush appears very effective at detecting endometrial cancer, though obviously less so at finding ovarian cancer.

“Probably one of the most exciting features of this approach,” Dr. Diaz said, “is that we wanted a test that would seamlessly integrate with routine medical practice that could be utilized with the same test that women get every day all over the world, the Pap smear.”

But, he added: “We can’t say it’s ready for prime time. Like all good science, it needs to be validated.”

He and other members of the team said it might be possible to improve the detection rate for ovarian cancer by looking for more mutations and by changing the technique of performing Pap tests to increase the likelihood of capturing cells from the ovary. The change might involve timing the test to a certain point in a woman’s monthly cycle, using a longer brush to collect cells from deeper within the cervix or prescribing a drug that would raise the odds of cells being shed from the ovary.

The technique also needs to be tested in much larger groups of women, including healthy ones, to find out whether it works, particularly at finding cancers early enough to improve survival. And studies must also find out whether it generates false positive results, or identifies cancers that might not actually need to be treated.

Michael H. Melner, a program director in molecular genetics and biochemistry for the American Cancer Society, called the research “very promising,” in part because it is based on finding mutations.

“It tells you not just that cancer is there, but which mutation is there,” Dr. Melner said. “As we learn more and more about which mutations are associated with more or less severe forms of cancer, it’s more information, and possibly more diagnostic.”

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S.E.C. Seeks to Penalize 2 Auditors in Bank Case

In its first case against auditors stemming from the financial crisis, the Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday took action against two KPMG employees who had given a clean audit opinion to a Nebraska-based bank holding company that later failed because of bad loans it had made to real estate developers in Nevada and Florida.

The S.E.C. asked an administrative law judge to bar John J. Aesoph, 40, a partner in the Omaha office of KPMG, and Darren M. Bennett, 35, a senior manager, for their roles in an audit of TierOne in 2008.

That included what the S.E.C. said was a failure to take steps to review the audit after evidence emerged that the auditors had been misled about whether the bank had taken large enough write-downs on the value of real estate development loans.

“Aesoph and Bennett merely rubber-stamped TierOne’s collateral value estimates and ignored the red flags surrounding the bank’s troubled real estate loans,” said Robert Khuzami, the commission’s enforcement director. “Auditors must adhere to professional auditing standards and exercise due diligence rather than merely relying on management’s representations.”

George S. Canellos, the deputy director of the division, said the case was “in keeping with our focus on the important responsibility of gatekeepers” who fail to do their jobs properly.

He pointed to a case filed last month against eight former directors of Morgan Keegan mutual funds, who were charged with failing to prevent fund managers from overvaluing fund assets during the financial crisis.

Lawyers for Mr. Aesoph and Mr. Bennett did not comment on the case, but KPMG issued a statement saying, “Our partner and senior manager look forward to presenting the facts in support of the work that was performed under the circumstances at TierOne.” A KPMG spokesman said Mr. Aesoph and Mr. Bennett remained at the company.

TierOne was a savings bank that focused on its home markets in Iowa, Kansas and Nebraska until it began to look for faster growing markets and opened loan production offices in Arizona, Colorado, Florida and Nevada. Loans to developers grew in those markets, leaving the bank exposed when property values began to plummet.

In 2008, TierOne closed those offices and wrote down the value of some of its largest loans. But the S.E.C. said that in doing so, the bank had not acted rapidly enough, particularly with regard to Nevada loans.

It said the auditors should have noted numerous red flags, including the fact that the few new appraisals that were done showed management had underestimated the expected losses.

It noted that the auditors had signed off on the financial statements even after the Office of Thrift Supervision, the bank’s primary regulator, warned of serious problems.

In 2010, the bank failed and was taken over by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which estimated its losses would be $298 million, or about 10 percent of total assets. The F.D.I.C. has since revised the estimate to $212 million.

KPMG, one of the largest audit firms in the world, was not named as a defendant in the case, which may reflect the S.E.C.’s lack of possible remedies as much as it does a view of the firm’s actions.

Under the law, the S.E.C. does not have the authority to levy financial penalties on auditors who fail to do their jobs. It can only suspend or bar them from practicing before the commission, a penalty that would prevent them from having any role in accounting or auditing the books of a public company.

Taking such a step against KPMG would be tantamount to putting it out of business, something the commission would not want to do in any but the most extreme circumstances.

The commission previously filed charges against three former officials of TierOne, two of whom settled and one of whom is fighting it in federal court in Omaha.

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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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