L.A. County D.A. reassigns rival she beat in November election

Two weeks after taking office, Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Jackie Lacey has reassigned a political rival she beat in the November election from a prestigious high-profile job to a post where he will no longer try cases — a move he contends is a backward step for his career.

In his new post, Alan Jackson will supervise deputy district attorneys handling what he described as "garden variety felony" and misdemeanor cases rather than the complex, high-profile murder cases he directed and tried for years in the office's elite major crimes division.

The reassignment comes despite Lacey's describing Jackson during and after the election as an "outstanding trial attorney." A nearly 18-year veteran of the office, Jackson was named as "prosecutor of the year" in 2010 by the county's bar association.

He was one of two prosecutors who won the conviction of famed music producer Phil Spector in 2009, marking the office's first victory in a celebrity murder trial in more than 40 years. He also won a conviction in the cold case murders of motor racing legend Mickey Thompson and his wife. Among his current workload was the capital murder case of a former Armenian army soldier accused of killing an 8-year-old girl, her mother and father, and a prostitute.

An office spokeswoman described Jackson's transfer as a "lateral move" that had nothing to do with the campaign. Jean Guccione said more than half of the office's managers were reassigned on Friday as part of a shake-up by the new administration. Jackson's salary, title and office location in downtown Los Angeles will remain the same, she said.

"This is not retaliation," Guccione said. "This new assignment provides an excellent opportunity for him to share his courtroom experience with other prosecutors."

Jackson, however, disputed that the transfer was a lateral move.

"It's a move backward in my career," Jackson said. "This decision is specifically designed to remove me from the courtroom and from access to complex and high-profile litigation."

Jackson stopped short of saying he believed the new assignment, which takes effect Jan. 7, was punishment for his criticism of Lacey during the campaign, but he said he could think of no other reason for the transfer.

"The only thing that has changed from the time I have been trying these cases ... is that I ran for office against her," he said. "Am I disappointed? Absolutely. Not just for me, but I'm disappointed for what it says about the mission of the district attorney's office."

Lacey, a registered Democrat who had the backing of incumbent Steve Cooley, beat Jackson, a registered Republican, in the Nov. 6 runoff by 55% to 45%. The nonpartisan campaign grew testy at times, with Jackson running a television commercial in which he referred to conflicting testimony Lacey gave at employee grievance hearings and accused her of being "dishonest under oath to protect her boss," Cooley.

After the election, Lacey acknowledged that she had felt hurt by the accusation but again called Jackson "a very talented trial lawyer" and promised that she would not retaliate against him.

"I'm not a vindictive person. I'm not a mean person. I don't believe in wasting energy on that kind of thing," she told The Times during an interview two weeks ago. "If he chooses to remain in the office, we will find an appropriate spot."

Lacey, however, did not say that Jackson would remain in the high-profile major crimes division, where he has worked for nearly a decade and most recently served as assistant head deputy.

"The choice won't be up to him. It will be up to us," she said. "I think in this office, you benefit from a variety of assignments."

Jackson on Saturday said he had not decided whether he would remain with the district attorney's office for the long term but added that he would work hard in his new assignment.

jack.leonard@latimes.com

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As Conn. story unfolds, media struggle with facts

NEW YORK (AP) — The scope and senselessness of the Newtown, Conn., school shooting challenged journalists' ability to do much more than lend, or impose, their presence on the scene.

Pressed with the awful urgency of the story, television, along with other media, fell prey to reporting "facts" that were often in conflict or wrong.

How many people were killed? Which Lanza brother was the shooter: Adam or Ryan? Was their mother, who was among the slain, a teacher at the school?

Like the rest of the news media, television outlets were faced with intense competitive pressures and an audience ravenous for details in an age when the best-available information was seldom as reliable as the networks' high-tech delivery systems.

Here was the normal gestation of an unfolding story. But with wall-to-wall cable coverage and second-by-second Twitter postings, the process of updating and correcting it was visible to every onlooker. And as facts were gathered by authorities, then shared with reporters (often on background), a seemingly higher-than-usual number of points failed to pan out:

— The number of dead was initially reported as anywhere from the high teens to nearly 30. The final count was established Friday afternoon: 20 children and six adults, as well as Lanza's mother and the shooter himself.

— For hours on Friday, the shooter was identified as Ryan Lanza, with his age alternatively reported as 24 or 20. The confusion seemed explainable when a person who had spoken with Ryan Lanza said that 20-year-old Adam Lanza, the shooter who had then killed himself, could have been carrying identification belonging to his 24-year-old sibling.

This case of mistaken identity was painfully reminiscent of the Atlanta Olympics bombing case in 1996, when authorities fingered an innocent man, and the news media ran with it, destroying his life. Such damage was averted in Ryan Lanza's case largely by his public protestations on social media, repeatedly declaring "It wasn't me."

— Initial reports differed as to whether Lanza's mother, Nancy, was shot at the school, where she was said to be a teacher, or at the home she shared with Adam Lanza. By Friday afternoon, it was determined that she had been shot at their home.

Then doubts arose about whether Nancy Lanza had any link to Sandy Hook Elementary. At least one parent said she was a substitute teacher, but by early Saturday, an official said investigators had been unable to establish any connection with the school.

That seemed to make the massacre even more confusing. Early on, the attack was said to have taken place in her own classroom and was interpreted by more than one on-air analyst as possibly a way for Adam Lanza to strike back at children with whom he felt rivalry for his mother's affection.

— At first, authorities said Lanza had used two pistols (a Glock and a Sig Sauer) in the attack and left a .223-caliber Bushmaster rifle in the trunk of a vehicle. But by Saturday afternoon, the latest information was that all the victims had been shot with the rifle at close range.

— There were numerous versions of what Lanza was wearing, including camouflage attire and black paramilitary garb.

With so many unanswered questions, TV correspondents were left to set the scene and to convey the impact in words that continually failed them.

However apt, the phrase "parents' worst nightmare" became an instant cliche.

And the word "unimaginable" was used countless times. But "imagine" was exactly what the horrified audience was helpless not to do.

The screen was mostly occupied by grim or tearful faces, sparing everybody besides law enforcement officials the most chilling sight: the death scene in the school, where — as viewers were reminded over and over — the bodies remained while evidence was gathered. But who could keep from imagining it?

Ironically, perhaps the most powerful video came from 300 miles away, in Washington, where President Barack Obama delivered brief remarks about the tragedy. His somber face, the flat tone of his voice, the tears he daubed from his eyes, and his long, tormented pauses said as much as his heartfelt words. He seemed to speak for everyone who heard them.

The Associated Press was also caught in the swirl of imprecise information. When key elements of the story changed, the AP issued two advisories — one to correct that Adam Lanza, not his brother, was the gunman, and another that called into question the original report that Lanza's mother taught at the school.

But TV had hours to fill.

Children from the school were interviewed. It was a questionable decision for which the networks took heat from media critics and viewers alike. But the decision lay more in the hands of the willing parents (who were present), and there was value in hearing what these tiny witnesses had to say.

"We had to lock our doors so the animal couldn't get in," said one little boy, his words painting a haunting picture.

In the absence of hard facts, speculation was a regular fallback. Correspondents and other "experts" persisted in diagnosing the shooter, a man none of them had ever met or even heard of until hours earlier.

CNN's "Piers Morgan Tonight" scored an interview with a former classmate of Lanza's — with an emphasis on "former."

"I really only knew him closely when we were very, very young, in elementary school together," she said.

Determined to unlock Lanza's personality, Morgan asked the woman if she "could have ever predicted that he would one day flip and do something as monstrous as this?"

"I don't know if I could have predicted it," she replied, struggling to give Morgan what he wanted. "I mean, there was something 'off' about him."

The larger implications of the tragedy were broached throughout the coverage — not least by Obama.

"We're going to have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this, regardless of the politics," he said, which may have gladdened proponents of stricter gun laws.

But CBS correspondent Nancy Cordes noted, "There's often an assumption that after a horrific event like this, it will spark a fierce debate on the issue. But in recent years, that hasn't been the case."

Appearing on "The O'Reilly Factor" Friday night, Fox News correspondent Geraldo Rivera voiced his own solution.

"I want an armed cop at every school," he said.

___

EDITOR'S NOTE — Frazier Moore is a national television columnist for The Associated Press. He can be reached at fmoore(at)ap.org and at http://www.twitter.com/tvfrazier .

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Sidney Gilman’s Shift Led to Insider Trading Case

Speaking in front of a packed convention hall in Chicago, a top Alzheimer’s researcher, Sidney Gilman, presented the results of a drug trial that had the potential to change the fate of elderly patients everywhere.

Fabrizio Costantini for The New York Times

Dr. Gilman’s lifestyle was a well-kept secret among colleagues at the University of Michigan medical school.

But as he worked through the slides, it became clear to the audience on that day in July 2008 that the drug was not delivering and that its makers, Elan and Wyeth, could lose out on blockbuster profits. Along with other Wall Street analysts in the front rows, David Moskowitz zapped messages to clients to dump shares of the companies. “I can remember gasping” at the results, Mr. Moskowitz said.

Little did anyone in the room know that 12 days earlier, Dr. Gilman had e-mailed a draft of the presentation to a trader at an affiliate of one of the nation’s most prominent hedge funds, according to prosecutors, allowing the fund, SAC Capital, and its affiliate to sell over $700 million of Elan and Wyeth stock before Dr. Gilman’s public talk.

Last month, the trader was arrested on insider trading charges after Dr. Gilman agreed to cooperate with prosecutors to avoid charges.

While he appeared a grandfatherly academic, Dr. Gilman, 80, was living a parallel life, one in which he regularly advised a wide network of Wall Street traders through a professional matchmaking system. Those relationships afforded him payments of $100,000 or more a year — on top of his $258,000 pay from the University of Michigan — and travels with limousines, luxury hotels and private jets.

The riddle for Dr. Gilman’s longtime friends and colleagues is why a nationally respected neurologist was pulled into the high-rolling life of a consultant to financiers and how he, by his own admission, crossed the line into criminal behavior.

“My first reaction was, ‘That can’t possibly be right,’ ” said Dawn Kleindorfer, a former student of Dr. Gilman’s at Michigan.

What is clear is that Dr. Gilman made a sharp shift in his late 60s, from a life dedicated to academic research to one in which he accumulated a growing list of financial firms willing to pay him $1,000 an hour for his medical expertise, while he was overseeing drug trials for various pharmaceutical makers. Among the firms he was advising was another hedge fund that was also buying and selling Wyeth and Elan stock, though the authorities have given no sign they have questioned those trades.

His conversion to Wall Street consultant was not readily apparent in his lifestyle in Michigan and was a well-kept secret from colleagues. Public records show no second home, and no indication of financial distress. Nevertheless, he was willing to share a glimpse of his lifestyle with a 17-year-old student whom he sat next to on a flight from New York to Michigan a few months ago, telling her how his Alzheimer’s research allowed him to enjoy fine hotels in New York and limousine rides to the airport.

“I wouldn’t say he was egotistical because he didn’t come across as obnoxious, but he definitely mentioned the kind of lifestyle that he had,” said the student, Anya Parampil, who had been upgraded to first class.

Dr. Gilman’s role in the case involving SAC Capital has largely been overshadowed by the possibility that investigators may be narrowing in on the firm’s billionaire founder, Steven A. Cohen. Mr. Cohen and his firm have not been accused of wrongdoing in acting on the insider information.

Colleagues now say Dr. Gilman’s story is a reminder of the corrupting influence of money. The University of Michigan, where he was a professor for decades, has erased any trace of him on its Web sites, and is now reviewing its consulting policy for employees, a spokesman said.

The case also turns the spotlight back onto the finance world’s expert networks, which match sources in academia and at publicly traded companies — like Dr. Gilman — with traders at hedge funds and financial firms.

The networks have been a central target of prosecutors in the sprawling insider trading investigations that have resulted in dozens of convictions in recent years.

Some networks have closed, and many are shifting their focus outside the financial world, hoping to make up revenue by consulting for corporate America.

Days after the charges were filed, Dr. Gilman retired and has gone into seclusion at his home on a wooded lot overlooking the Huron River on the outskirts of Ann Arbor, which is listed in public records as worth $400,000. He declined to open the door to a reporter last week, directing questions to his lawyer. “I can’t discuss it,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

Stephanie Steinberg contributed reporting.

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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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Gil Friesen dies at 75; longtime president of A&M recording label

A&M Records spent much of the 1960s, '70s and '80s as one of the leading independent labels in the music business, buoyed by a remarkably consistent string of hits from superstar acts, beginning with label co-founder Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass and continuing through the Carpenters, Carole King, Cat Stevens, Joe Cocker, Peter Frampton, the Police, Sting, the Go-Go's, Janet Jackson, Bryan Adams and many others.

The one thing they had in common: Most weren't superstars when they came to A&M.

"We don't sign big names," Gil Friesen, the longtime president of the label founded in 1962 by Alpert and business partner Jerry Moss, told Forbes in 1988. "We would rather have an artist whose career you slowly build with great credibility over time than an artist with whom you have instant chart success and that's the end of it."

Friesen, who was sometimes referred to as "the ampersand in A&M," died Thursday of leukemia at his home in Brentwood, said his friend and Rolling Stone magazine publisher Jann Wenner. He was 75.

Friesen spent a quarter century at the label until his resignation in 1990 shortly after Alpert and Moss sold the company to international conglomerate PolyGram for $500 million.

"Gil was a visionary," Alpert said Friday. "His door was always open to people looking for [new] thoughts and ideas.... He was always there to say things that maybe you didn't think of before."

He also contributed significantly to A&M's reputation for fair play among the musicians the label signed.

"The night the Byrds were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame [in 1991], we were giving a press conference and I looked out into the small crowd and saw Gil Friesen, who in turn gave me a 'thumbs up,' as if to say 'well done.' I'll never forget that," Chris Hillman, the Byrds founding member who recorded for A&M after starting the Flying Burrito Brothers, said Friday. "He was one of the good guys."

Friesen's tenure at A&M began "in the heyday of the record business when the record business was a thriving, exciting place to be with the rise of a new generation of popular music, and A&M was at the forefront of it," Wenner said. A&M was "the leading independent label. It had a real reputation for style, class and integrity. It was a happening place to be, and Gil led that."

Gil Friesen was born March 19, 1937, in Pasadena and grew up in a musical family, which he credited with his own passion for music. His first job in the music business was at the lowest rung of the career ladder, processing mail for Capitol Records.

Later, he remembered visiting Santa Monica-based radio station KDAY to pitch a record to Alan Freed, the fabled East Coast deejay who moved to California after getting caught up in the radio payola scandal of the late 1950s.

"I was promoting a Peggy Lee record," Friesen recalled. Freed "was shocked to have a representative from Capitol show up. He introduced me to an independent promotion guy who was there for same reasons I was. His name was Jerry Moss. Jerry Moss and I became friends. Good friends."

In 1981, Friesen spearheaded the launch of A&M Films, the company's independent film division, and became executive producer of the 1985 hit "The Breakfast Club." He also produced two early John Cusack comedies, "Better Off Dead" (1985) and "One Crazy Summer" (1986), and the 1989 biopic "Blaze," about Louisiana Gov. Earl Long, starring Paul Newman.

Most recently he'd been working on a documentary titled "Twenty Feet From Stardom," about the backup singers who support rock and pop stars. It has been selected to be shown on opening night of the 2013 Sundance Film Festival.

Former A&M Senior Vice President and General Manager Jim Guerinot recalled Friday that Friesen would regularly invite groups of friends and co-workers to his home for dinner and engage them in conversations on topics far beyond that of day-to-day business affairs.

"He was friends with [historian] Bob Dallek, and after dinner, he'd say, 'Let's all go to the living room. What are we going to talk about tonight, Bob?' And Dallek would say, 'Tonight, let's talk about FDR' or 'Let's talk about Vietnam.' He made all those intellectual pursuits seem cool. And they were cool, because Gil did them."

An art aficionado, Friesen had been a board member and chairman of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. He also was a founding partner of the Classic Sports cable channel, which was sold to ESPN in 1997 for $175 million, and a founding investor in Akamai, a prominent Internet content delivery platform.

In addition to Janet Friesen, his third wife, Friesen is survived by their two children, Theo and Uma, and a son, Tyler, from a previous marriage. No services have been announced.

randy.lewis@latimes.com

elaine.woo@latimes.com

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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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Facebook, Google tell the government to stop granting patents for abstract ideas

Facebook (FB), Google (GOOG) and six other tech companies have petitioned the courts to begin rejecting lawsuits that are based on patents for vague concepts rather than specific applications, TechCrunch reported. The agreement, which was cosigned by Zynga (ZNGA), Dell (DELL), Intuit (INTU), Homeaway (AWAY), Rackspace (RAX), and Red Hat (RHT), notes the only thing these abstract patents do is increase legal fees and slow innovation in the industry. The companies claim that “abstract patents are a plague in the high tech sector” and force innovators into litigation that results in huge settlements or steep licensing fees for technology they have already developed on their own, which then leads to higher prices for consumers.

“Many computer-related patent claims just describe an abstract idea at a high level of generality and say to perform it on a computer or over the Internet,” the briefing reads. “Such barebones claims grant exclusive rights over the abstract idea itself, with no limit on how the idea is implemented. Granting patent protection for such claims would impair, not promote, innovation by conferring exclusive rights on those who have not meaningfully innovated, and thereby penalizing those that do later innovate by blocking or taxing their applications of the abstract idea.”

The companies conclude, “It is easy to think of abstract ideas about what a computer or website should do, but the difficult, valuable, and often groundbreaking part of online innovation comes next: designing, analyzing, building, and deploying the interface, software, and hardware to implement that idea in a way that is useful in daily life. Simply put, ideas are much easier to come by than working implementations.”

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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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Paper Links Nerve Agents in ’91 Gulf War and Ailments

Reviving a 20-year debate over illnesses of veterans of the 1991 Persian Gulf war, a new scientific paper presents evidence that nerve agents released by the bombing of Iraqi chemical weapons depots just before the ground war began could have carried downwind and fallen on American troops staged in Saudi Arabia.

The paper, published in the journal Neuroepidemiology, tries to rebut the longstanding Pentagon position, supported by many scientists, that neurotoxins, particularly sarin gas, could not have carried far enough to sicken American forces.

The authors are James J. Tuite and Dr. Robert Haley, who has written several papers asserting links between chemical exposures and gulf war illnesses. They assembled data from meteorological and intelligence reports to support their thesis that American bombs were powerful enough to propel sarin from depots in Muthanna and Falluja high into the atmosphere, where winds whisked it hundreds of miles south to the Saudi border.

Once over the American encampments, the toxic plume could have stalled and fallen back to the surface because of weather conditions, the paper says. Though troops would have been exposed to low levels of the agent, the authors assert that the exposures may have continued for several days, increasing their impact.

Though chemical weapons detectors sounded alarms in those encampments in the days after the January 1991 bombing raids, they were viewed as false by many troops, the authors report.

But a significant number of medical experts have cast doubts on the sarin gas theory over the years, and several said Thursday that the new paper did little to change their minds.

Dr. John Bailar, an emeritus professor at the University of Chicago who led a group that studied gulf war illnesses in 1996, said there was still no clear evidence that troops might have been exposed to levels of sarin significant enough to have a biological effect.

Dr. Bailar said that the stress of war rather than chemical agents might be a more likely cause of the veterans’ problems. “Gulf war syndrome is real,” he said, using the term for a constellation of symptoms. “And the veterans who have it deserve appropriate medical care. But we should not kid ourselves about its causes or about the most effective means of treatment.”

Nearly half of the 700,000 service members who were deployed in 1990 and 1991 for the gulf war have filed disability claims with the Department of Veterans Affairs, and more than 85 percent of those have been granted benefits, the department has reported.

Many of those veterans have reported long-lasting problems, including chronic pain, memory loss, persistent fatigue and diarrhea, some of which had no clear causes. Many veterans insist that their problems are not the result of stress but have a biological basis.

Paul Sullivan, a gulf war veteran who has advocated for more research into the illnesses, said the new paper provided “overwhelming scientific evidence” that exposure to chemical agents sickened those troops and that the Department of Veterans Affairs should ensure that all receive health care and benefits.

Panels of medical experts have come down on both sides of the issue, with one group in 2000 questioning whether low levels of sarin could cause long-term health problems and another in 2004 concluding that toxic chemicals had caused neurological damage in many troops.

The Pentagon has acknowledged that the postwar demolition of a chemical weapons depot at Kamisiya, in southern Iraq, may have exposed 100,000 troops to nerve gas. But the military has said it was unlikely that nerve gas caused long-term illnesses in troops, a position it reiterated on Thursday.

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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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Jenni Rivera jet linked to troubled company and executive

So far, this much is clear: Jenni Rivera, one of the most celebrated artists in the Latin world, died when her private jet went into a dive. The plane plummeted nose-first, 28,000 feet in 30 seconds, leaving its wreckage — and the remains of Rivera and six others — splayed across the side of the mountain like a wash of pebbles.

The investigation at the remote Mexican crash site is now in full swing, and authorities have not said whether they suspect maintenance problems or pilot error. But scrutiny has fallen on the plane and its pilots, one of whom was 78 years old. Interviews and documents link the jet to a troubled company — and an executive who was once imprisoned for faking the safety records of planes he bought from the Mexican government and sold to private pilots in the United States.

According to federal aviation records, the Learjet 25 carrying Rivera from a performance in Monterrey, Mexico, was built in 1969 and was owned by a Las Vegas company called Starwood Management LLC.

A Starwood executive, Christian E. Esquino Nunez, was accused of conspiring with associates in the 1990s and 2000s to falsify records documenting the history of planes they bought and sold — tail numbers, inspection stamps and logbooks. Esquino's "fraudulent business practices ... put the flying public at risk," federal authorities argued in documents obtained by The Times.

"We had a forewarning that this is what he is," Timothy D. Coughlin, an assistant U.S. attorney in San Diego, said. "Essentially they would manufacture the records ... that would indicate that maintenance was up to date. They would create them out of whole cloth." Once Esquino brought the planes across the border for sale, "it was open season," Coughlin said.

Coughlin prosecuted the case against Esquino in 2005, resulting in a guilty plea that sent Esquino to a federal prison in Lompoc, Calif., for two years.

After his release from prison, Esquino was deported from Southern California to his native Mexico, where he lives today.

For 20 years, Esquino has been embroiled in a briar of legal allegations, many involving airplanes — a bankruptcy and a restraining order, criminal indictments and civil judgments, cocaine-distribution charges, even a role in an alleged conspiracy to airlift relatives of the late Moammar Kadafi out of Libya.

On Wednesday, Esquino told The Times by telephone from Mexico City that the flight was not a charter as authorities have said. Rather, Rivera was in the final stages of buying the plane from Starwood for $250,000; the flight was offered as a free "demo."

Esquino, 50, described himself as Starwood's operations manager, and said he understood why his past would place him under scrutiny in the wake of the accident.

"Obviously my past — there is a story to it," he said. "It's unavoidable that they are going to look at my past.... I think it's fair to bring it up right now and question it."

However, he said, the jet was perfectly maintained. He said the only conceivable explanation for the crash was that pilot Miguel Perez Soto suffered a heart attack or was incapacitated in some way, and that a younger co-pilot, Alejandro Torres, was unable to save the plane. (Authorities stressed that they have not determined a cause of the crash or whether the plane had any problems.)

"We're all grieving," Esquino said. "I'm definitely very sorry that this happened."

Esquino said it was not a mistake to put a 78-year-old pilot at the helm of the flight. Perez had a valid license to fly in Mexico, authorities said Wednesday, but U.S. aviation sources said that in the United States, Perez was licensed to fly only under conditions that didn't require the use of instruments and was not allowed to carry passengers for hire.

Esquino said he had known and trusted Perez for 30 years. "I couldn't think of anyone more qualified," he said.

Rivera, 43, a famed Mexican American performer, mother of five and master of a growing international business empire, was killed Sunday when the private jet carrying her and four members of her entourage crashed near Iturbide, Mexico.

Rivera had sold 20 million albums, lived in a massive estate in Encino, was preparing to make her American network television debut and was at the height of her career.

The same plane, according to U.S. aviation records, sustained "substantial" damage in 2005 when a fuel imbalance left one wing tip weighing as much as 300 pounds more than the other. The unnamed pilot, despite having logged more than 7,000 hours in the air, lost control while landing in Amarillo, Texas, and struck a runway distance marker. No one was injured.

Esquino called that accident "minor" and said the plane had flown without issue for 1,000 hours since then.

Starwood formed in March 2007, two months after Esquino was released from prison. He probably knew, federal officials said Wednesday, that he would be unable to receive a license to buy and sell U.S.-registered aircraft following the federal charges and his deportation. Nevada employment records list Esquino's sister-in-law, Norma Gonzalez, as the sole corporate officer of Starwood. But according to allegations contained in court documents, it was Esquino — who has operated at times under the name Eduardo "Ed" Nunez — who was actually running the show.

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New Flickr iPhone app to compete with Instagram and Twitter with 16 filters

Hot on the heels of its email redesign, Yahoo (YHOO) announced on Wednesday that it has completely redesigned the Flickr iPhone app. The new app borrows heavily from Instagram and focuses on what makes Flickr special: photos and communities. Yahoo’s new Flickr app also includes 16 filters with their own fancy names to go head-on with Instagram and Twitter’s recently updated app that added eight filters. Users can now access the Flickr app with numerous accounts including Facebook (FB) and Google (GOOG) and photos can be shared to Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr or via email. The new Flickr app is available for free on iPhone but to our disappointment, there isn’t an iPad-optimized version.

Ellis Hamburger from The Verge penned an interesting editorial on how Twitter misses the mark by simply adding filters to its app without having the close community that makes Instagram so addictive. Led by CEO Marissa Mayer, Yahoo seems aware that mobile apps thrive on the communities that sprout up. The new Flickr app’s emphasis on how the images are displayed and shared in visually appealing and digestible thumbnails suggests Yahoo finally understands mobile.

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Music, comedy strike defiant tone at Sandy concert

NEW YORK (AP) — Music and comedy royalty struck a defiant tone in a benefit concert for Superstorm Sandy victims on Wednesday, asking for help to rebuild a New York metropolitan area most of them know well.

The sold-out Madison Square Garden show was televised, streamed online and aired on radio all over the world. Producers said up to 2 billion people could experience the concert live.

"When are you going to learn," comic and New Jersey native Jon Stewart said. "You can throw anything at us — terrorists, hurricanes. You can take away our giant sodas. It doesn't matter. We're coming back stronger every time."

Jersey shore hero Bruce Springsteen set a roaring tone, opening the concert with "Land of Hope and Dreams" and "Wrecking Ball." He addressed the rebuilding process in introducing his song "My City of Ruins," noting it was written about the decline of Asbury Park, N.J. before that city's renaissance over the past decade. What made the Jersey shore special was its inclusiveness, a place where people of all incomes and backgrounds could find a place, he said.

"I pray that that characteristic remains along the Jersey shore because that's what makes it special," Springsteen said.

He mixed a verse of Tom Waits' "Jersey Girl" into the song before calling New Jersey neighbor Jon Bon Jovi to join him in a rousing "Born to Run." Springsteen later returned the favor by joining Bon Jovi on "Who Says You Can't Go Home."

Adam Sandler hearkened back to his "Saturday Night Live" days with a ribald rewrite of the oft-sung "Hallelujah" that composer Leonard Cohen never would have dreamed. The rewritten chorus says, "Sandy, screw ya, we'll get through ya, because we're New Yawkers.

Sandler wore a New York Jets T-shirt and mined Donald Trump, Michael Bloomberg, the New York Knicks, Times Square porn and Jets quarterback Mark Sanchez for laugh lines.

The music lineup was heavily weighted toward classic rock, which has the type of fans able to afford a show for which ticket prices ranged from $150 to $2,500. Even with those prices, people with tickets have been offering them for more on broker sites such as StubHub, an attempt at profiteering that producers fumed was "despicable."

"This has got to be the largest collection of old English musicians ever assembled in Madison Square Garden," Rolling Stones rocker Mick Jagger said. "If it rains in London, you've got to come and help us."

In fighting trim for a series of 50th anniversary concerts in the New York area, the Stones ripped through "You've Got Me Rockin'" and "Jumping Jack Flash.

Jagger wasn't in New York City for Sandy, but he said in an interview before the concert that his apartment was flooded with 2 feet of water.

Eric Clapton switched from acoustic to electric guitar and sang "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out" and "Crossroads." New York was a backdrop for Clapton's personal tragedy, when his young son died after falling out of a window.

Roger Waters played a set of Pink Floyd's spacey rock, joined by Eddie Vedder for "Comfortably Numb." Waters stuck to the music and left the fundraising to others.

"Can't chat," he said, "because we only have 30 minutes."

The sold-out "12-12-12" concert was being shown on 37 television stations in the United States and more than 200 others worldwide. It was to be streamed on 30 websites, including YouTube and Yahoo, and played on radio stations. Theaters, including 27 in the New York region and dozens more elsewhere, were showing it live.

Proceeds from the show will be distributed through the Robin Hood Foundation. More than $30 million was raised through ticket sales alone.

The powerful storm left parts of New York City underwater and left millions of people in several states without heat or electricity for weeks. It's blamed for at least 125 deaths, including 104 in New York and New Jersey, and it destroyed or damaged 305,000 housing units in New York alone.

Other concert performers were to include Long Islander Billy Joel ("New York State of Mind") and New Yorker Alicia Keys ("Empire State of Mind"). Even Liverpool's Paul McCartney has a New York office, Hamptons home and a wife, Nancy Shevell, who spent a decade on the board of the agency that runs New York's public transit system.

E Street Band guitarist Steve Van Zandt said backstage that musicians are often quick to help when they can.

"Yes, it's more personal because literally the Jersey shore is where we grew up," he said. "But we'd be here anyway."

The concert came a day after the death of sitar master Ravi Shankar, a performer at the 1971 "Concert for Bangladesh" considered the grandfather of music benefits. That concert also was in Madison Square Garden.

___

AP Music Writer Mesfin Fekadu in New York contributed to this report.

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Eli Lilly to Conduct Additional Study of Alzheimer’s Drug

The drug maker Eli Lilly & Company said on Wednesday that it planned an additional study of an experimental Alzheimer’s drug that failed to improve the condition of people with the disease, saying that it remained hopeful about the drug’s prospects.

The newest study is expected to get under way in the third quarter of 2013 and will focus on patients with mild Alzheimer’s disease. Lilly released results of two clinical trials in August that showed the drug, called solanezumab, did not significantly improve either the cognition or the daily functioning of people with mild and moderate forms of the disease. But despite that failure, the results also gave some reason for hope: when patients with mild Alzheimer’s were separated out, the drug was shown to significantly slow their decline in cognition.

In a statement on Wednesday, the company said it decided not to pursue approval of the drug based on existing study results after it met with officials from the Food and Drug Administration. A Lilly executive said, however, that the company was still optimistic.

“We remain encouraged and excited by the solanezumab data,” David Ricks, a senior vice president at Lilly and president of Lilly Bio-Medicines, said in the statement. “We are committed to working with the F.D.A. and other regulatory authorities to bring solanezumab to the millions of patients and caregivers suffering from this devastating disease who urgently need this potential treatment.”

The Lilly drug is the second Alzheimer’s treatment to fail in clinical trials this year. Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson stopped development of a similar treatment, bapineuzumab, after it, too, was not shown to work. Both drugs target beta amyloid, a protein in the brain that is found in people with Alzheimer’s disease.

Lilly shares closed at $49, down 3.2 percent.

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Junk bonds drawing more investors despite the risks

NEW YORK — Low interest rates pushed down by the Federal Reserve have opened a spigot of easy money to companies with less than sterling credit.

The Fed, which signaled Wednesday that it would aggressively keep rates low until unemployment fell below 6.5%, has been pumping billions of dollars into the economy. And the historic rate drops are nudging investors into riskier investments.

One place that has attracted investors is the debt of companies with non-investment-grade, or "junk," credit ratings. Companies have been all too eager to oblige, taking advantage of the situation by issuing millions of dollars in junk bonds.

"It's really been startling," said Bonnie Baha, head of global developed credit at the bond fund Doubleline Capital in Los Angeles. "So much money has been flowing into this sector."

For example, the Westlake Village home builder Ryland Group rushed into the bond market with a $250-million offering in September. Ryland, like other home builders, saw its finances hurt and credit ratings dented during the mortgage crisis and its aftermath. But the company's low credit rating didn't deter investors in the offering, which came with a relatively low interest rate of 5.38% and few strings attached.

Ryland plans to use the proceeds to buy land in Southern California, Texas and Florida and elsewhere next year as it expands and bets the housing market continues to recover.

"With all these issues we're facing now, let's take the money when we know we can get it," said Gordon Milne, chief financial officer, describing Ryland's decision.

Although investors have been devouring high-yield bonds this year, some analysts see signs the market could be overheating and are warning that investors could get burned when the tide reverses.

Yet investors seem to be buying bonds from nearly any company, without much regard to financial health or protections for investors, Baha said. "The quality of some of the deals that have come to market this year has been pretty suspect," she added.

Investors shoved $27.9 billion into high-yield bond funds this year as of October, almost twice as much as the $14.4 billion put into those funds in all of 2011, according to Morningstar Inc.

Interest rates on junk bonds — which soared to about 18% at the height of the financial crisis in 2008 — have fallen below 6%, according to a high-yield index tracked by KDP Investment Advisors.

As the Fed's monetary stimulus programs — known as quantitative easing — have pushed interest rates closer to zero, investors have put their money in riskier assets including stocks, real estate or bonds issued by developing countries.

"We're in an artificially low-rate environment," Baha said. "Everyone is desperate for whatever kind of return they can get."

The river of cash into junk bonds may be a lifeline to some companies.

Take Energy Future Holdings Corp., a Texas energy company. A bond analyst at KDP Investment Advisors Inc. wrote in a recent note that the company's "capital structure is unsustainable" and the company would "likely see defaults within the next two years," yet Energy Future Holdings would probably tap the junk bond market again in 2013. The company declined to comment.

Investors' frenzy for yield has led to loose terms for companies issuing junk bonds. Deals are coming with fewer covenants, or restrictions on how companies can use their cash or dispose of assets and whether they can issue more bonds.

"So many issuers are selling covenant-light bonds because they can — it's as simple as that," Adam Cohen, who heads the credit research firm Covenant Review, wrote in an email.

Some observers have begun sounding the alarm.

"This all presents, to me, a pretty big risk in the market," Michael Gitlin, director of fixed income at T. Rowe Price, said during a recent presentation. "When you start seeing things like this, like you did in '06 and '07, you should start being concerned."

Corporate default rates are relatively low, however.

The trailing 12-month default rate on speculative-grade corporate bonds declined to 2.7% in November, from 2.8% the previous month. But that default rate could rise to 3.7% by September 2013, according to ratings company Standard & Poor's.

An uptick in corporate defaults if the economy worsens could rattle investors, leading to a sell-off and higher borrowing costs for companies with junk ratings.

"At some point something's got to give," Baha said.

andrew.tangel@latimes.com

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North Korea launches its second rocket this year

This image shared by the Union of Concerned Scientists shows the announced zones where stages of the North Korean rocket are expected to splash down. (Union of Concerned Scientists / December 10, 2012)

By Emily Alpert

December 11, 2012, 5:24 p.m.

North Korea launched a rocket Wednesday morning, according to South Korean media and the Associated Press. The launch marks the second such mission this year, after a failed attempt that embarrassed the regime in April.

The rocket was fired at 9:51 a.m., according to the Yonhap news agency in South Korea. 

Though North Korea describes the effort as a peaceful satellite launch, the technology used to send a satellite into orbit or launch a missile carrying a warhead is essentially the same, raising fears that a successful mission could be a stride toward putting the United States in North Korea's sights. The U.S., South Korea and other nations condemned the planned launch as a brazen provocation when it was first announced.

The April launch ended in less than two minutes. The rocket broke into pieces shortly after liftoff, a black eye for the country as it marked the 100th anniversary of the birth of founder Kim Il Sung. Earlier attempts to launch a satellite also failed, according to Western officials.

North Korea experts say the latest undertaking is a bid to regain face after the April effort and an attempt to bolster the leadership of Kim Jong Un, who took power late last year.

The country announced at the beginning of the month that its scientists had analyzed the errors behind the April failure, but some analysts were skeptical that it had had enough time to fix the problems.

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