Massive HP conference draws 10,000 attendees to ogle products, speakers, presentations

By Suzy Hansen

More than 10,000 customers, partners and attendees flocked to the Hewlett-Packard Discover conference in Frankfurt, Germany, this week to learn about HP’s latest products, exchange ideas, swap business cards and basically examine whether HP can improve the way their companies are run. The event was held at Messe Frankfurt, one of the world’s largest trade exhibition sites.

CEO Meg Whitman acknowledged in her speech on Tuesday that HP has gone through some rough times this past year. HP’s stock price has been nearly halved during her tenure. Whitman, however, pointed out that HP has $ 120 billion in revenue and is the 10th-largest company in the United States. In Q4, HP has generated $ 4.1 billion in cash flow.

“We are the No. 1 or No. 2 provider in almost every market,” Whitman told the crowd in Frankfurt.

Whitman emphasized  executives’ increasing concerns about security and said that it will be addressed by “a new approach”: HP’s security portfolio, with Autonomy and Vertica, which helps “analyze and understand the context of these events.” Executive Vice President of Enterprise Dave Donatelli spoke about converged infrastructure, or bringing together server, network and storage; their software-defined data centers; and their new servers, which “change the way servers have been defined.” George Kadifa, executive vice president of software, said 94 of the top 100 companies use HP software. HP is the sixth-largest software company in the world, with 16,000 employees in 70 countries, Kadifa added.

Also at the conference was Jeffrey Katzenberg, CEO of DreamWorks and an old friend of Whitman’s from their Disney days, who roused the crowd with a fun speech about his long relationship with HP. Katzenberg showed an old video of himself onstage with a lion, which nearly mauled him. This time, he appeared onstage with a guy in a lion suit. The lesson was to learn from past mistakes and move on.

“If I am smart enough to say ‘scalable multicorps processing,’ I am smart enough to not put myself onstage with a real lion again,” he joked.

The Discover conference is a key vehicle for HP to show off products it’s offering in the coming year. Among them were the latest ProLiant and Integrity servers, the 3PAR StoreServ 7000 and the StoreAll and StoreOnce storage systems. At the HP Labs section of the conference, attendees could learn about the cloud infrastructure or test HP’s new ElitePad 900.

Throughout the three-day event, which saw attendance grow by 30 percent this year, attendees wandered the enormous halls, milling around displays, watching videos, listening to speeches and participating in workshops. People gathered on clustered couches and chatted with new acquaintances, frequently stopping to plug in their various devices and recharge themselves with coffee. With people coming from all over the world, you could hear many languages spoken, from Arabic to French to the most bewildering of them all: the language of technology. Despite the large crowds, it was hard not to notice there were very few women among the thousands in attendance. In fact, when asked about this phenomenon, one female HP employee said, “Trust me, you aren’t the first person who has come up to me asking about this.”

Indeed, the Discover conference was like a forest of men in suits. The few women stood out like rays of sunlight. 

Regardless of their presence at this conference, women are making big strides in information technology. Among the leaders are HP CEO Whitman, who also led eBay; Carly Fiorina, who ran HP before Whitman; Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer; and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg. Were the women at the Discover conference surprised by the low female turnout?

“No, for IT this is standard,” said Stefanie, a 30-year-old product manager from Germany. “Many are afraid of all the technical stuff, and you have to prove that you are capable of it. You get more women in retail and distribution but not in high-tech areas, at least not in Europe. In America there are more women in management positions and in general.”

Americans might assume that Europe, with its generous social programs that include free daycare, enables more women to ascend the corporate ladder. But that still doesn’t mean that a woman trying to balance a high-tech career and a family is always accepted in European society.

“There is still a lot of emphasis on the family,” Stefanie said. “It’s easier to move up in the U.S., where there is a culture of ‘having it all.’ It’s quite a fight to get there here.”

Still, the IT industry might seem inhospitable to women. Could this male-dominated profession be male-dominant because women have a hard time breaking in?

Stefanie disagreed. “No, they actually like working with women,” she said. “They want to.”

One male conference attendee, who asked not to be named, was less certain.

“There’s a lot of ego and testosterone,” he said. “It can’t be easy” for women.

Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Luke Bryan cleans up at ACAs with 9 awards

Luke Bryan didn't want the American Country Awards to end.

He cleaned up during the fan-voted show, earning nine awards, including artist and album of the year. His smash hit "I Don't Want This Night To End" was named single and music video of the year.

Miranda Lambert took home the second most guitar trophies with three. Jason Aldean was named touring artist of the year. Carrie Underwood won female artist of the year, and a tearful Lauren Alaina won new artist of the year.

Bryan, Aldean, Keith Urban, Lady Antebellum and Trace Adkins with Lynyrd Skynrd were among the high-energy performances.

The third annual ACAs were held at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas Monday night.

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Online: http://www.theACAs.com

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Rate of Childhood Obesity Falls in Several Cities

PHILADELPHIA — After decades of rising childhood obesity rates, several American cities are reporting their first declines.

The trend has emerged in big cities like New York and Los Angeles, as well as smaller places like Anchorage, Alaska, and Kearney, Neb. The state of Mississippi has also registered a drop, but only among white students.

“It’s been nothing but bad news for 30 years, so the fact that we have any good news is a big story,” said Dr. Thomas Farley, the health commissioner in New York City, which reported a 5.5 percent decline in the number of obese schoolchildren from 2007 to 2011.

The drops are small, just 5 percent here in Philadelphia and 3 percent in Los Angeles. But experts say they are significant because they offer the first indication that the obesity epidemic, one of the nation’s most intractable health problems, may actually be reversing course.

The first dips — noted in a September report by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation — were so surprising that some researchers did not believe them.

Deanna M. Hoelscher, a researcher at the University of Texas, who in 2010 recorded one of the earliest declines — among mostly poor Hispanic fourth graders in the El Paso area — did a double-take. “We reran the numbers a couple of times,” she said. “I kept saying, ‘Will you please check that again for me?’ ”

Researchers say they are not sure what is behind the declines. They may be an early sign of a national shift that is visible only in cities that routinely measure the height and weight of schoolchildren. The decline in Los Angeles, for instance, was for fifth, seventh and ninth graders — the grades that are measured each year — between 2005 and 2010. Nor is it clear whether the drops have more to do with fewer obese children entering school or currently enrolled children losing weight. But researchers note that declines occurred in cities that have had obesity reduction policies in place for a number of years.

Though obesity is now part of the national conversation, with aggressive advertising campaigns in major cities and a push by Michelle Obama, many scientists doubt that anti-obesity programs actually work. Individual efforts like one-time exercise programs have rarely produced results. Researchers say that it will take a broad set of policies applied systematically to effectively reverse the trend, a conclusion underscored by an Institute of Medicine report released in May.

Philadelphia has undertaken a broad assault on childhood obesity for years. Sugary drinks like sweetened iced tea, fruit punch and sports drinks started to disappear from school vending machines in 2004. A year later, new snack guidelines set calorie and fat limits, which reduced the size of snack foods like potato chips to single servings. By 2009, deep fryers were gone from cafeterias and whole milk had been replaced by one percent and skim.

Change has been slow. Schools made money on sugary drinks, and some set up rogue drink machines that had to be hunted down. Deep fat fryers, favored by school administrators who did not want to lose popular items like French fries, were unplugged only after Wayne T. Grasela, the head of food services for the school district, stopped buying oil to fill them.

But the message seems to be getting through, even if acting on it is daunting. Josh Monserrat, an eighth grader at John Welsh Elementary, uses words like “carbs,” and “portion size.” He is part of a student group that promotes healthy eating. He has even dressed as an orange to try to get other children to eat better. Still, he struggles with his own weight. He is 5-foot-3 but weighed nearly 200 pounds at his last doctor’s visit.

“I was thinking, ‘Wow, I’m obese for my age,’ ” said Josh, who is 13. “I set a goal for myself to lose 50 pounds.”

Nationally, about 17 percent of children under 20 are obese, or about 12.5 million people, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which defines childhood obesity as a body mass index at or above the 95th percentile for children of the same age and sex. That rate, which has tripled since 1980, has leveled off in recent years but has remained at historical highs, and public health experts warn that it could bring long-term health risks.

Obese children are more likely to be obese as adults, creating a higher risk of heart disease and stroke. The American Cancer Society says that being overweight or obese is the culprit in one of seven cancer deaths. Diabetes in children is up by a fifth since 2000, according to federal data.

“I’m deeply worried about it,” said Francis S. Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health, who added that obesity is “almost certain to result in a serious downturn in longevity based on the risks people are taking on.”

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FedEx fills Santa's sleigh during busiest day in its history

FedEx Corp.'s sorting facility at Los Angeles International Airport is a maze of chutes, ladders and catwalks, capable of processing more than 300 packages a minute.

And in the pre-dawn hours Monday — which FedEx projected would be the busiest in its history — it was going full force.

"With the Internet now, that volume is just flying off the hook," said manager Alex Johnson, 55, speaking above the loud whir of machinery and steady thud of vehicles in motion around him.

All that activity is yet another sign that the economy is coming back from the dregs of the recession and its long aftermath. Shoppers this year will spend an estimated $586.1 billion during the holidays, up 4.1% from last year, according to the National Retail Federation.

By Monday afternoon, FedEx estimated that it had delivered 19 million packages, a 10% increase from its busiest day last year. The company predicted that it will deliver a record 280 million parcels worldwide between Thanksgiving and Christmas, assisted by 20,000 seasonal hires.

Other shippers estimated that they also would have their busiest holiday season in years.

United Parcel Service Inc. said it expected its holiday shipping to increase 10% this year to 527 million packages. UPS planned to deliver 28 million packages Dec. 20, its projected peak day, and has hired 55,000 seasonal employees to try to ensure on-time delivery.

The U.S. Postal Service said it anticipates a 20% increase in packages between Thanksgiving and Christmas this year, and that it will process a projected 658 million letters and parcels on its forecast peak day, Dec. 17.

At the FedEx facility, workers were unloading giant steel shipping containers holding hundreds of boxes, newly plucked from jetliners. Mechanical arms sent packages marked with company names, or simply "Season's Greetings," pirouetting down a side ramp. Spry human "jammers" swung precariously from railings, jumping down onto the ramps to prevent backups and to funnel the boxes to the sorters below.

One of the jammers, Arvel Boyd, 20, has been working for FedEx for 10 months. He's was perspiring heavily as he worked, even though at 3:30 a.m. the warehouse, open to the tarmac, was chilly.

"It's a workout," Boyd said. "Plus, I get paid for it."

christine.maiduc@latimes.com

Times writer Shan Li contributed to this report.

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Rise in renewable energy will require more use of fossil fuels

The Delta Energy Center, a power plant about an hour outside San Francisco, was roaring at nearly full bore one day last month, its four gas and steam turbines churning out 880 megawatts of electricity to the California grid.

On the horizon, across an industrial shipping channel on the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, scores of wind turbines stood dead still. The air was too calm to turn their blades — or many others across the state that day. Wind provided just 33 megawatts of power statewide in the midafternoon, less than 1% of the potential from wind farms capable of producing 4,000 megawatts of electricity.

As is true on many days in California when multibillion-dollar investments in wind and solar energy plants are thwarted by the weather, the void was filled by gas-fired plants like the Delta Energy Center.

One of the hidden costs of solar and wind power — and a problem the state is not yet prepared to meet — is that wind and solar energy must be backed up by other sources, typically gas-fired generators. As more solar and wind energy generators come online, fulfilling a legal mandate to produce one-third of California's electricity by 2020, the demand will rise for more backup power from fossil fuel plants.

"The public hears solar is free, wind is free," said Mitchell Weinberg, director of strategic development for Calpine Corp., which owns Delta Energy Center. "But it is a lot more complicated than that."

Wind and solar energy are called intermittent sources, because the power they produce can suddenly disappear when a cloud bank moves across the Mojave Desert or wind stops blowing through the Tehachapi Mountains. In just half an hour, a thousand megawatts of electricity — the output of a nuclear reactor — can disappear and threaten stability of the grid.

To avoid that calamity, fossil fuel plants have to be ready to generate electricity in mere seconds. That requires turbines to be hot and spinning, but not producing much electricity until complex data networks detect a sudden drop in the output of renewables. Then, computerized switches are thrown and the turbines roar to life, delivering power just in time to avoid potential blackouts.

The state's electricity system can handle the fluctuations from existing renewable output, but by 2020 vast wind and solar complexes will sprawl across the state, and the problem will become more severe.

Just how much added capacity will be needed from traditional sources is the subject of heated debate by utility officials, government regulators and policy experts. The concerns are expected to come to a head next year when the state must adopt a 10-year plan for its energy needs.

"This issue is someplace between a significant concern and a major problem," said electricity system expert Severin Borenstein, a professor at UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business. "There is definitely going to be a need for more reserves."

Borenstein said state legislators and the governor did not consider all of the details, such as unleashing this new demand for fossil fuel generators, when they set the 33% mandate for renewable energy. The state now gets 20% of its power from renewables, in part from older hydro and geothermal energy. Gov. Jerry Brown has advocated upping the goal to 40%.

The cost to consumers in the years ahead could be in the billions of dollars, according to industry experts. California's electricity prices are already among the highest in the nation and are projected to rise sharply in coming years. At the moment, the need for reserve power isn't considered a cost of renewable power, though consumers have to bear its costs as well.

The California Independent System Operator, the nonprofit company that runs the grid, estimates that by 2020 the state will need to double its reserve capacity. California now maintains a margin of 7% to 8% above projected daily demand, in case a nuclear power plant goes offline or outages occur. But when 33% of the state's power comes from renewables, that margin will have to rise to 15%, said Stephen Berberich, the firm's chief executive.

Nobody knows whether Berberich's estimate is right or how much the added capacity will cost. The California Energy Commission, which has responsibility for licensing new power plants and forecasting future power demand, said it doesn't have the analytical tools necessary to know how much reserve power will be needed.

"It is frankly in the development stage," said Mike Jaske, the commission's senior policy analyst for electricity supply.

The independent system operator is warning that by 2017 the state will be short by about 3,100 megawatts of flexible power that it can dedicate to meeting reserve needs — about what three nuclear reactors produce. The company is pushing the state Public Utility Commission to require that capacity. The commission has been noncommittal so far.

Solar and wind advocates reject those concerns. They say renewables can provide their own reserve cushion because solar and wind generators will be spread across vast areas of the state. If wind power is down in one region, it might be up in another. If wind power is down statewide, desert sunshine might boost solar.

On the day last month when wind energy provided just 33 megawatts of power statewide, a brilliant sun spiked solar plant output.

The independent system operator "likes to show these frightening graphs for shock value," said Nancy Rader, executive director of the California Wind Energy Assn.

Edward Randolph, director of the Public Utility Commission's energy division, said the independent system operator understandably wants more reserves because its primary focus is on the reliability of the system. The PUC is focused on cost. If there is an immediate problem with reserves, the PUC can order utilities to make more available. And in three to five years, batteries, flywheels or other new technology can provide storage that would make reserves much less necessary, he said.

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'Amour' takes top prize from LA film critics

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The French-language drama "Amour" was chosen as the year's best film Sunday by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, whose prizes are among a flurry of year-end honors that help sort out the Academy Awards race.

Among the group's other honors, the 1950s cult drama "The Master" earned four awards: best director for Paul Thomas Anderson, best actor for Joaquin Phoenix, supporting actress for Amy Adams and production design for David Crank and Jack Fisk.

"The Master" also was chosen as best-picture runner-up. The film stars Phoenix as a volatile World War II veteran who comes under the sway of a charismatic cult leader. Adams co-stars as the cult leader's tough-minded wife.

"Amour" star Emmanuelle Riva, who plays an elderly, ailing woman being cared for by her husband, shared the best-actress honor in a tie with Jennifer Lawrence of the lost-soul romance "Silver Linings Playbook."

Newcomer Dwight Henry was chosen as supporting actor for the low-budget critical darling "Beasts of the Southern Wild." The film's writer-director, Benh Zeitlin, received the group's New Generation Award and shared the prize for best music score with composing partner Dan Romer.

Directed by Michael Haneke, "Amour" is Austria's entry for the foreign-language Oscar and won the top honor at the Cannes Film Festival in May.

The choice by the Los Angeles critics marked a move away from bigger Hollywood productions that the group favored the last two years when it named George Clooney's "The Descendants" as best film of 2011 and David Fincher's "The Social Network" as tops for 2010.

The Los Angeles critics' picks came days after both the New York Film Critics Circle and the National Board of Review chose Kathryn Bigelow's Osama bin Laden manhunt docudrama "Zero Dark Thirty" as the best film of the year.

Bigelow, who dominated the 2009 Los Angeles critics awards with best-picture and director wins for "The Hurt Locker," was chosen this time as directing runner-up for "Zero Dark Thirty."

"The Hurt Locker" went on to a best-picture win at the Oscars and made Bigelow the first woman ever to earn the best-director Oscar. Bigelow is considered a potential Oscar favorite again this time around with "Zero Dark Thirty."

Shut out at the LA critics honors was Steven Spielberg's Civil War epic "Lincoln."

Runners-up for the acting honors: Denis Levant of "Holy Motors," best actor; Christoph Waltz of "Django Unchained," supporting actor; and Anne Hathaway of "Les Miserables" and "The Dark Knight Rises," supporting actress. The French film "Holy Motors" also was named best foreign-language film, with Israel's "Footnote" named runner-up.

Next up on Hollywood's awards calendar are the Screen Actors Guild nominations Wednesday and Golden Globe nominations Thursday. Oscar nominations follow on Jan. 10.

The Los Angeles group named Tim Burton's dead-dog tale "Frankenweenie" best animated film. Don Hertzfeldt's "It's Such a Beautiful Day" was runner-up.

The documentary prize went to "The Gatekeepers," director Dror Moreh's exploration of intelligence operations by Israel's Shin Bet security agency. The runner-up was "Searching for Sugar Man," Malik Bendjelloul's portrait of obscure 1970s singer-songwriter Rodriguez.

Chris Terrio earned the screenplay honor for Ben Affleck's Iran hostage-crisis thriller "Argo." David O. Russell was the screenplay runner-up for "Silver Linings Playbook."

The critics group gave its first-ever prize for film editing to Dylan Tichenor and William Goldenberg for "Zero Dark Thirty." Goldenberg also was the editing runner-up for "Argo."

Among other honors Sunday:

— Music score runner-up: Jonny Greenwood, "The Master."

— Cinematography: Roger Deakins, "Skyfall." Runner-up: Mihai Malaimare Jr., "The Master."

— Production design runner-up: Adam Stockhausen, "Moonrise Kingdom."

— Independent experimental film: "Leviathan."

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Online:

http://www.lafca.net

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A Breakthrough Against Leukemia Using Altered T-Cells

PHILIPSBURG, Pa. — Emma Whitehead has been bounding around the house lately, practicing somersaults and rugby-style tumbles that make her parents wince.

It is hard to believe, but last spring Emma, then 6, was near death from leukemia. She had relapsed twice after chemotherapy, and doctors had run out of options.

Desperate to save her, her parents sought an experimental treatment at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, one that had never before been tried in a child, or in anyone with the type of leukemia Emma had. The experiment, in April, used a disabled form of the virus that causes AIDS to reprogram Emma’s immune system genetically to kill cancer cells.

The treatment very nearly killed her. But she emerged from it cancer-free, and about seven months later is still in complete remission. She is the first child and one of the first humans ever in whom new techniques have achieved a long-sought goal — giving a patient’s own immune system the lasting ability to fight cancer.

Emma had been ill with acute lymphoblastic leukemia since 2010, when she was 5, said her parents, Kari and Tom. She is their only child.

She is among just a dozen patients with advanced leukemia to have received the experimental treatment, which was developed at the University of Pennsylvania. Similar approaches are also being tried at other centers, including the National Cancer Institute and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York.

“Our goal is to have a cure, but we can’t say that word,” said Dr. Carl June, who leads the research team at the University of Pennsylvania. He hopes the new treatment will eventually replace bone-marrow transplantation, an even more arduous, risky and expensive procedure that is now the last hope when other treatments fail in leukemia and related diseases.

Three adults with chronic leukemia treated at the University of Pennsylvania have also had complete remissions, with no signs of disease; two of them have been well for more than two years, said Dr. David Porter. Four adults improved but did not have full remissions, and one was treated too recently to evaluate. A child improved and then relapsed. In two adults, the treatment did not work at all. The Pennsylvania researchers were presenting their results on Sunday and Monday in Atlanta at a meeting of the American Society of Hematology.

Despite the mixed results, cancer experts not involved with the research say it has tremendous promise, because even in this early phase of testing it has worked in seemingly hopeless cases. “I think this is a major breakthrough,” said Dr. Ivan Borrello, a cancer expert and associate professor of medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

Dr. John Wagner, the director of pediatric blood and marrow transplantation at the University of Minnesota, called the Pennsylvania results “phenomenal” and said they were “what we’ve all been working and hoping for but not seeing to this extent.”

A major drug company, Novartis, is betting on the Pennsylvania team and has committed $20 million to building a research center on the university’s campus to bring the treatment to market.

Hervé Hoppenot, the president of Novartis Oncology, called the research “fantastic” and said it had the potential — if the early results held up — to revolutionize the treatment of leukemia and related blood cancers. Researchers say the same approach, reprogramming the patient’s immune system, may also eventually be used against tumors like breast and prostate cancer.

To perform the treatment, doctors remove millions of the patient’s T-cells — a type of white blood cell — and insert new genes that enable the T-cells to kill cancer cells. The technique employs a disabled form of H.I.V. because it is very good at carrying genetic material into T-cells. The new genes program the T-cells to attack B-cells, a normal part of the immune system that turn malignant in leukemia.

The altered T-cells — called chimeric antigen receptor cells — are then dripped back into the patient’s veins, and if all goes well they multiply and start destroying the cancer.

The T-cells home in on a protein called CD-19 that is found on the surface of most B-cells, whether they are healthy or malignant.

A sign that the treatment is working is that the patient becomes terribly ill, with raging fevers and chills — a reaction that oncologists call “shake and bake,” Dr. June said. Its medical name is cytokine-release syndrome, or cytokine storm, referring to the natural chemicals that pour out of cells in the immune system as they are being activated, causing fevers and other symptoms. The storm can also flood the lungs and cause perilous drops in blood pressure — effects that nearly killed Emma.

Steroids sometimes ease the reaction, but they did not help Emma. Her temperature hit 105. She wound up on a ventilator, unconscious and swollen almost beyond recognition, surrounded by friends and family who had come to say goodbye.

But at the 11th hour, a battery of blood tests gave the researchers a clue as to what might help save Emma: her level of one of the cytokines, interleukin-6 or IL-6, had shot up a thousandfold. Doctors had never seen such a spike before and thought it might be what was making her so sick.

Dr. June knew that a drug could lower IL-6 — his daughter takes it for rheumatoid arthritis. It had never been used for a crisis like Emma’s, but there was little to lose. Her oncologist, Dr. Stephan A. Grupp, ordered the drug. The response, he said, was “amazing.”

Within hours, Emma began to stabilize. She woke up a week later, on May 2, the day she turned 7; the intensive-care staff sang “Happy Birthday.”

Since then, the research team has used the same drug, tocilizumab, in several other patients.

In patients with lasting remissions after the treatment, the altered T-cells persist in the bloodstream, though in smaller numbers than when they were fighting the disease. Some patients have had the cells for years.

Dr. Michel Sadelain, who conducts similar studies at the Sloan-Kettering Institute, said: “These T-cells are living drugs. With a pill, you take it, it’s eliminated from your body and you have to take it again.” But T-cells, he said, “could potentially be given only once, maybe only once or twice or three times.”

The Pennsylvania researchers said they were surprised to find any big drug company interested in their work, because a new batch of T-cells must be created for each patient — a far cry from the familiar commercial strategy of developing products like Viagra or cholesterol medicines, in which millions of people take the same drug.

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Jenni Rivera aboard plane missing in Mexico

CAPTIONS

Jenni Rivera performs at the Latin Billboard Awards
Jenni Rivera performs during the Latin Billboard Awards in Coral Gables, Fla. Authorities in Mexico say the wreckage of a small plane believed to be carrying Rivera has been found and there are no apparent survivors. (Lynne Sladky / Associated Press /April 26, 2012)

By Meg James

December 9, 2012, 1:05 p.m.

A small plane carrying Mexican American singer Jenni Rivera is missing and believed to have crashed in northern Mexico early Sunday.

The Associated Press reported the plane, a Learjet, left Monterrey about 3:30 a.m. after a concert by Rivera. The pilot lost contact with air traffic contollers about 10 minutes after its departure. It was scheduled to arrive in Toluca, near Mexico City, about an hour later.

An NBCUniversal spokeswoman confirmed that Rivera was aboard the plane. Seven people, including the pilots and crew, were believed to be on the plane.

PHOTOS: Jenni Rivera missing

The Long Beach native's career has been soaring. The 43-year-old singer is best known for her interpretations of regional Mexican music, norteno and banda. She also is one of NBCUniversal's brightest bilingual television stars.

Her reality show on the Telemundo cable channel, mun2, "I Love Jenni," has been one of the channel's highest rated shows. The program is in its second year.

ABC television network was reportedly considering casting Rivera as a star of a prime-time sitcom in development about a strong-willed single Latina mother.

The AP said that a search for the plane was launched early Sunday.

[Updated 3:37 p.m.: Mexican transportation officials have reported the wreckage of the plane believed to be carrying Rivera has been located and no one appears to have survived the crash.

Read more: Jenni Rivera, Mexican American music star, feared dead in plane crash]

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Cooley leaves legacy of fighting corruption, increasing DNA use

He waged an insurgent campaign against his boss to become Los Angeles County district attorney, promising to act as a prosecutor not a politician.

Twelve years later, Steve Cooley retired last week as one of the county's most entrenched political fixtures, having served a historic tenure as top prosecutor, reshaped the most powerful office in the local criminal justice system and left his mark on California law enforcement.

Cooley is widely credited with expanding the way law enforcement uses DNA and with making the fight against local public corruption a priority. His efforts to soften California's tough three-strikes sentencing law came to fruition less than a month before he left office when voters in November overwhelmingly passed a ballot measure that scales back the law.

"He steered a very middle and fair course," former Dist. Atty. John Van de Kamp told reporters before Cooley's successor, Jackie Lacey, was sworn in earlier in the week. "He leaves a great legacy for this office."

But his tenure was hardly free of criticism or problems.

Cooley failed two years ago in a bid to become state attorney general, losing narrowly as the Republican nominee to Democrat Kamala D. Harris, who comfortably won in Cooley's home county. He has been dogged by accusations that he lacked the nerve to prosecute the toughest cases. And he waged an ugly battle with the union that represents line-level prosecutors, which accused him of retaliating against its officers.

As he steps off the public stage, Cooley insists he cannot think of anything he would have done differently.

"I have no regrets. My motives were pure," he said in a recent interview before he left office. "This has probably been the greatest run in anyone's memory."

Cooley, 65, who joined the district attorney's office straight out of law school in 1973, rattled off a long list of accomplishments but said a few stood out.

Among them was the work of his Public Integrity Division. In October, the division charged one of its most high-profile targets, county Assessor John Noguez, with taking bribes to illegally reduce property taxes for the clients of a political supporter. A year earlier, the unit hit eight Bell officials with a litany of corruption charges.

The office also spearheaded efforts to fight violent crime through the increased use of DNA.

Cooley signed the ballot argument in favor of a 2004 initiative that expanded the state's DNA databank to include anyone arrested for a felony. And he urged the state to embrace a controversial method of searching the databank for partial matches that would identify relatives of crime suspects. In 2010, the method helped investigators identify Lonnie Franklin Jr. as the "Grim Sleeper" serial killer, now linked to the slayings of more than a dozen women.

One of Cooley's first actions in office was to introduce a policy for prosecutors generally not to seek life sentences for repeat offenders under the three-strikes law unless the latest offense was a serious or violent crime.

His efforts to amend the law led him to butt heads with other district attorneys, but the state's prosecutors must now follow a law modeled on his approach thanks to the passage of Proposition 36, which his office helped write.

Donna McClay, president of the union that represents deputy district attorneys, said the public has more trust in the office today than 12 years ago, and she credited Cooley with improving the diversity of its employees. More than 36% of the office's prosecutors are nonwhite compared with 28% in late 2000. Nearly 53% are women. "That's a positive thing," she said.

But she said many prosecutors are disappointed that Cooley did not do more to make good on a campaign promise to improve their salaries and benefits. Cooley did, however, receive a 23% raise himself in 2008. He retired making more than $308,000 and will continue to receive about that sum as his annual pension.

Cooley spent his first week of retirement at a defendant's table in federal court scribbling notes on a legal pad during a civil trial in which two former union presidents allege that he retaliated against them with punitive transfers and dead-end assignments. Cooley denies the claim.

In his last few days, he upset some in the office when he announced a final round of promotions for 19 mid-level prosecutors. Among those chosen from a top group of 152 prosecutors was his daughter, Shannon, who was hired in April 2009 and has less time in the office than all but two others of those promoted.

Cooley defended his decision, saying it was based on merit. His daughter earned perfect scores on the office's written test and from her supervisor. The supervisor, Head Deputy Dist. Atty. John Zajec, called her "dedicated, conscientious, hardworking" and among the most outstanding young prosecutors. She recently won a conviction in a difficult drunk-driving murder trial, he said.

Under Cooley, the district attorney's office brought a good share of public corruption cases to court. But some have questioned Cooley's decision not to file charges against high-profile subjects.

Last year, a judge hearing the case against Bell officials said it was curious that the city's former police chief, Randy Adams, hadn't been charged. Adams made more money than the Los Angeles police chief for heading Bell's 46-person Police Department. Prosecutors say his contract was drawn up so the public could not learn the real size of his paycheck.

Cooley called Judge Kathleen Kennedy's comments "gratuitous and uninformed." He said his prosecutors carefully reviewed the evidence against Adams before determining that they did not have enough to charge him.

"Randy Adams is an embarrassment to the profession, to every uniform he has ever worn, and he ought to just go hide," he said. "But ... we don't overreach. We don't bring false charges."

Despite his defeat in the 2010 attorney general's election, Cooley recently showed that he still has plenty of political clout as he helped his anointed successor, Lacey, win election.

For the future, Cooley said he has only vague plans that include setting up a management consulting firm to advise government and private organizations. He might also try his hand at books that would detail some of the high-profile cases his office handled during his tenure, he said. One possible title: "Fakes, Frauds and Phonies."

"It would include both people we've prosecuted and others I've run across," he said with a laugh.

jack.leonard@latimes.com

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Rolling Stones hit NY for 50th anniversary gig

NEW YORK (AP) — "Time Waits for No One," the Rolling Stones sang in 1974, but lately it's seemed like that grizzled quartet does indeed have some sort of exemption from the ravages of time.

At an average age of 68-plus years, the British rockers are clearly in fighting form, sounding tight, focused and truly ready for the spotlight at a rapturously received pair of London concerts last month.

On Saturday, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Ronnie Wood and Charlie Watts hit New York for the first of three U.S. shows on their "50 and Counting" mini-tour, marking a mind-boggling half-century since the band first began playing its unique brand of blues-tinged rock.

And the three shows — Saturday's at the new Barclays Center in Brooklyn, then two in Newark, N.J., on Dec. 13 and 15 — aren't the only big dates on the agenda. Next week the Stones join a veritable who's who of British rock royalty and U.S. superstars at the blockbuster 12-12-12 Sandy benefit concert at Madison Square Garden. Also scheduled to perform: Paul McCartney, the Who, Eric Clapton, Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band, Alicia Keys, Kanye West, Eddie Vedder, Billy Joel, Roger Waters and Chris Martin.

The Stones' three U.S. shows promise to have their own special guests, too. Mary J. Blige will be at the Brooklyn gig, as well as guitarist Gary Clark Jr., the band has announced. (Blige performed a searing "Gimme Shelter" with frontman Jagger in London.) Rumors are swirling of huge names at the Dec. 15 show, which also will be on pay-per-view.

In a flurry of anniversary activity, the band also released a hits compilation last month with two new songs, "Doom and Gloom" and "One More Shot," and HBO premiered a new documentary on their formative years, "Crossfire Hurricane."

The Stones formed in London in 1962 to play Chicago blues, led at the time by the late Brian Jones and pianist Ian Stewart, along with Jagger and Richards, who'd met on a train platform a year earlier. Bassist Bill Wyman and drummer Charlie Watts were quick additions.

Wyman, who left the band in 1992, was a guest at the London shows last month, as was Mick Taylor, the celebrated former Stones guitarist who left in 1974 — to be replaced by Wood, the newest Stone and the youngster at 65.

The inevitable questions have been swirling about the next step for the Stones: another huge global tour, on the scale of their last one, "A Bigger Bang," which earned more than $550 million between 2005 and 2007? Something a bit smaller? Or is this mini-tour, in the words of their new song, really "One Last Shot"?

The Stones won't say. But in an interview last month, they made clear they felt the 50th anniversary was something to be marked.

"I thought it would be kind of churlish not to do something," Jagger told The Associated Press. "Otherwise, the BBC would have done a rather dull film about the Rolling Stones."

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Associated Press writer David Bauder contributed to this report.

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