United Airlines pilots ratify new labor contract









CHICAGO — After years of divisive negotiations between United Airlines and its pilots, union members on Saturday ratified a new labor agreement, shedding a bankruptcy-era contract for pilots and marking an important step toward fully integrating United and Continental airlines, which officially merged in 2010.


The Air Line Pilots Assn., which over the last couple of years has staged pickets about its lack of a contract and had taken a preliminary strike vote, said 67% of its 10,000 members voted over the last several weeks to ratify the deal, with nearly 98% casting votes. Voting closed Saturday morning.


The four-year contract will go into effect immediately. It provides gains in pay, job protections, retirement and benefits compensation and work rules.





"The era of bankruptcy and concessionary contracts is now over," union leaders said in a statement. "For too long, the pilots of United and Continental have had to shoulder more than their share of the burden as our respective airlines struggled through the difficult economic times of the past decade. We now stand ready to embark on a fresh start for the pilots and the airline."


With help from federal mediators, the two sides agreed in principle to a deal in August, then took until mid-November to work out language for a contract and send the proposal to the union membership for a vote.


"The ratification of this agreement is an important step forward for our pilots and the company," said Fred Abbott, United senior vice president of flight operations, in a statement.


The finished contract is a bit of good news in what has otherwise been a rocky merger for Chicago-based United Continental Holdings.


Most notable to passengers were rampant flight delays and cancellations after a conversion to a combined passenger reservation system in March. Those operational woes were severe over the summer, and customers started to flee to other airlines. But the problems have subsided in recent months, with United hitting its goal of an 80% on-time rate.


United is still in joint negotiations with other major unions, including those for flight attendants, passenger service agents, dispatchers and ramp and fleet workers. Pilot contracts are traditionally done first and tend to be the most contentious.


gkarp@tribune.com





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Gunman kills 20 kids, 6 adults at Connecticut elementary school









NEWTOWN, Conn. — A gunman massacred 20 children and six adults at a suburban elementary school here Friday morning before killing himself in what appeared to be the second-deadliest school shooting in U.S. history, authorities said.


Sources said Adam Lanza, 20, earlier killed his mother at home and then drove her Honda to Sandy Hook Elementary School equipped with firearms that were registered to one or both of his divorced parents.


Clad in military fatigues and carrying two semiautomatic pistols, he entered the school, argued with someone in the hallway and then opened fire on staff members and children around 9:30 a.m., a law enforcement source said. He focused his gunfire on two rooms. Children huddled in closets and corners as the carnage unfolded.





Connecticut State Police Lt. J. Paul Vance said police searched "every nook and cranny" of the kindergarten-through-fourth-grade campus after receiving a 911 call. He said 18 children and seven adults were found dead at the school — including the shooter — and two other children died at the hospital. Victims' bodies remained inside the school into the evening as relatives were gathered at a nearby fire station.


Vance did not officially identify the shooter or any of the dead. He said another adult had been killed elsewhere in Newtown, but he did not say whether it was Lanza's mother. Police are questioning Lanza's 24-year-old brother, Ryan, of Hoboken, N.J., the Associated Press reported.


It was the deadliest school shooting since 32 were murdered in the 2007 Virginia Tech rampage.


"Evil visited this community today," Gov. Dannel P. Malloy said Friday evening. "It's too early to speak of recovery."


Chris Manfredonia, whose 6-year-old daughter attends the school, was heading there Friday morning to help make gingerbread houses with first-graders when he heard popping sounds and smelled sulfur.


He ran around the school trying to reach his daughter and was briefly handcuffed by police. He later found his child, who had been locked in a small room with a teacher.


"The whole reason we moved here a year ago is because when you drive down the subdivision, it's a happy place," said his wife, Georgeann Manfredonia. "There's a ton of children here and the families are very kind and supportive."


Geneva Cunningham, 9, a fourth-grader, said she was in the library when the shooting erupted and she heard "a lot of screaming and yelling."


She said the school loudspeaker came on, and through it came the sound of a scream and then "really deep breathing."


A teacher ordered her and other students into a closet. "They told us it was a drill and that it was for our own safety," she said. "When it was happening there was a lot of glass shattering." At first, she said, some students thought an animal was loose. She said she heard about seven muted gunshots.


A fourth-grade boy told CNN that he was in the gym when he heard pops and bangs.


"We thought it was the custodian knocking stuff down," the boy said. "We heard screaming ... and then the police came in and said, 'Is he in here?'"


When it was deemed safe, students were led out of the school. They were told to close their eyes. Some were taken to a nearby fire station. Some ran. Some walked single-file, hands on each other's shoulders.


Parents rushed to collect their children. Others waited in anguish for news of their kids' fate. People trickled out of the school throughout the day.


The school sits at the end of a two-lane road, lined with barns converted to houses, in an affluent town of about 28,000 people about 60 miles from New York City. The scene quickly bore the hallmarks of other mass casualties, with whirling news helicopters and masses of reporters, law enforcement and rescue personnel.


The street leading to the school, cut off to most cars Friday, became a pathway for people running to the school to find out what happened to loved ones.


Susan Birge, a mental health disaster counselor, spent Friday afternoon in the fire station down the road from the school, huddling with grieving families.





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Owner of Rivera plane being investigated by DEA


PHOENIX (AP) — The company that owns a luxury jet that crashed and killed Latin music star Jenni Rivera is under investigation by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, and the agency seized two of its planes earlier this year as part of the ongoing probe.


DEA spokeswoman Lisa Webb Johnson confirmed Thursday the planes owned by Las Vegas-based Starwood Management were seized in Texas and Arizona, but she declined to discuss details of the case. The agency also has subpoenaed all the company's records, including any correspondence it has had with a former Tijuana mayor who U.S. law enforcement officials have long suspected has ties to organized crime.


The man widely believed to be behind the aviation company is an ex-convict named Christian Esquino, 50, who has a long and checkered legal past. Corporate records list his sister-in-law as the company's only officer, but insurance companies that cover some of the firm's planes say in court documents that the woman is merely a front and that Esquino is the one in charge.


Esquino's legal woes date back decades. He pleaded guilty to a fraud charge that stemmed from a major drug investigation in Florida in the early 1990s and most recently was sentenced to two years in federal prison in a California aviation fraud case. Esquino, a Mexican citizen, was deported upon his release. Esquino and various other companies he has either been involved with or owns have also been sued for failing to pay millions of dollars in loans, according to court records.


The 43-year-old California-born Rivera died at the peak of her career when the plane she was traveling in nose-dived into the ground while flying from the northern Mexican city of Monterrey to the central city of Toluca early Sunday morning. She was perhaps the most successful female singer in grupero, a male-dominated Mexico regional style, and had branched out into acting and reality television.


It remained unclear Thursday exactly what caused the crash and why Rivera was on Esquino's plane. The 78-year-old pilot and five other people were also killed. Esquino was not on the plane.


The late singer's brother, Pedro Rivera Jr., said that he didn't know anything about the owner or why or how she ended up in his plane.


Esquino told the Los Angeles Times in a telephone interview from Mexico City earlier this week that the singer was considering buying the aircraft from Starwood for $250,000 and the flight was offered as a test ride. He disputed reports that he owns Starwood, maintaining that he is merely the company's operations manager "with the expertise."


In response to an email from The Associated Press, Esquino said he did not want to comment. Calls to various phone numbers associated with him rang unanswered.


Esquino is no stranger to tangles with the law. He was indicted in the early 1990s along with 12 other defendants in a major federal drug investigation that claimed the suspects planned to sell more than 480 kilograms of cocaine, according to court records. He eventually pleaded guilty to conspiring to conceal money from the IRS and was sentenced to five years in prison, but much of the term was suspended for reasons that weren't immediately clear.


He served about five months in prison before being released.


Cynthia Hawkins, a former assistant U.S. attorney who handled the case and is now in private practice in Orlando, remembered the investigation well.


"It was huge," Hawkins said Thursday. "This was an international smuggling group."


She said the case began with the arrest of Robert Castoro, who was at the time considered one of the most prolific smugglers of marijuana and cocaine into Florida from direct ties to Colombian drug cartels in the 1980s. Castoro was convicted in 1988 and sentenced to life in prison, but he then began cooperating with authorities, leading to his sentence being reduced to just 10 years, Hawkins said.


"Castoro cooperated for years," she said. "We put hundreds of people in jail."


He eventually gave up another smuggler, Damian Tedone, who was indicted in the early 1990s along with Esquino and 11 others in a conspiracy involving drug smuggling in Florida in the 1980s at a time when the state was the epicenter of the nation's cocaine trade.


Tedone also cooperated with authorities and has since been released from prison. Telephone messages left Thursday for both Tedone and Castoro were not returned.


Esquino eventually pleaded guilty to the lesser offense of concealing money from the IRS.


Joseph Milchen, Esquino's attorney at the time, said Thursday the case eventually revolved around his client "bringing money into the United States without declaring it."


However, Milchen acknowledged that a plane purchased by Esquino was "used to smuggle drugs."


He denied his former client has ever had anything to do with illegal narcotics.


"The only thing he has ever done is with airplanes," Milchen said.


Court filings also indicate Esquino was sentenced to two years in federal prison after pleading guilty in 2004 to committing fraud involving aircraft he purchased in Mexico, then falsified the planes' log books and re-sold them in the United States.


Also in 2004, a federal judge ordered him and one of his companies to pay a creditor $6.2 million after being accused of failing to pay debts to a bank.


As the years passed, Esquino's troubles only grew.


In February this year, a Gulfstream G-1159A plane the government valued at $500,000 was seized by the U.S. Marshals Service on behalf of the DEA after landing in Tucson on a flight that originated in Mexico


Four months later, the DEA subpoenaed all of Starwood's records dating to Dec. 13, 2007, including federal and state income tax documents, bank deposit information, records on all company assets and sales, and the entity's relationship with Esquino and more than a dozen companies and individuals, including former Tijuana Mayor Jorge Hank-Rhon, a gambling mogul and a member of one of Mexico's most powerful families. U.S. law enforcement officials have long suspected Hank-Rhon is tied to organized crime but no allegations have been proven. He has consistently denied any criminal involvement.


He was arrested in Mexico last year on weapons charges and on suspicion of ordering the murder of his son's former girlfriend. He was later freed for lack of evidence.


The subpoena was obtained by the U-T San Diego newspaper.


A Starwood attorney listed on the subpoena, Jeremy Schuster, declined Thursday to provide details.


"We don't comment on matters involving clients," he said.


In September, the DEA seized another Starwood plane — a 1977 Hawker 700 with an insured value of $1 million — after it landed in McAllen, Texas, from a flight from Mexico.


Insurers of both aircraft have since filed complaints in federal court in Nevada seeking to have the Starwood policies nullified, in part, because they say Esquino lied in the application process when he noted he had never been indicted on drug-related criminal charges. Both companies said they would not have issued the policies had he been truthful.


Another attorney for Starwood has not responded to phone and email messages seeking comment, and no one was at the address listed at its Las Vegas headquarters. The address is a post office box in a shipping and mailing store located between a tuxedo rental shop and a supermarket in a shopping center several miles west of the Las Vegas Strip.


___


Associated Press writers Elliot Spagat in San Diego and Ken Ritter in Las Vegas contributed to this report.


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Life Expectancy Rises Around World, Study Finds





A sharp decline in deaths from malnutrition and infectious diseases like measles and tuberculosis has caused a shift in global mortality patterns over the past 20 years, according to a report published on Thursday, with far more of the world’s population now living into old age and dying from diseases mostly associated with rich countries, like cancer and heart disease.







Tony Karumba/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Children in Nairobi, Kenya. Sub-Saharan Africa lagged in mortality gains, compared with Latin America, Asia and North Africa.






The shift reflects improvements in sanitation, medical services and access to food throughout the developing world, as well as the success of broad public health efforts like vaccine programs. The results are striking: infant mortality declined by more than half from 1990 to 2010, and malnutrition, the No. 1 risk factor for death and years of life lost in 1990, has fallen to No. 8.


At the same time, chronic diseases like cancer now account for about two out of every three deaths worldwide, up from just over half in 1990. Eight million people died of cancer in 2010, 38 percent more than in 1990. Diabetes claimed 1.3 million lives in 2010, double the number in 1990.


“The growth of these rich-country diseases, like heart disease, stroke, cancer and diabetes, is in a strange way good news,” said Ezekiel Emanuel, chairman of the department of medical ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania. “It shows that many parts of the globe have largely overcome infectious and communicable diseases as a pervasive threat, and that people on average are living longer.”


In 2010, 43 percent of deaths in the world occurred at age 70 and older, compared with 33 percent of deaths in 1990, the report said. And fewer child deaths have brought up the mean age of death, which in Brazil and Paraguay jumped to 63 in 2010, up from 30 in 1970, the report said. The measure, an average of all deaths in a given year, is different from life expectancy, and is lower when large numbers of children die.


But while developing countries made big strides the United States stagnated. American women registered the smallest gains in life expectancy of all high-income countries’ female populations between 1990 and 2010. American women gained just under two years of life, compared with women in Cyprus, who lived 2.3 years longer and Canadian women who gained 2.4 years. The slow increase caused American women to fall to 36th place in the report’s global ranking of life expectancy, down from 22nd in 1990. Life expectancy for American women was 80.5 in 2010, up from 78.6 in 1990.


“It’s alarming just how little progress there has been for women in the United States,” said Christopher Murray, director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, a health research organization financed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation at the University of Washington that coordinated the report. Rising rates of obesity among American women and the legacy of smoking, a habit women formed later than men, are among the factors contributing to the stagnation, he said. American men gained in life expectancy, to 75.9 years from 71.7 in 1990.


Health experts from more than 300 institutions contributed to the report, which provided estimates of disease and mortality for populations in more than 180 countries. It was published in The Lancet, a British medical journal.


The World Health Organization issued a statement on Thursday saying that some of the estimates in the report differed substantially from those done by United Nations agencies, though others were similar. All comprehensive estimates of global mortality rely heavily on statistical modeling because only 34 countries — representing about 15 percent of the world’s population — produce quality cause-of-death data.


Sub-Saharan Africa was an exception to the trend. Infectious diseases, childhood illnesses and maternity-related causes of death still account for about 70 percent of the region’s disease burden, a measure of years of life lost due to premature death and to time lived in less than full health. In contrast, they account for just one-third in South Asia, and less than a fifth in all other regions. Sub-Saharan Africa also lagged in mortality gains, with the average age of death rising by fewer than 10 years from 1970 to 2010, compared with a more than 25-year increase in Latin America, Asia and North Africa.


Globally, AIDS was an exception to the shift of deaths from infectious to noncommunicable diseases. The epidemic is believed to have peaked, but still results in 1.5 million deaths each year.


Over all, the change means people are living longer, but it also raises troubling questions. Behavior affects people’s risks of developing cancer, heart disease and diabetes, and public health experts say it is far harder to get people to change their ways than to administer a vaccine that protects children from an infectious disease like measles.


“Adult mortality is a much harder task for the public health systems in the world,” said Colin Mathers, a senior scientist at the World Health Organization.


Tobacco use is a rising threat, especially in developing countries, and is responsible for almost six million deaths a year globally. Illnesses like diabetes are also spreading fast.


Donald G. McNeil Jr. contributed reporting.



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Former IndyMac CEO Michael Perry to pay $1 million in settlement









Former IndyMac Bancorp Chairman and Chief Executive Michael W. Perry has agreed to pay $1 million and be banished from the banking industry to settle government claims that he overloaded the Pasadena thrift with risky home loans before it collapsed in July 2008.


The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. is dropping its $600-million negligence lawsuit against Perry in return for the personal payment and the right to seek $11 million from IndyMac's insurance carriers, Perry's lawyers and the FDIC said in statements released Friday.


The collapse of IndyMac is considered one of the early events that helped usher in the 2008 financial meltdown. A run on the bank's deposits wound up costing the FDIC insurance fund $13 billion — by far the most costly bank failure of the crisis.





Perry has continued to maintain that he did nothing wrong. A statement from the lawyers said he was settling "in large part" because the corporate insurance funds for his defense had been exhausted battling lawsuits brought against him and other former bank insiders.


"Mike Perry was a smart, honest and highly capable CEO who did all he could to save IndyMac Bank," said defense attorney D. Jean Veta of Washington, D.C.


Of the executives the government has accused of civil wrongdoing in the aftermath of the financial crisis, Perry was the most outspoken self-defender.


He even set up a website, http://www.nottoobigtofail.org, to dispute lawsuits brought by the FDIC, the Securities and Exchange Commission and private investors. Among other things, Perry noted that he had never sold his stock in IndyMac as the mortgage meltdown approached and then ripped through the industry.


Perry's lenders became the nation's largest issuer of so-called alt-A mortgages — home loans mostly based on borrowers' simple statements of their income rather than on tax returns. As such, they were commonly called "liar loans."


IndyMac's collapse was hastened when Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) released a letter in June 2008 to the FDIC and other regulators, saying that "IndyMac's financial deterioration poses significant risks to both taxpayers and borrowers."


Veta said the FDIC's filings acknowledge that the agency did not blame Perry for causing the bank to fail. Instead, she said, "the FDIC insisted on pursuing an equally baseless simple negligence claim, alleging that Mr. Perry should have had a crystal ball, seen the financial crisis coming and stopped making loans sooner than IndyMac did."


FDIC spokesman Andrew Gray did not dispute Veta's characterization of the case. He issued a statement saying: "The FDIC as Receiver of IndyMac has settled with Michael Perry in an agreement that will bar him from banking and that recovers $1 million in personal assets and up to $11 million of insurance policy money."


The FDIC sued Perry in July 2011.


His No. 2 at the bank, former IndyMac President Richard Wohl, previously settled FDIC negligence claims for $1.4 million — most of it covered by the bank's directors and officers insurance policies, the FDIC said last week. The agency had not previously disclosed that settlement.


In a separate suit, the FDIC accused three former executives of negligence at an IndyMac division that made loans to home builders. A federal court jury in Los Angeles last week ordered the three to pay $169 million to the agency.


That case included evidence that Perry had questioned the aggressive loans made by the home builder division of his bank — a demonstration, Veta said, that he had taken "sound fiscal actions" to try to save IndyMac.


A sweeping SEC fraud case against Perry was largely tossed out this year by a federal judge. He recently settled the sole remaining claim in that lawsuit for $80,000.


scott.reckard@latimes.com





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Court ruling could cut California spending on Medi-Cal









SAN FRANCISCO — In a potential windfall for the state, a federal appeals court decided unanimously Thursday that California may cut reimbursements to doctors, pharmacies and others who serve the poor under Medi-Cal.


A three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals overturned injunctions blocking the state from implementing a 2011 law that slashed Medi-Cal reimbursements by 10%. Medi-Cal, a version of Medicaid, serves low-income Californians.


The ruling could make it harder to find doctors for as many as 2 million new patients who could become eligible for Medi-Cal under President Obama's healthcare law — a possible 25% expansion of the program. California already provides one of the lowest rates of reimbursement in the nation for medical services to the poor, and there is a shortage of doctors to serve those patients.








Lynn S. Carman, an attorney for a group of pharmacies, said the decision would be costly for providers, worsen the doctor shortage and would be appealed.


"If this decision stands it will not only destroy the Medicaid program in California, but it will destroy the Obamacare program for millions of Americans who are now being shoved into the Medicaid program under the Affordable Care Act," Carman said.


"They will not be able to obtain quality healthcare or access to services because providers cannot provide services at less than what it costs to furnish them," Carman said.


The ruling could make it considerably easier for the state to close its budget gap.


The state is facing a $1.9-billion deficit next year, although Proposition 30's temporary tax hike and an improving economy are projected to shift the state back into surpluses in the near future.


Medical providers said Thursday that the cutback should be lifted now that the state's fiscal outlook has improved. The ruling can be applied retroactively to June 1, 2011.


"Now that the state has money, it would be like Scrooge for Gov. Brown not to pass a bill to eliminate at least the retroactivity part of it," Carman said.


For the governor, Medi-Cal cuts could serve one policy aim at the expense of another.


Balancing the budget has been Brown's first priority since taking office, and cutting healthcare — the state's second-biggest cost after education — has been key to his fiscal goal.


But at the same time, he has wanted California to be out front in healthcare reform, and lead the country in efforts to put the federal law into place.


A spokesman for Gov. Brown released a statement Thursday that implied that Brown was inclined to put his budget priorities first, and was not likely to rescind the cuts.


"Today's decision allows California to continue providing quality care for people on Medi-Cal while saving the state millions of dollars in unnecessary costs," the spokesman wrote.


In a ruling written by Judge Stephen S. Trott, appointed by President Reagan, the panel said the lower court injunctions were unwarranted because the federal government had approved the cuts.


"Neither the State nor the federal government 'promised, explicitly or implicitly,' that provider reimbursement rates would never change," Trott wrote.


California has estimated that the 10% cut to medical providers and pharmacies would save the state $50 million a month.


Medi-Cal typically covers families and disabled Californians. The federal law will extend its coverage to single, childless adults beginning in 2014.


The California Medical Assn., which joined dentists, pharmacists, medical suppliers and medical response companies in trying to block the cutbacks, urged Brown to repeal them.





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One Direction named MTV's 2012 Artist of the Year


NEW YORK (AP) — They're platinum. They're fascinating. And now One Direction is MTV's 2012 Artist of the Year.


MTV says the fivesome is "the clear choice for the top spot" after a year that included two No. 1 albums, hits such as "What Makes You Beautiful" and a sold-out world tour.


One Direction's Louis (LOO'-ee) Tomlinson calls Thursday's honor "the icing on the cake."


MTV's team of music staffers chose Carly Rae Jepsen's "Call Me Maybe" as song as the year.


One Direction placed third on the U.K. version of "The X Factor" in 2010 and made their U.S. debut in March with the No. 1 album "Up All Night." Their sophomore album, "Take Me Home," was the year's third-highest debut.


The group also made Barbara Walters' most fascinating people of 2012 list.


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Another Look at a Drink Ingredient, Brominated Vegetable Oil


James Edward Bates for The New York Times


Sarah Kavanagh, 15, of Hattiesburg, Miss., started an online petition asking PepsiCo to change Gatorade’s formula.







Sarah Kavanagh and her little brother were looking forward to the bottles of Gatorade they had put in the refrigerator after playing outdoors one hot, humid afternoon last month in Hattiesburg, Miss.




But before she took a sip, Sarah, a dedicated vegetarian, did what she often does and checked the label to make sure no animal products were in the drink. One ingredient, brominated vegetable oil, caught her eye.


“I knew it probably wasn’t from an animal because it had vegetable in the name, but I still wanted to know what it was, so I Googled it,” Ms. Kavanagh said. “A page popped up with a long list of possible side effects, including neurological disorders and altered thyroid hormones. I didn’t expect that.”


She threw the product away and started a petition on Change.org, an online petition platform, that has almost 200,000 signatures. Ms. Kavanagh, 15, hopes her campaign will persuade PepsiCo, Gatorade’s maker, to consider changing the drink’s formulation.


Jeff Dahncke, a spokesman for PepsiCo, noted that brominated vegetable oil had been deemed safe for consumption by federal regulators. “As standard practice, we constantly evaluate our formulas and ingredients to ensure they comply with federal regulations and meet the high quality standards our consumers and athletes expect — from functionality to great taste,” he said in an e-mail.


In fact, about 10 percent of drinks sold in the United States contain brominated vegetable oil, including Mountain Dew, also made by PepsiCo; Powerade, Fanta Orange and Fresca from Coca-Cola; and Squirt and Sunkist Peach Soda, made by the Dr Pepper Snapple Group.


The ingredient is added often to citrus drinks to help keep the fruit flavoring evenly distributed; without it, the flavoring would separate.


Use of the substance in the United States has been debated for more than three decades, so Ms. Kavanagh’s campaign most likely is quixotic. But the European Union has long banned the substance from foods, requiring use of other ingredients. Japan recently moved to do the same.


“B.V.O. is banned other places in the world, so these companies already have a replacement for it,” Ms. Kavanagh said. “I don’t see why they don’t just make the switch.” To that, companies say the switch would be too costly.


The renewed debate, which has brought attention to the arcane world of additive regulation, comes as consumers show increasing interest in food ingredients and have new tools to learn about them. Walmart’s app, for instance, allows access to lists of ingredients in foods in its stores.


Brominated vegetable oil contains bromine, the element found in brominated flame retardants, used in things like upholstered furniture and children’s products. Research has found brominate flame retardants building up in the body and breast milk, and animal and some human studies have linked them to neurological impairment, reduced fertility, changes in thyroid hormones and puberty at an earlier age.


Limited studies of the effects of brominated vegetable oil in animals and in humans found buildups of bromine in fatty tissues. Rats that ingested large quantities of the substance in their diets developed heart lesions.


Its use in foods dates to the 1930s, well before Congress amended the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act to add regulation of new food additives to the responsibilities of the Food and Drug Administration. But Congress exempted two groups of additives, those already sanctioned by the F.D.A. or the Department of Agriculture, or those experts deemed “generally recognized as safe.”


The second exemption created what Tom Neltner, director of the Pew Charitable Trusts’ food additives project, a three-year investigation into how food additives are regulated, calls “the loophole that swallowed the law.” A company can create a new additive, publish safety data about it on its Web site and pay a law firm or consulting firm to vet it to establish it as “generally recognized as safe” — without ever notifying the F.D.A., Mr. Neltner said.


This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: December 14, 2012

An article on Thursday about new concerns over brominated vegetable oil, a common ingredient in many citrus drinks, described incorrectly Change.org, the Web site where a Mississippi teenager started a petition to persuade PepsiCo to remove the substance from Gatorade. It is a B Corporation, a sort of hybrid nonprofit/for-profit entity; it is not a nonprofit Web site. (The company’s online petition platform is supported by advertising.)



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Retailers scramble to woo shoppers in final days before Christmas









The holiday crunch is on at the mall, and Toys R Us is opening all its stores for 88 straight hours until Christmas Eve. And, for the first time, Macy's is staying open at most stores for 48 hours nonstop the final weekend before Christmas.


In the rush to woo shoppers, merchants this year are upping the ante. Banana Republic is giving away six Fiat cars. Kohl's is picking up the tab for a shopper in each of its stores every day until Christmas Eve. And Sport Chalet will have a scuba-diving Santa at some of its stores Saturday.


Across the nation, retailers are scrambling to draw customers into stores and online in the last days leading up to Christmas, in the hope that shoppers will deliver a last-minute cash infusion at a crucial time for merchants. After a successful Black Friday weekend that netted a record $59.1 billion in sales, stores have seen an unwelcome drop-off in business.





What happens in the next two weeks may be vital not only for merchants but also for the nation's fragile economic recovery, because consumer spending of all kinds makes up about 70% of the U.S. economy.


This weekend and next hold the key to boom or bust. "This holiday, the highs have been higher and the lows lower for retailers," industry analyst Marshal Cohen said. "That means we need a good, strong finish to come out even."


The National Retail Federation is sticking to its prediction of $586.1 billion this year, up 4.1% from last year.


With an extra weekend this year between Thanksgiving and Christmas, many stores say that traffic has plummeted in the last few weeks as shoppers gave their credit cards a rest after splurging on Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Independent boutiques and national retailers alike are anxiously waiting for a surge of shoppers at the very end.


Liz Williamson and last-minute shoppers like her may dictate the outcome. With a dozen family members and friends on her holiday list, "I have to get started now or I'm going to end up running through the malls on Christmas Eve," said the Los Angeles accountant, who was hunting at the Americana at Brand shopping center. "It's get-it-done time."


Shopper Colleen Chang, 26, hasn't started shopping either. "I've started feeling a little crazy," said the Los Angeles leasing agent, who has budgeted $400. "You have to know exactly what you want because pretty soon there's just nothing left and you have to take what you can get."


"Procrastinators will be the secret weapon for either a ho-ho holiday or a ho-hum one," Cohen said.


With 11 days to go, shipping deadlines loom for online orders. Christmas parties are in full swing. Advertising blares. Last-minute sales scream for attention. Holiday music won't let you alone. Time is running out.


Retailers have plenty of shoppers to win over. Nearly a fifth of consumers have yet to start holiday shopping, while 21% plan to drop into stores again after taking a break from post-Thanksgiving splurging, the research firm NPD Group estimated Thursday.


"Every day feels like a sprint. Across the board we see a lot of traffic right now both online and in store," said Brian Hanover, a spokesman at Sears, which is rolling out another round of door-busters Friday and Saturday.


Despite the looming fiscal cliff in Washington and the prospect of higher taxes next year, retailers expect that people will open their wallets for last-minute gifts.


Kevin Jewelers in the Glendale Galleria is hoping for the traditional surge of procrastinators after a disappointing two weeks, diamond consultant Grace Figues said.


"We're still waiting for the rush," she said. "Lately it's been high-low, high-low just like a normal month. We would welcome the craziness."


At the Best Buy store in Westfield Culver City, general manager Margie Kenney said this weekend is "tremendously important" and will be "one of our busiest weekends after Black Friday."


Both bricks-and-mortar and Web merchants will probably enjoy a boost during the next two Saturdays, which typically hold the No. 3 and No. 2 spots for top shopping days of the year after Black Friday, said Bill Martin of retail technology firm ShopperTrak.


"There's still plenty of shopping left," he said. "Some people are just willing to outlast the retailer and wait for the next wave of serious discounts."


At the Americana at Brand, Stella Yu of Glendale had just begun searching for gifts for her family and close friends. But the 25-year-old graduate student, a veteran last-minute shopper, is already mentally preparing herself for the thick crowds, jammed parking lots and general mall madness as the clock ticks down to Christmas.


"I hate humans during holiday shopping," Yu sighed, "especially the ones with kids."


shan.li@latimes.com





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Oregon mall shooting suspect showed no known sign of trouble









Jacob Roberts planned big life changes before this week's shooting at a suburban mall in Oregon that left two people dead and another seriously injured: He quit his job, got rid of many belongings, and aimed to move to Hawaii.


"He was kind of leaving suddenly. I've seen that happen before, where stuff comes up in someone's life, where they kind of need a fresh, clean break. So we thought nothing of it. It was, 'Good luck on your new life. Enjoy Hawaii,'" said Holli Winchell, who socialized frequently with Roberts in the bars and restaurants of southeast Portland.


Something went wrong, though, and Roberts didn't make it onto the plane for Hawaii. The next thing his friends heard, he was dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound Tuesday after shouting, "I am the shooter!" and opening fire, authorities say, with a semiautomatic assault rifle at the Clackamas Town Center mall, which was packed with Christmas shoppers.





PHOTOS: Oregon mall shooting


Roberts' Facebook page left what may be one of the only clues to his mind-set: a picture of a graffiti-covered wall with the words, "Follow Your Dreams," marked out with another word in large red letters: "Cancelled." It had been uploaded Oct. 3.


Authorities believe that Roberts, 22, who proudly claimed to work at a "badass" sandwich shop and whom friends described as funny and good-natured most of the time, rushed into the mall carrying a stolen AR-15 rifle along with magazines of ammunition and sprayed shoppers in the food court before his weapon momentarily jammed. He retreated down a service stairwell.


Retailers herded panicked shoppers to safety behind locked doors as more than 100 police officers swarmed toward the mall. Casualties were remarkably few, Clackamas County Sheriff Craig Roberts told reporters Wednesday, because of quick thinking by those present and the many drills police had conducted imagining the unthinkable.


"Ten thousand people in the mall at one time kept a level head. They got themselves out of the mall, they helped others out, and there's just a number of heroes that took the time to help people get out.... It was really a whole lot of people coming together to make a difference," the sheriff said.


Police have not been able to discern any warnings that the young man was headed for violence, nor any signs that he had help in the rampage, Sheriff Roberts said.


"Every indication we have is that he acted solely on his own in carrying out this heinous, horrible, tragic crime," he said.


Young Roberts gave no sign of anything amiss to his friends — at least as far as Winchell was able to tell after talking with co-workers and other friends who were part of their casual group.


"None of my friends, even ones who are very close with him, none of them seem to know what happened. He'd had some small stuff come up in his life, nothing major, but just maybe he wanted to get out of Portland, and it was kind of a convenient time to leave," Winchell said.


"It's the type of community where if somebody had known, if he had talked to somebody, there were resources out there and friends that would have been able to help him," she said. "The only thing I could think of was he had something going on in his head that was a lot deeper than any of us could have imagined."


Brandon Froom said he considered Roberts "a good friend," but saw no signs of anything wrong.


"He never spoke much of his personal life. He was entertaining. He made a lot of jokes, always presented a positive mood," he said. "I don't know what snapped in him, but he was always good to people. And it saddens me that he acted out the way he did, for whatever reason he had."


On his Facebook page, Roberts described himself as "a pretty funny person that takes sarcasm to the max" and "the kind of person that is going to do what I want."


"I'm the conductor of my choo choo train," he wrote. "I may be young, but I have lived one crazy life so far.... I like to think of myself as a bit of an adrenaline junkie.... But I'm just looking to meet new people and see the world."


The two victims killed — Steven Forsyth, 45, a youth sports coach who operated a kiosk at the mall, and Cindy Yuille, a 54-year-old hospice nurse — appear to have died right away. A third victim, Kristina Shevchenko, 15, was in serious condition with a gunshot wound to the chest and significant injuries to her lung and liver.


Authorities said a friend helped her get out of the mall to medics quickly.


"These were very serious, life-threatening injuries," her surgeon, Laszlo Kiraly, told reporters at Oregon Health & Science University Hospital. "There is going to be a significant rehabilitation, but she is very young and healthy and … she is a fighter."





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