New York's new tallest building rises at ground zero

New York's new tallest building rises at ground zero

One World Trade Center, the successor to the Twin Towers destroyed on Sept. 11, 2001, has become the tallest structure on the Manhattan skyline, the latest milestone of New York's, as well as the nation’s, rise from the terrorist attack.

Workers on Monday raised a steel column onto the office building’s skeleton and torqued the bolts, making the fastenings firm. With the addition, the unfinished structure is technically taller than the Empire State Building’s observation deck at 1,250 feet and can claim the city’s bragging rights.

“The New York City skyline is, once again, stretching to new heights,” Mayor Michael Bloomberg said in a statement. “The latest progress at the World Trade Center is a testament to New Yorkers’ strength and resolve, and to our belief in a city that is always reaching upward. This building has been a labor of love for many, and I congratulate the men and women who have worked tog ether to solve the challenges presented by this incredibly complex project. Today our city has a new tallest building, and a new sense of how bright our future is.”

Photos: One World Trade Center becomes tallest building in New York

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo also stressed the symbolism of rebirth. “The new World Trade Center is more than just a skyscraper: It is a symbol of the enduring spirit of the city and state of New York, representing our commitment to rebuilding stronger than before,” Cuomo said.

The building previously known as the Freedom Tower is one of the signature efforts at  the Lower Manhattan site that was destroyed in the airliner attacks by Al Qaeda on New York and the Pentagon. About 3,000 people died in the overall attack, with more than 2,600 killed in New York when the towers of the World Trade Center came crashing down.

Since the attack, the 16-acre site, known as ground zero, has become a monument to the nation’s effort to deal with the scars and memorialize the dead.

Still, Monday’s action was heavily symbolic. It came during the week that the United States commemorates its successful raid on Al Qaeda’s leader, Osama bin Laden, who was killed by U.S. SEALs in Pakistan a year ago.

When completed sometime next year, One World Trade Center will stretch exactly 1,776 feet high, including a 408-foot needle, or spire, at the top. By comparison, the Empire State Building is 1,454 feet from the ground to the top of its antenna. Without the antenna, the Empire State Building is 1,250 feet, the figure passed by Monday’s action at the World Trade site.

Without its spire, One World Trade Center will be 1,368 feet, the height of the North Tower of the original World Trade Center. The spire was added to bring the height up to 1,776 feet to ho nor the year of U.S. independence. At that height it will be the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere and the third tallest in the world.

Records, however, will be in the eye of the beholder. Chicago with its Willis Tower (formerly the Sears Tower) will still be able to make a case for some glory. Without its spire, One World Trade Center will be 82 feet shorter than the roof height of the Willis, currently the nation’s tallest.

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michael.muskal@latimes.com

Exotic animals to be returned to widow in Zanesville, Ohio

Exotic animals to be returned to widow in Zanesville, Ohio

Five exotic animals -- the survivors of dozens freed by their owner, who then killed himself --  will be returned to his widow, Ohio officials announced on Monday.

The announcement came at an administrative hearing to determine the future of the animals --  two leopards, two primates and a bear -- who have been lodged at the Columbus zoo under a quarantine order, state officials confirmed by telephone. At a hearing last week, Ohio officials testified that preliminary results showed that the animals were free of dangerous infectious diseases and could be returned.

Still to be worked out is when the animals will be returned to Marian Thompson, of Zanesville, Ohio. Thompson is the widow of Terry Thompson, whose actions and suicide touched off a national debate on state regulation, the care of exotic animals and security.

Photos: Exotic animals deliberately freed in Ohio

On Oct. 18, Terry Thompson released 56 animals he was keeping at his Zanesville farm in eastern Ohio, then committed suicide. The animals, a collection of exotics including bears, mountain lions, Bengal tigers and primates, roamed the area until officials hunted them down and killed 48. One leopard was later euthanized, and some of the animals are believed to have been eaten by other escapees.

The five surviving animals were placed in the care of the zoo but have been at the center of a custody battle between Thompson and the state.

On Monday, the state gave up its fight, conceding, in effect, that it had reached the end of its legal powers to hold the animals.

"The Ohio Department of Agriculture’s review of the health of the five surviving animals from the Thompson farm is complete, and no dangerously infectious or contagious diseases were found.  The quarantine will be lifted later today, and the animals will soon be returned to Marian Thompson," the agency said in a  statement emailed to reporters.

Ohio officials had issued the quarantine order because of questions about how the animals were kept in Zanesville and whether they were possibly diseased or had rabies. The state also wanted assurance that the surviving animals would be properly kept.

The Thompson family has  insisted it had the resources and the facilities to care for the animals. State officials said they were still worried, but could do little given the laws.

"Mrs. Thompson has indicated that she intends to take the animals back to her farm in Zanesville and place them back into the cages which they inhabited prior to the October 18 tragedy," the state said in its statement.  "This raises concerns, as she has indicated the cages have not been repaired, and has repeatedly refused to allow animal welfare experts to evaluate if conditions are safe for the animals and sufficient to prevent them from escaping and endangering the community.

"Unfortunately, current law gives enforcement powers to local authorities, not the state. ...  Hopefully legislation pending in the General Assembly will be completed soon so that new, broader, tougher rules can go into effect to better protect the public from dangerous wild animals and ensure these kinds of animals are kept under the care of veterinarians and in enclosures that are clean and adequate.  Until then we can only hope that local officials choose to act to prevent another tragedy."

Photos: Exotic animals deliberately freed in Ohio

The Zanesville incident prompted a review by the state of its regulations on allowing exotic animals. The state Senate has passed a bill to toughen the licensing requirements for current owners and to ban the acquisition of monkeys, lions and other exotic animals -- except by zoos, sanctuaries and research facilities.

The measure is pending in the state’s other chamber.

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Diplomatic silence shrouds Chinese dissident's situation

Diplomatic silence shrouds Chinese dissident's situation

U.S. and Chinese officials maintained silence Monday on the location and fate of Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng as both sides sought to avert a diplomatic crisis during Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's coming visit to Beijing.

State-run Chinese media have yet to even acknowledge that the blind 40-year-old human rights activist escaped last week after 18 months of house arrest, and U.S. officials have declined to confirm reports that Chen has been given refuge at the American Embassy in Beijing.

Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell was already in Beijing ahead of Clinton's arrival, but State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland refused to say anything about his meetings with Chinese counterparts or whether the subject of Chen's whereabouts was being addressed.

Clinton will have to juggle U.S. commitment to improving human rights in China with the need to retain Chinese cooperation in regional and international matters such as North Korea's pursuit of nuclear weapons capability.

John Brennan, a top national security advisor to President Obama, said on "Fox News Sunday" that the administration was seeking to strike "an appropriate balance" between support for human rights and diplomatic relations with Beijing in its handling of the Chen affair.

The dissident, who has long spoken out against forced abortions and sterilization in China under the government's one-child rule, appealed to the Beijing leadership in a video posted on YouTube on Friday in which he said his family and supporters had been harassed by authorities during his detention and house arrest.

A Texas-based activist group, China Aid Assn., said in a statement over the weekend that Chen was "under U.S. protection."

"High-level talks are currently underway between U.S. and Chinese officials regarding Chen's status," said the statement, citing a source close to the situation.

Bob Fu, founder and director of China Aid, said in a telephone interview with The Times that he envisioned U.S. and Chinese authorities resolving the unspoken standoff over Chen by agreeing to let him and his family take refuge in the United States, perhaps under the pretext of his seeking medical treatment.

Chen sustained numerous injuries while making the 300-mile journey to Beijing from his home in Yinan county, Fu said.

Chen's friends and colleagues in the human rights movement have said he doesn't want to abandon the fight, but Fu said "he has suffered enough," and that others would pick up the rights battle if Chen were to leave the country.

Syria violence continues despite presence of chief monitor

Syria violence continues despite presence of chief monitor

BEIRUT â€" Even with the commander of the United Nations monitoring mission in place in Syria, explosions and attacks continued Monday as forces loyal to President Bashar Assad and opposition groups appeared no closer to a cease-fire after 13 months of unrest.

In the northern city of Idlib, two early-morning car bombings killed at least eight people and injured more than 100, according to state media and activists. The explosions targeted the air force security and other military security buildings in the southern part of the city dominated by government buildings.

State media put the death toll at eight, though activists said 20 people, both civilians and security officers, were killed.

It was not immediately clear who was responsible for the attacks. State media blamed them on terrorist groups, the blanket term the government has used to describe the opposition since the uprising against Assad began more than a year ago. But many activists blamed the government.

The bombings occurred in a heavily guarded area called Security Square, where it would have been difficult for anyone to get through, said activist Alaa Al-Deen Al-Yusuf.

They came a day after the commander of the United Nations monitoring mission, Maj. Gen. Robert Mood of Norway, arrived in Syria. An advance team of U.N. observers already in Syria is expected to grow to a full force of 300.

But as the cease-fire stipulated in a peace plan has failed to take hold, some have questioned whether the monitors can help bring Syria back from the brink of civil war.

"We will be only 300, but we can make a difference," Mood told reporters in Damascus, the capital. "Thirty unarmed observers, 300 unarmed observers, even 1,000 unarmed observers cannot solve all the problems."

In Idlib, the explosions occurred about 6:30 a.m., soon after morning prayers, said one resident who lives in the Shimali neighborhood, in the northern part of the city.

"We are very far from the explosion and we still heard it," she said.

The official Syrian Arab News Agency said an armed group attacked the Central Bank of Syria in Damascus with a rocket-propelled grenade, causing minor damage to the building. Elsewhere in the capital, a group attacked a rescue patrol near a hospital with a rocket-propelled grenade, injuring four policemen, according to the news agency.

The Local Coordination Committees, an opposition network, said in a statement that the attacks Monday and on previous days were orchestrated by the government to divert attention from its obligation to comply with the U.N.'s six-point peace plan. The plan requires the government to cease attacks on the opposition and withdraw its tanks and heavy weapons from cities and towns, which has not happened.

Also Monday, the Lebanese Interior Ministry said a man was shot in the shoulder by Syrian security forces as he and a group of friends were skiing on Mt. Hermon. The man was taken to a nearby hospital and his friends were handed over to Lebanese army intelligence, though the ministry did not explain whether they were under investigation.

Dissident Chen Guangcheng's case complicates U.S.-China ties

Dissident Chen Guangcheng's case complicates U.S.-China ties

WASHINGTON â€" Even before a blind human rights lawyer slipped away from house arrest in rural China last week, Washington and Beijing were each trying to navigate a turbulent time in their internal politics and their relationship. Now they are trying to avoid their worst diplomatic spat in years.

Although U.S. officials are mum, Chen Guangcheng's supporters are believed to have outwitted his guards and then spirited Chen several hundred miles from his village to seek refuge with U.S. diplomats in Beijing.

As Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and other top U.S. officials left Washington on Monday for previously scheduled annual talks in Beijing, diplomats from both countries scrambled to find a way to solve Chen's case without undermining efforts to improve economic and security ties.

A senior U.S. diplomat, Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell, flew to Beijing on Sunday to discuss the case with Chinese officials. Activists and former U.S. officials say the most likely outcomes are Chen's departure for the U.S., an agreement by China to end harassment of him, or his traveling to a third country.

Former Chinese and U.S. officials say they believe leaders on both sides want to work out a deal. There are a range of international issues before them: North Korea, Iran, Syria and the weak global economy. China is still nervous about President Obama's announcement late last year of a pivot in U.S. diplomatic and milit ary policy to focus on the Asia-Pacific region. But for both governments, domestic politics may limit their room to maneuver.

In a sign of the sensitivity of the case, President Obama pointedly declined to respond to questions at a White House news conference Monday as to whether Chen was under U.S. protection, if secret talks were underway to resolve the crisis, or whether the United States would grant Chen political asylum if he asked for it.

Obama said only that he was "aware of the press reports on the situation in China."

"What I would like to emphasize is that every time we meet with China the issue of human rights comes up," Obama said, familiar diplomatic language that is unlikely to limit the administration's maneuvering room.

However, Obama's China policy faces tough scrutiny from Republicans in an election year. He was criticized for U.S. actions in a scandal that is already rocking China's political establishment. A Chinese police offi cial entered a U.S. Consulate in February seeking protection because of his accusations against his boss, Politburo member Bo Xilai, who was later sacked. The official, Wang Lijun, left the consulate and was reportedly taken into custody.

Mitt Romney, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, over the weekend called for unflinching support of human rights in China.

Chen has long complained of China's harsh enforcement of its policy that limits each family to only one child, and he angered authorities in rural China by exposing forced abortions.

A Chen confidant, Texas-based activist Bob Fu of the China Aid Assn. human rights group, said Monday that talks between U.S. and Chinese officials were well underway and that it was likely Chen would be brought to the United States despite his reluctance to permanently leave his home country.

Some analysts say the case could become as serious as the dispute over the collision of a Navy spy plane and a Chinese warplane over the South China Sea in April 2001, which caused the Chinese jet to crash and the U.S. aircraft to make a forced landing in China.

There is precedent for U.S. diplomats protecting Chinese dissidents. Diplomats refused to turn over Fang Lizhi and his wife, who were wanted by Chinese authorities after the Tiananmen massacre in 1989. China allowed the couple to leave the country the next year.

Chen's surprise escape came at an extremely sensitive time for the Chinese leadership. Already faced with a once-in-a-decade transfer of power, it has been buffeted by the sensational case of Bo, whose wife has been accused of murder in connection with the death of a British businessman.

Analysts say Chen's case gives the outgoing leadership a chance to back up its contention that the rule of law is paramount in China. But hard-liners in the security establishment could undermine a deal by arguing that the government should firmly resist any Ame rican meddling in China's affairs.

"Some will say, 'We can't let the U.S. do this,' and then we may have a very big problem," said Kenneth Lieberthal, who was top Asia advisor to President Clinton and is now with the Brookings Institution think tank.

Chen made a video appeal to Premier Wen Jiabao to protect his wife and daughter, whom he left behind in his village in the eastern province of Shandong.

"This puts China in a dilemma, as the government has spent the better part of the last month telling people China is a law-governed society and law-based government," said Victor Shih, an associate professor of political science at Northwestern University. "The Chinese government should then, according to law, protect Chen Guangcheng, who has not broken any laws."

Bin Laden raid emerges as campaign issue

Bin Laden raid emerges as campaign issue

WASHINGTON â€" In a first term marked by clear partisan divisions, President Obama's decision to order a high-risk special forces operation targeting Osama bin Laden stands out as an unquestioned nonpartisan success.

But the one-year anniversary of the Al Qaeda mastermind's death has become a flash point in early skirmishing between Obama and Mitt Romney, his likely Republican opponent in the fall election. It reflects both the competitive nature of this year's presidential contest and Democrats' zeal to highlight an advantage over the GOP on issues of national security.

Even as they denied the effort was tied to the milestone, senior Obama surrogates over the last week have attempted to raise questions about whether Romney would have made the decision to greenlight the mission at the terrorist leader's compound in Pakistan.

They pointed to Romney's own statements in his last run for the White House, in which he questioned the value of "moving heaven and earth" to catch Bin Laden, and criticized then-candidate Obama's position that he would order military strikes against terrorists in Pakistan even without that nation's consent.

From the East Room of the White House on Monday, with the prime minister of Japan at his side, Obama indirectly raised the question himself.

"I'd just recommend that everybody take a look at people's previous statements in terms of whether they thought it was appropriate to go into Pakistan and take out Bin Laden," Obama said. "I said that I'd go after Bin Laden if we had a clear shot at him, and I did. If there are others who have said one thing and now suggest they'd do something else, then I'd go ahead and let them explain it."

Earlier Monday, while campaigning in New Hampshire, Romney rejected the idea that he would not have given a similar directive.

"Of course, of course," he said. "Even Jimmy Carter would have given that order."

The White House, in a twist on the traditional Rose Garden strategy of using the trappings of incumbency to full advantage in a reelection effort, seems to be executing a "situation room" strategy.

The administration agreed to let NBC News cameras follow the president into the room where Obama and his top aides watched the Bin Laden operation unfold a year ago, captured in an iconic photograph.

"There's silence at this point inside the room," Obama tells NBC's Brian Williams, revealing for perhaps the first time that he and his top aides were watching with visible apprehension as the first U.S. helicopter had mechanical problems.

On Thursday, the president's campaign team deployed Vice President Joe Biden to New York, where he called it "legitimate" to question whether Bin Laden would still be alive today had Romney been elected in 2008.

In an online ad released Friday by the Obama campaign, former President Clinton hails Obama's political courage in ordering the raid. The ad also quotes Romney as saying, "It's not worth moving heaven and earth spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person."

The ad netted a "half true" rating from PolitiFact, because although Romney is quoted accurately, the video omits other facts â€" that Romney was speaking about the need to focus on the global Al Qaeda network rather than one leader, and that Romney said the nation must track down Bin Laden and "make sure he pays for the outrage he exacted upon America."

Republicans put Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) front and center to accuse Obama of politicizing the moment, saying Obama was "doing a shameless end-zone dance to help himself get reelected."

"No one disputes that the president deserves credit for ordering the raid, but to politicize it in this way is the height of hypo crisy," he said.

Obama said Monday there was no "excessive celebration" on his part, calling the anniversary an appropriate time for reflection.

Though the Sept. 11 attacks united Americans in the immediate aftermath, they have played a part in politics ever since. In the 2004 campaign,President George W. Bushran an ad arguing that the nation would be vulnerable to terrorist attacks if John F. Kerry were elected president.

Rudolph W. Giulianiused his role as "America's mayor" in the aftermath of the attacks on New York as a focal point of his 2008 campaign, which prompted Biden, himself a presidential hopeful at the time, to quip: "There's only three things he mentions in a sentence: a noun, a verb and9/11."

Romney and Giuliani are set to appear together Tuesday at a New York fire station.

"There's a common claim, made all the time, that politics stops at the water's end or that politics should stop at the water's edge. That may be an aspiration . It's never been a reality," said James Lindsay, an analyst at the Council on Foreign Relations.

"Gov. Romney's doing what any candidate in his position [would] do â€" he's crying foul and hoping that he'll get sympathy from the voters," Lindsay added. "If the shoes were reversed, it would be Democrats crying foul, and they cried foul back in 2004 in similar circumstances."

Lindsay noted that Romney has been sharply critical of Obama on other areas of foreign policy, having accused him of a policy of "appeasement." Romney's campaign made the charge again in response to Obama's latest comments.

"President Obama's feckless foreign policy has emboldened our adversaries, weakened our allies, and threatens to break faith with our military. ... Gov. Romney has always understood we need a comprehensive plan to deal with the myriad threats America faces," said spokeswoman Andrea Saul.

Romney's comment pointed to a risky move that â€" unlike the Bin Laden rai d â€" went disastrously wrong and backfired on a first-term president. In April 1980, President Carter ordered a military rescue of 66 U.S. hostages in Iran. The mission failed â€" eight Americans were killed and no hostages were rescued â€" and many believe it contributed heavily to Carter's reelection defeat.

michael.memoli@latimes.com

christi.parsons@latimes.com

seema.mehta@latimes.com

Memoli and Parsons reported from Washington and Mehta from Portsmouth, N.H.

Oklahoma Supreme Court rejects embryo 'personhood' measure

Oklahoma Supreme Court rejects embryo 'personhood' measure

OKLAHOMA CITY â€" The Oklahoma Supreme Court on Monday halted an effort to grant "personhood" rights to human embryos, saying the measure is unconstitutional.

The state's highest court ruled unanimously that a proposed amendment to the Oklahoma Constitution defining a fertilized human egg as a person violates a 1992 U.S. Supreme Court decision involving a Pennsylvania case and "is clearly unconstitutional." Supporters of the personhood amendment were trying to gather enough signatures to put it before Oklahoma voters on the November ballot.

Opponents contend that the measure would ban abortions without exception and interfere with a woman's right to use certain forms of contraception and medical procedures, such as in vitro fertilization.

The American Civil Liberties Union and the New York-based Center for Reproductive Rights filed a protest with the state Supreme Court on behalf of several Oklahoma doctors and residents. They asked the court to stop the group Personhood Oklahoma from gathering signatures.

The nine-member court determined that the initiative petition "is void on its face" and struck it down.

"The only course available to this court is to follow what the United States Supreme Court, the final arbiter of the United States Constitution, has decreed," the court said.

The ruling is the latest setback for abortion opponents who have been pursuing personhood measures in several states. In December, a judge in Nevada ruled that a personhood initiative petition was vague and could not be circulated for signatures to qualify for the 2012 ballot. Similar proposals were defeated last year in Mississippi and Colorado.

The backers of the s ignature drive say their goal is to set up a legal challenge to the landmark Roe vs. Wade decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1973 that gave women a legal right to abortion.

Computer specialist contends his views cost him his job at JPL

Computer specialist contends his views cost him his job at JPL

David Coppedge's co-workers at one of the nation's most prominent scientific institutions didn't have to guess his theory as to how the universe was created. He offered to lend them DVDs advocating intelligent design.

An evangelical Christian, he also asked that the holiday potluck at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory be renamed the Christmas potluck and sparred with at least one colleague over their divergent views on Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage in California.

Coppedge's zest for hot-button topics rankled some co-workers at the facility in La Cañada Flintridge, who complained about him to management. But did it eventually cost him his job?

That's the question a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge presiding over Coppedge's wrongful termination lawsuit is expected to decide in the coming months. JPL, which Caltech manages for NASA, contends Coppedge was laid off in 2011 as part of massive cutbacks because his skill set was outdated and his attitude obstinate.

"What happened to David Coppedge â€" really what David Coppedge did to himself â€" had nothing to do with intelligent design or religion but with his own stubbornness," defense attorney Cameron Fox said during closing arguments this month.

To anti-evolution forces, however, Coppedge is a warrior on the front lines of the national evolution debate. They've seized on his otherwise humdrum lawsuit, showering it with resources and publicity.

In fact, defense attorneys alleged in court papers that Coppedge and his supporters were pursuing the case in part to promote intelligent design. In general, its adherents say life is too complex to have stemmed from evolution alone and distinguish themselves from creationists by not tying their beliefs specifically to the Bible.

Coppedge found his lawyer, William Becker, through the Alliance Defense Fund, a Christian group that's also helping fund Coppedge's defense. Becker has also worked with the Discovery Institute, a prominent intelligent design group based in Seattle and a key force in helping portray Coppedge as a victim of religious bigotry.

"There is a worldview war in this country," Becker said in an interview. "There's a battle between people who think religious people are trying to disrupt the integrity of the scientific method and those who know we're not."

The intelligent design crowd has won some victories in recent years, including a new law in Tennessee that allows teachers to question evolution and global warming in their classrooms. Opponents derided it as the "monkey bill," a nod to the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial, in which a Tennessee man was prosecuted for teaching evolution.

But the attention lavished on the Coppedge case shows that the anti-evolution community is also invested in trying to win lower-level battles. For example, the American Freedom Alliance successfully sued the California Science Center after it canceled a screening of an intelligent design film in 2009.

Critics said it's a sign of desperation. "The creationists keep losing," said Glenn Branch, deputy director of the National Center for Science Education in Oakland. "They lost the science battle years ago." He said latching onto the Coppedge case feeds a "narrative of victimization" that paints science and academia as hostile to religion.

But Discovery Institute representatives said their strategy is sound. Any spat, however small, is another opportunity to air their views. The institute sent a spokesman to the Coppedge closing arguments to field questions from reporters, and one of its fellows has regularly blogged about the trial.

"It fits another tile in the mosaic that will eventually be recognized as demonstrating that the scientific 'consensus' against intelligent design is the product of intimidation and group think," fellow David Klinghoffer wrote before opening statements in March. "Coppedge has already contributed his tile."

For all the online buildup, the details of the Coppedge case are somewhat run-of-the-mill. Coppedge is a computer specialist who started as a JPL contractor in 1996. He was eventually brought onto the systems administration staff and given the title of "team lead." He worked on computer networks for Cassini, the first spacecraft to orbit Saturn and its moons.

A bespectacled, white-bearded man, Coppedge never hid his embrace of intelligent design. He maintained a website dedicated to it and sat on the board of Illustra Media, which produces intelligent design DVDs. He tried to get his co-workers to watch at least two of them: "Unlocking the Mystery of Life" and "The Privileged Planet."

In 2009, one co-worker balked. She said Coppedge's DVD had a sticky note that listed fellow colleagues and, next to one name, the phrase "try again." She complained to a supervisor, who told Coppedge to "stop pushing your religion," Coppedge said.

"Imagine if employees were told, stop pushing your gay agenda or stop pushing your feminist agenda, your civil rights agenda," Becker told Judge Ernest M. Hiroshige, who will decide the case. Both sides agreed to forgo a jury.

At JPL, a human resources probe turned up how Coppedge had protested the name "holiday potluck" and purportedly told another co-worker who opposed Proposition 8 that he "must be against children," court papers said. Coppedge received a written warning for "unwelcome and unprofessional" behavior, Fox told the judge.

Coppedge was also stripped of his leadership title and responsibilities, though his salary didn't change. But he clearly felt humiliated; in court papers, he equated the memo announcing his replacement to a "Scarlet Letter or the mark of Cain."

In 2010, he filed suit, alleging religious discrimination and harassment. Less than a year later, he was laid off, and added a wrongful termination claim. In the flurry of legal filings since, Coppedge included cartoons posted at JPL that he said mocked intelligent design. His attorney also wrote up a key conversation as a screenplay, complete with stage directions.

Defense attorneys scoffed at the accusation that Coppedge was targeted because of his beliefs. Due to budget cuts, including to the Cassini project, more than 200 employees also lost their jobs.

Coppedge had also waved off suggestions to update his computer skills and was saddled with a reputation for being "unwilling to listen and always having to do things his way," defense attorneys said in court papers.

In fact, during closing arguments, Fox asked the judge to recall Coppedge's demeanor on the witness stand. He repeatedly wandered off topic to discuss intelligent design.

ashley.powers@latimes.com

Pair of studies may offer clarity on mammograms

Pair of studies may offer clarity on mammograms

After several years of upheaval over the best way to conduct breast cancer screening, researchers are working to find clarity over when women should begin getting mammograms, how often and at what cost. A pair of new studies clears up some of the uncertainty by finding that women who have a mother or sister diagnosed with breast cancer, or those who have unusually dense breast tissue, should have their first test at age 40 and repeat the exam at least once every other year.

For these women, who face at least twice the average risk of developing breast cancer in their 40s, the benefits of routine screening between the ages of 40 and 49 outweigh the risk of false alarms and unnecessary work-ups that might otherwise put them at greater risk than doing nothing, researchers report in Tuesday's edition of Annals of Internal Medicine.

Of the various recommendations put forth by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force in 2 009, none generated more ire than the suggestion that annual mammograms could do more harm than good for most fortysomething women, who are far less likely than older women to get breast cancer. The task force advised women in their 40s to talk with their doctors and make individualized decisions about whether to get a mammogram every other year at most.

• Also
• Graphic: Breast cancer risk factors

The new research was designed to identify women who could benefit the most from having mammograms early and often.

In the process, the doctors and other experts who worked on the studies pushed a relatively new risk factor â€" breast density â€" to the forefront in the calculations a woman and her physician make as they decide how assiduously to check for breast cancer.

The two studies arrive at their conclusions through different means. One involved combining and analyzing data from 61 studies that have already been published. The other used computer models to predict the health outcomes of about 44,000 simulated women who had their first mammogram at 50. They then ran the same women through a simulation in which they began screening at 40 and compared the rates of false alarms, breast cancer diagnoses and mortality in both groups.

"The fog is clearing," said Dr. Diana Petitti, who worked on the 2009 Preventive Ser vices Task Force study. "Personalized breast screening recommendations are better."

The recommendations from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, an independent panel of health experts that advises the federal government, upended the long- and fiercely-held beliefs of most practitioners and breast cancer activists by suggesting that women older than 50 should have a mammogram every two years instead of annually, and that most women in their 40s should skip the test altogether. Until then, women over 40 were routinely advised to have a mammogram once a year.

The latest studies push further away from what many have since called "one size fits all" medicine and toward an approach more tailored to the individual patient and her risks. Dr. Otis Brawley, chief medical officer for the American Cancer Society, likened the effort to identify who can benefit most from mammogram screening to the type of "personalized medicine" that is used to identify patients who will benefit the most from intensive efforts to forestall heart disease.

Using assumptions that undergirded the controversial 2009 Preventive Services report, researchers found that among women 50 to 74, for every breast cancer death averted by screening, 146 women received a false-positive reading on a mammogram. In addition, for every year of life that a woman gained because her breast cancer had been detected early by mammogram, there were 8.3 false positives that led to unnecessary biopsies, weeks of worry and in some cases surgical complications.

Shifting their focus to simulated women between the ages of 40 and 49, the researchers found that the only ones who stood to benefit to a similar degree were those whose breast cancer risk was roughly double the norm for their age group.

The companion study fills out the picture by pinpointing ways to assess a woman's breast cancer risk in her 40s. For instance, the researchers showed that having a first-de gree relative â€" a mother or sister â€" with a breast cancer diagnosis more than doubles the woman's own risk of developing the disease. If she has two or more first-degree relatives with breast cancer, her risk goes up by nearly a factor of four.

The study also found that having breasts made up of substantially more glandular tissue rather than fat was enough to double a woman's breast cancer risk in her 40s. However, this also makes breast cancer harder to find on a mammogram, because cancerous tumors do not show up as readily against a backdrop of glandular tissue as they do against fat.

The researchers found that women who've had breast biopsies that turned out to be benign have an 80% greater risk of getting the disease in their 40s; women on oral contraceptives have a 30% increased risk; women who have never given birth have a 25% greater risk; and women who had their first child after age 30 have a 20% increased risk.

In an editorial a ccompanying the two studies, Brawley said the findings about dense breasts create "several conundrums," not least that their mammograms are difficult to interpret. If breast density becomes a factor that drives how often women should be screened, he wrote, future guidelines may include the recommendation that all women get a baseline mammogram at age 40.

Dr. Patricia Ganz, a breast cancer specialist at UCLA, said the studies would help in the development of "user-friendly ways that a primary-care physician can start that conversation" about a woman's breast cancer risk and what steps she can take to address it. Ganz said the findings underscored the central importance of taking a family history â€" and of updating it as a woman (and her mother and sisters) age.

But Ganz too said the key risk factor of breast density needed better definition if it was to be a helpful guidepost to women and their doctors. Radiologists, who review mammograms, and primary-care docto rs have no established standards or software that defines and grades breast density, she said, so sending all 40-year-old women to have their breast density assessed would be premature.

"It's not really ready for prime time," she said.

melissa.healy@latimes.com

Meteor hunters strike pay dirt

Meteor hunters strike pay dirt

COLOMA-LOTUS VALLEY, Calif â€" In the week since a fireball shot across the sky and exploded, scattering a rare type of meteorite over California's Gold Country, these hills have drawn a new rush of treasure seekers.

Once again there are lively saloons, fortune hunters jockeying for prime spots and astounding tales of luck â€" including that of Brenda Salveson, a local who found a valuable space rock while walking her dog Sheldon, named after the theoretical physicist on the TV show "The Big Bang Theory."

It started April 22, Earth Day, with a blazing streak across a morning sky and a sonic boom that the next day had the older women in the "Gentle Stretching to Beautiful Music" class at Sierra Ballet comparing notes on how hard their windows shook.

PHOTOS: Meteorite found in Coloma

Eight hundred miles away, while windows were still rattling, Robert Ward in Prescott, Ariz., was getting alerts. A 35-year-old professional meteorite hunter and dealer, he pays for tips and keeps a bag packed, ready to go anywhere in the world to chase a meteorite.

On Tuesday, after 16 hours of driving, he scanned a parking lot in Lotus in the pre-dawn not knowing what type of rock he was seeking. But when he spotted a dark space pebble, he immediately recognized it as carbonaceous chondrite, meteorites containing water and carbon â€" the type scientists long to study for insights into how life began on Earth and possibly in other places.

"I was trembling," Ward said. "It's the rarest of the rare. It's older than the sun. It holds the building blocks of life."

The rush was on. The meteorites are invaluable to science but on the open market can also fetch $1,000 a gram, or more for larger, pristine pieces.

In Vancouver, Canada, Paul Gessler, a part-time meteorite hunter, was readying for a halibut fishing tournament when he read about Ward's find on a hobbyists Twitter feed. He took his fishing rod back to the house and told his wife he was driving to California.

At the NASA Ames Research Center north of San Jose, Beverly Girten, deputy director in charge of the center's experiments on the International Space Station, announced she was going to Coloma. Her boss reminded her of a conference call about a $40-million budget. Girten said meteorites with organic compounds could prove more important to science.

In the Gold Rush town of Rescue (elevation and population both 1,400), Salveson, a wife and mother of two, read a local news article about the meteorites. The area scattered with them, about three miles wide and 10 miles long, included Henningsen Lotus Park, where she walks her dog every morning. She noted what to look for: a rock that seemed out of place â€" different from anything around it. It would be dark and delicate.

On Wednesday, near the end of her stroll with Sheldon, Salveson picked up a rock the size of a spool of thread that seemed to match the description.

She walked over to a group with metal detectors.

"I opened my hand and they all let out a collective gasp," she said.

The geologists, as they turned out to be, wrapped the 17-gram stone in foil and told Salveson to get it into a bank vault.

A few minutes before, a firefighter had stopped to search at the park on his way to work and found a 2-gram meteorite in less than 20 minutes. A dealer paid him $2,000 on the spot.

Before going to the bank, Salveson made one stop: Rescue Elementary School. She had her children â€" Linnea, 10, and Tommy, 6 â€" and their classmates put their hands behind their backs. She pulled back the foil just a little and told them to look at perhaps the oldest thing anyone has ever seen.

Girten believes that should any of those children grow up to take a college earth science class, they might study this meteorite. Until now, the most studied meteorite has been the Murchison, found after a witnessed shower in Australia in 1969. All indications are that the Sutter's Mill meteorite will replace it as the meteorite most known by name to anyone in science.

"We want to learn about this asteroid," said Peter Jenniskens, an astronomer and senior research scientist at the Carl Sagan Center at the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute and the NASA Lunar Science Institute. "This is scientific gold."

Bobby Brown didn't introduce Whitney Houston to drugs, he says

Bobby Brown didn't introduce Whitney Houston to drugs, he says

Who got Whitney Houston started using drugs? Bobby Brown says it wasn’t him, thank you very much.

Houston's drug use started "way before" he entered the picture, he told Matt Lauer in an interview that will air this week on the “Today” show.

"I didn't get high [on narcotics] before I met Whitney," Brown said. "I smoked weed, I drank the beer, but no, I wasn't the one that got Whitney on drugs at all."

He said that watching the reality show they did together in 2005, “Being Bobby Brown,” was enlightening.  “We was able to see that our drug use had affected our relationship, had affected the love that we felt for each other." The couple, who got together at the start of the '90s, split in 2006 and finalized their divorce in 2007.

Brown, who last week pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor DUI charge stemming from a daytime arrest in March, is "very much clean and sober from narcotics," he said. He reportedly gave up cocaine and heroin.

“I'm not the reason she's gone," he added, saying his guess was that it was one bad day with cocaine that killed her, not her body wearing out after years of using the drug.< /p>

"It had to be that one, because that's all it takes," Brown said. "One hit, you know ... it could definitely take your life away from you. And, unfortunately, that was it."

This from a guy who claims to have already died three times from drugs, though he was resuscitated each time, according an autobiography he self-published in 2008.

The interview is scheduled to air in two parts, Wednesday and Thursday on “Today.”

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Follow Christie D'Zurilla on Twitter and Google+. Follow the Ministry of Gossip @LATcelebs.

 

MTV's Dan Savage whacked by PTC for anti-Bible remarks

MTV's Dan Savage whacked by PTC for anti-Bible remarks

Dan Savage bashed the Bible â€" and now conservatives are declaring a holy war on the outspoken MTV host.

A longtime gay and anti-bullying activist who in early April premiered the sex-advice series "Savage U" on the cable network, Savage earlier this month spoke at the National High School Journalism Convention in Seattle. Many students applauded â€" but many others walked out â€" after he attacked those who defended anti-gay attitudes by citing biblical scripture.

"People often point out that they can't help it, they can't help with the anti-gay bullying, because it says right there in Leviticus, it says right there in Timothy, it says right there in Romans, that being gay is wrong," Savage told the crowd. He counseled the students to ignore biblical teachings on homosexuality and noted that defenders of slavery once used Scripture for similar purposes. He also ridiculed the students who walked out of the auditorium during his speech.

Over the last few days, the speech unleashed a torrent of invective from conservatives, who argued that an anti-bullying activist was now bullying Christians. On Monday, the the Parents Television Council â€" which relentlessly attacks networks for programs it deems overly sexual or otherwise unfit for families â€" weighed in, calling "Savage U" "a campaign to promote promiscuity on college campuses."

PTC even took its protest a step further, saying Savage's series illustrates why cable customers should be allowed to strip out objectionable programs and networks from their bundled monthly packages â€" a longtime pet issue for some conservative commentators who hope that such "cable choice" can erode Hollywood's power.

Savage has since apologized for some of the strong language he used during the speech, but says his intention all along was to attack hypocrisy rather than the Bible itself.

What do you think of Savage's views and the reaction to them?

RELATED:

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â€" Scott Collins (twitter.com/scottcollinsLAT)

Photo: Columnist Dan Savage has drawn ire for his remarks about the Bible earlier this month. Credit: Charles Sykes / Associated Press.

 

'RuPaul's Drag Race' hits the finish line with biggest finale yet

'RuPaul's Drag Race' hits the finish line with biggest finale yet

"RuPaul's Drag Race"is crossing its Season 4 finish line, honey, with the reality competition arguably at the height of its popularity.  

To close the show's splashiest and most twist-laden season yet, RuPaul's pack of drag queens reunited last week in North Hollywood, where a special live taping awaited along with the crowning of "America's next drag superstar."

The Ministry was on site for the taping (the finale airs Monday night on Logo), and Ru and his girls didn't disappoint. Even the "grande dame," as Ru called himself, was a bit overwhelmed at the scale of the event.

"In social media we get to see there's a lot of people into it, but the [finale] sent a message to another place in my consciousness," he said Friday. "To have this kind of success? After 30 years?"

It was a rare treat to see Ru live in full drag (the contestants were asked to wear black, and Ru showed in red, a page right out of Oprah Winfrey's book when she hoste d her 2006 Legends Ball with a similar dress code). 

"I haven't put on a dress unless it's for a television camera in 10 years," Ru told us. Meanwhile, the top three finalists â€" the polarizing Phi Phi O'Hara, decidedly alternative Sharon Needles and seasoned Chad Michaels â€" hustled several looks.

"We're a bunch of sex clowns, but last night was a culmination of this entire process. I really couldn't handle it," Needles told us the day after the taping, where [spoiler alert] she joins the opening number in a costume gown shaped like a beer mug.

"We were told to open wearing gold, and there's really only two ways to do it: lamé and sequins. Phi Phi is a tacky-ass drag queen, so I knew she'd do lamé. Chad is so glamorous, so I knew she'd do sequins."

All the better, as the top three likely needed a cold one. Season 4 diverged from the series' tradition of naming a winner at the end of the taped season â€" given the girls' fierce competition, R u upped the stakes by deciding to name the winner on the live finale.

Yet another twist came on the live stage, when Ru announced that all three contestants would be filmed accepting the crown, to preserve the integrity of Monday night's big reveal.

"That's because some stunt queens tried to ruin this last season!" RuPaul told the audience, referring to a leak that had outed drag queen Raja as the winner of Season 3.

Also new in Season 4: The winner snatches $100,000 in prize money, among other spoils. The girls have their respective plans for spending it, but according to their host, no one turns up a loser.

"For them to go through this machine is life changing. They get to see themselves for the first time the way other people see them. They all grow exponentially."

As does "Drag Race." Catch the finale at 9 p.m. Pacific on Logo. 

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Follow Matt Donnelly on Twitter @mattdonnelly.

Octomom Nadya Suleman files for personal bankruptcy

Octomom Nadya Suleman files for personal bankruptcy

"Octomom" Nadya Suleman filed for personal bankruptcy in Orange County Superior Court on Monday as her home in La Habra was set to go up for auction.

In court documents reviewed by the Orange County Register, Suleman said she had $50,000 in assets and up to $1 million in debts. "I have had to make some very difficult decisions this year, and filing Chapter 7 was one of them," Suleman said in a statement released to the paper by her spokeswoman. "But I have to do what is best for my children, and I need a fresh start."

Suleman and her 14 children could face eviction if the house is sold, which would compound her problems after recent allegations she had been neglecting her children while spending hundreds of dollars on herself for services such as Brazilian blowouts.

Officers from the La Habra Police Department accompanied social workers to Suleman's home last Tuesday after receiving a complaint, which said there was only one working toilet in the house and the children had to use portable training toilets in their bedrooms.

The complaint also said the children appeared to be malnourished and unclean, and Suleman locked them in their rooms while she attended to personal matters.

TV review: 'Jesse Owens' on fast-forward

TV review: 'Jesse Owens' on fast-forward

The Olympics are (almost) back, and it's a good time to sing again the ballad of Jesse Owens, the black American track star who put the lie to Adolf Hitler's master-race malarkey at the 1936 Summer Olympics by winning four gold medals. (It's never not a good time to sing that song, of course.) "Jesse Owens," premiering Tuesday on PBS SoCal as part of the series "American Experience," is the latest work to take up that inspiring tune.

Written by Stanley Nelson, directed by Laurens Grant ("Freedom Riders") and narrated by Andre Braugher, whose voice is always pleasing to hear, the hour-long film is necessarily a streamlined, simplified version of the life. Concentrating on Owens' Olympic adventure, with testimony from family, friends, teammates, spectators and scholars, it provides enough background and aftermath to give the story shape and movement, even as it suggests questions for further films to answer.

Owens, who once recalled the feeling that running could take you anywhere "on the strength of your feet and the courage of your lungs," was only one of 18 African American Olympians who traveled to Berlin in 1936, but he was already a star attraction. The year before at the Big Ten Conference Championships in Ann Arbor, Mich., in what is still regarded as one of the great days in sports history, he set three world records (including a long jump mark that stood for 25 years) and tied a fourth in the space of 45 minutes, all with an injured back.

His Olympic victories in the 100 meters, the 200, the long jump and the 400 relay (in which he and teammate Ralph Metcalfe were sudden substitutions for two Jewish runners) make him a kind of war hero, retrospectively. But if Hitler was less than pleased, the largely German crowd chanted his name and Luz Long, the German whom Owens beat in the long jump, took his arm to walk the stadium.

But Owens' decision to leave a grueling post-Olympics exhibition tour set him against autocratic U.S. Olympic Committee President Avery Brundage, who stripped him of his amateur standing, summarily ending his athletic career. His future races would be for show, against racehorses and the like. "It's just like saving somebody's life," offers Owens' Olympic teammate Louis Zamperini, "and then the next day that person slaps you in the face."

If there's a fault to this invigorating film, it's that it gives a clearer picture of the phenomenon than of the person; apart from the running and jumping, Owens comes across less as an actor in his life than as someone acted upon.

And as if the filmmakers' interest waxes and wanes with the nation's, his last 40 years are compressed almost into a coda, a familiar arc of hard times, including bankruptcy and tax problems, and eventual recognition and reward, as he becomes an international ambassador of goodwill and what one writer called a "professional good example."

robert.lloyd@latimes.com

E. Richard 'Rick' Brown dies at 70; pioneer in study of public health

E. Richard 'Rick' Brown dies at 70; pioneer in study of public health

E. Richard "Rick" Brown, the founding director of the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research who pioneered the collection and wide dissemination of health survey data to influence public policy and was a leading advocate for healthcare reform, has died. He was 70.

Brown, who lived in Santa Monica, died April 20 in a hospital in Lexington, Ky., where he suffered a stroke after moderating a panel at a conference on health communication, said his wife, Marianne Parker Brown.

A professor in the Department of Health Services at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, Brown founded the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research in 1994.

One of the center's major activities has been the development of the California Health Interview Survey, the premier source of information about individual and household health status in California. It has served as a model for health surveys for other states.

Brown was the founder and principal investigator for the survey, which produced its first data from interviews with more than 55,000 California households in 2001. Information from the survey, which has been conducted every two years, has been used by policymakers, community advocates, researchers and others.

"The single thing that makes Rick stand out in this field is that he had an extraordinary capacity to use evidence about the public's health and strategize and advocate to turn that evidence into the best policy and action," said Dr. Linda Rosenstock, dean of the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health.

Former state Sen. Sheila Kuehl (D-Santa Monica), who chaired the state Senate Health Committee for two years, said Brown "cared deeply about those who were uninsured."

"The way he chose to address it is he thought if you just developed responsible and accurate health data, you could counter persistent myths about the uninsured and also connect the fact of being uninsured with harsh health consequences, such as a shorter life span and having more serious illnesses because you didn't test to be diagnosed early," Kuehl said.

Data provided by the California Health Interview Survey "was the first time we had that kind of information just on our residents in California," Kuehl said. "Before that, you got a lot of information, but it was aggregated nationally. We had little data to help us legislate in California."

The data developed by the center "became one of the important ways that we argued for universal healthcare," she said.

Gerald Kominski took over as director of the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research in January after Brown stepped down, but Brown remained principal investigator of the survey.

In 1990, Brown was co-author of California's first single-payer healthcare legislation. He also co-wrote several other healthcare reform bills over the last two decades.

A past president of the American Public Health Assn., he served on dozens of health advisory committee and boards.

He also was a full-time senior consultant to President Clinton's Task Force on National Health Care Reform and served as a senior health policy advisor for the Barack Obama for President Campaign â€" as well as serving as an advisor to U.S. Sens. Bob Kerrey, Paul Wellstone and Al Franken.

The son of eastern European immigrants, Brown was born Feb. 17, 1942, in Plainfield, N.J., and moved to the Los Angeles area at an early age.

His father was a union organizer and social justice activist and times were tough for the family, which lived for several months in a tent behind a family friend's restaurant. After his parents separated when he was 12, Brown and his brother were raised by their mother, a bookkeeper.

Brown's interest in studying public health and finding ways to improve health coverage for all had its roots in an early experience when his brother required medical care after running his bicycle into a tree.

"My mother always remembered the stigma she felt when the eligibility workers at the county hospital grilled her about her income and were very demeaning to her because she couldn't pay the medical bills," he recalled.

Brown received a bachelor's degree in sociology, a master's in education and a doctorate in sociology of education from UC Berkeley, where he taught for about five years in the 1970s.

In addition to his wife of 46 years, Brown is survived by his daughters, Delia Brown and Adrienne Faxio; his brother, Julian Horowitz; and a granddaughter.

dennis.mclellan@latimes.com

Police departments wait for FAA clearance to fly drones

Police departments wait for FAA clearance to fly drones

WASHINGTON â€" Police departments across the country have bought inexpensive small drone aircraft with cameras to help track drug dealers, find missing children and locate wandering Alzheimer's patients, but federal rules designed to protect the nation's airspace have kept them grounded.

That is about to change in a dramatic way.

Under a law President Obama signed in February, the Federal Aviation Administration must write rules by May 14 on how it will license police, fire department and other public safety agencies eager to fly lightweight drones at low altitudes.

The FAA also is supposed to develop plans by this year to integrate drones operated by individuals or corporations into U.S. airspace by 2015.

The bottom line: Thousands of remotely piloted aircraft of various shapes, sizes and speeds â€" at least some carrying high-resolution cameras and sophisticated sensors â€" may soon be buzzing overhead.

FAA officials have long worried that ground-based pilots of drone aircraft can't always see or avoid commercial and other aircraft. And civil liberties groups warn that Americans could face unprecedented surveillance from above in violation of privacy rights.

But members of Congress, backed by drone manufacturers, inserted language in the FAA reauthorization bill that requires the agency to move swiftly to license drones. The new rules are supposed to help determine who can fly a drone â€" and how high and far â€" without posing a threat.

Advocates say the unmanned planes could be deployed for uses as diverse as dusting crops, selling real estate, giving real-time traffic reports and helping with disaster relief. Some can stay aloft at a fraction of the cost of helicopters and manned aircraft.

Next month's set of FAA rules will apply only to police and other first-responder drones smaller than 4.4 pounds that are flown in daylight below 400 feet, and that stay within a pilot's line of sight. They resemble large model planes.

"We want [police] to be able to use the aircraft sooner because there is a public interest," said Ben Gielow, government relations manager for the Assn. for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, an industry organization that helped draft some of the language in the new law.

Critics say the FAA is moving too quickly to secure privacy and safety.

"I think it is a very quick timeline," said Jennifer Lynch, a lawyer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco-based advocacy group that has sued to compel the FAA to release more information about its plans.

"Rushing to push through applications to fly drones doesn't seem like a good idea," she said.

At least a dozen police departments have asked the FAA for permission to fly drones.

Police in Gadsden, Ala., used a $150,000 federal grant two years ago to buy a lightweight drone called a WASP III to help in drug investigations. But officers have yet to fly the drone, said Capt. Regina May, a department spokeswoman.

"We're going to be keeping an eye on what happens" on May 14, she said.

brian.bennett@latimes.com

Wayward dolphin lingers in Bolsa Chica wetlands

Wayward dolphin lingers in Bolsa Chica wetlands

Helicopters circled, crowds gathered to gawk and worry, and traffic snarled along Pacific Coast Highway as a disoriented dolphin circled in the shallow, murky waters of the Bolsa Chica wetlands Friday.

The 7-foot dolphin â€" nicknamed Fred by some of the spectators â€" apparently swam mistakenly into the wetlands with five companions earlier in the week. While the dolphin's pod mates returned to sea, the one called Fred stayed behind.

"They were probably chasing fish through the Huntington Harbour and lost their way," said Dean Gomersall, animal care supervisor with the Pacific Marine Mammal Center in Laguna Beach.

Gomersall said the dolphin looked healthy and could go days without eating, but appeared "very confused."

Rescuers waded into the water in hopes of slipping the dolphin into a harness and guiding it through an inlet and back out to sea. But the dolphin proved elusive. It swam in circles, chasing fish. Occasionally it splashed. And sometimes it nosed under the water and seemed to disappear.

More than 50 spectators lined the shores to watch the drama, some of them lured by chatter on social media. They snapped photos on their smartphones, set up tripods or just sat and watched.

At one point, traffic on Pacific Coast Highway in Huntington Beach slowed to a crawl as people craned to get a look and motorists angled their cars along the shoulder â€" at least until police arrived and began handing out citations.

After hours of rescue attempts, officials decided that all the commotion might be inducing anxiety in the animal, which seemed to be more lost than sick.

Kelly O'Reilly, a biologist for the California Department of Fish and Game, said the dolphin appeared "spooked" and seemed to deliberately swim to the opposite side of the small bay to get away from onlookers.

By midafternoon, rescuers decided it was best to leave the dolphin alone and hope it could find its way back to sea on its own â€" possibly during high tide.

"Trapping an animal even under perfect circumstances causes stress," said Paul Hamdorf of Fish and Game.

If the dolphin is still there Saturday, rescuers might try again to nudge it in the direction of the open sea.

Lori Graham, who lives nearby, said she came over to the bay with her daughter and sister when she heard a helicopter overhead. "I've seen seals but never a dolphin here," she said.

Heather Swett, another local and a self-described dolphin lover, was on her daily jog near the wetlands when she saw the crowd. "I feel bad," she said, standing on a bridge over the water. "I want to help somehow."

The dolphin found its way into the bay through a passage that runs under Warner Avenue, which deepens at high tide. The wetlands sit on the inland side of Pacific Coast Highway.

One of the spectators, Laurel Armor, 47, of Huntington Beach, said she has been a dolphin enthusiast since she took a marine mammals class in college. She felt bad for the dolphin. "We don't speak their language so it's probably a little harder to help them," she said.

Charlie Adams, who had been watching the drama since morning, pondered names for the dolphin and came up with Fred.

"I think Fred, or whatever his name is, has got a lot more room now that the tide is in," he said.

Daniel Gonzalez, 42, an amateur photographer, drove about 45 minutes from Huntington Park to see the mammal. He was inspired by the community's concern.

"It shows community support and community service for the environment," he said.

nicole.santacruz@latimes.com

esmeralda.bermudez@latimes.com

Los Angeles Times staff writers Michael Miller and Christopher Goffard contributed to this report.

Teens with diabetes have trouble managing it, study says

Teens with diabetes have trouble managing it, study says

New research sends a stark warning to overweight teens: If you develop diabetes, you'll have a very tough time controlling it.

A major study released Sunday tested several ways to manage blood sugar in teens newly diagnosed with diabetes and found that nearly half of the teens failed to control their blood sugar within a few years and that 1 in 5 suffered serious complications. The results spell trouble for a nation facing rising rates of "diabesity," Type 2 diabetes brought on by obesity.

The federally funded study is the largest look at how to treat diabetes in teens. Earlier studies have focused mostly on adults, and most diabetes drugs aren't even approved for youths. The message is clear: Prevention is everything.

"Don't get diabetes in the first place," saidDr. PhilZeitler of the University of Colorado, one of the study leaders.

A third of American children and teens are overweight or obese. They are at higher risk of developing Type 2 diabetes, in which the body can't make enough insulin or can't use what it does make to process sugar from food. Until the rise of the obesity epidemic, doctors rarely saw children with Type 2 diabetes. The more common kind of diabetes in children is Type 1, which used to be called juvenile diabetes.

Doctors usually start Type 2 treatment with metformin, a pill to lower blood sugar. If it still can't be controlled, other drugs and daily insulin shots may be needed. The longer blood sugar runs rampant, the greater the risk of vision loss, nerve damage, kidney failure, limb amputation, even heart attacks and strokes.

The goal of the study was simple: What's the best way for teens to keep diabetes in check?

The study involved 699 overweight and obese teens recently diagnosed with diabetes. All had their blood sugar normalized with metformin, then received one of three treatments to try to maintain that control: metformin alone, metformin plus diet and exercise counseling, or metformin plus a second drug, Avandia.

After nearly four years, half in the metformin group were not able to maintain blood sugar control. The odds were a little better for the group that took the two drugs but not much different for those in the lifestyle group.

Even so, Zeitler said, doctors would not recommend the combination drug therapy because Avandia has been linked to higher risk of heart attacks in adults. Those risks became known after this study began.

Another study leader from Children's Hospital Los Angeles, Dr. Mitchell Geffner, agreed that Avandia can't be recommended for teens, but said the study made clear they would need more than metformin to control their disease.

"A single pill or single approach is not going to get the job done," he said.

Among all the teens in the study, 1 in 5 had a serious complication such as very high blood sugar, usually landing them in the hospital.

The results were published online Sunday by the New England Journal of Medicine and presented at a pediatric meeting in Boston. The National Institutes of Health funded the study and drug companies donated the medications.

Summer Movie Sneaks

Summer Movie Sneaks

Photos, videos, news and more on this year's seasonal selections.

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Stagecoach 2012: Some highlights -- Miranda Lambert, Dave Alvin

Stagecoach 2012: Some highlights -- Miranda Lambert, Dave Alvin

-- Steve Martin the Steep Canyon Rangers: Proof once again that it never hurts to have a bona fide movie star in the house. The Mustang Stage, which has hosted most of the tradition-minded acts this weekend and typically has a few hundred people on hand, was jammed beyond overflowing with at least a couple thousand people looking in on Martin's appearance. The good news regarding his foray into a legit bluegrass career is that he's got the chops, both as a banjo player and as a songwriter, to back up his celebrity free pass onto the music circuit. And he may well be the most naturally adep t emcee on the planet.

-- J.D. Souther: After a hiatus of a couple decades, Souther returned to music in 2008, interested these days in a more jazz-inflected sound that brought some welcome musical variety to the Stagecoach mix. His sweet tenor is still gossamer-smooth, and he delivered "Heartache Tonight," one of many of his songs the Eagles took up the charts, in an elegant swing arrangement a la Van Morrison circa "Moondance," for which he got impeccable support from pianist Mason Embrey and bassist Alana Rocklin.

-- The Mavericks: The boundary-bending band’s reunion performance was as effervescent as fans of its ‘90s incarnation might have hoped. With plenty of support from five touring members along with the core quartet, singer Raul Malo once again demonstrated his remarkably evocative voice as the band coursed seamlessly through Bakersfield twang, Texas honky-tonk, Austin Tex-Mex and pan-Latin dance textures.

-- Blake Shelton: The lanky singer now best known as a judge on "The Voice" showed off his own pipes and bad-boy persona in an engaging Mane Stage set that preceded Lambert, his wife. He's not truly dangerous, just an engaging loose cannon in an overscripted world who connects with female fans at least in part because he doesn't shy away from public displays of affection, respect and just the right amount of fear for his bride.

-- Jason Aldean: The Macon, Ga., singer who topped the opening-night bill on Friday rocks his country music hard, and he brought a sonic edge and party-ready attitude that flexed more muscle than, say, Kenny Chesney.

-- Sara Watkins: the Former Nickel Creek fiddler and singer out of San Diego was as winsome and charming as they come, infusing her endearingly homegrown bluegrass-folk blend with both youthful spunk and sophisticated musicality.

-- The Jayhawks: The veteran Americana outfit stressed its debt to California sources early in its set Saturday, touching on scintillating Buffalo Springfield/Poco-like vocal harmonies and often surprising chord progressions along with the occasional Grateful Dead-style solo excursion.

-- Brett Eldredge: The relative newcomer from Illinois relied too heavily on name-checking other performers' hits during his early slot in the midday sun Friday. But in a couple of songs, such as his touching Alzheimer's-themed single "Raymond," he channeled a hint of the Midwestern soul that is the hallmark of John Hiatt's music.

-- Sunny Sweeney: The Texas singer-songwriter lived up to her name temperamentally and meteorologically on a bright Saturday afternoon in the desert. Playing the Mane stage, she displayed a kinship with Miranda Lambert’s brashness in her single “If I Could,” a breakneck double shuffle, and the confessional “Amy," and a deliciously catty new sequel she followed it with, “You Don't Know Your Husband Like I Do.”

-- Old Man Markley: This San Fernando Valley-based group applied the brash attitude and visceral energy â€" sans the anger â€" of punk rock to old-timey music bashed out on banjo, autoharp, washtub bass and washboard.

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PHOTOS: The scene at Stagecoach 2012

Stagecoach 2012: Backstage with Jason Aldean

Stagecoach 2012: Steve Martin goes whole hog in Indio

--Randy Lewis

Photos, from top: At the Stagecoach Country Music Festival, Miranda Lambert (Credit: Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times), Steve Martin (Karl Walter / Getty Images for Stagecoach) and Blake Shelton (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times).

'Una Noche' director supports defecting Cuban actors

'Una Noche' director supports defecting Cuban actors

NEW YORK -- Two Cuban actors who went missing in Miami 10 days ago en route to the Tribeca Film Festival have surfaced, announcing that they are indeed defecting to the United States.

“Una Noche’s” Javier Nunez Florian and Anailín de la Rúa de la Torre, both 20, made an appearance this weekend on America TeVe,  a Miami Spanish-language station, saying that they were in good health and that they were seeking political asylum.

On Sunday morning in New York, a third Cuban actor in the film, Dariel Arrechada, and the picture's British director, Lucy Mulloy, said they were gratified to learn of the pair's safety. "We were just relieved that they were OK," Mulloy said. "I spoke to them on the phone and told them it was an important decision and I was going to support them in whatever they wanted to do [here]."

The pair, who are a couple and are staying with relatives of De la Torre’s in Miami, have hired a lawyer to help with their asylum claim. They have not said whether they'll continue to pursue acting careers in the U.S.

The two had gone missing from the Miami airport after arriving there on a layover to the New York festival with a producer and Arrechada.

Mulloy said that she and Arrechada had learned of the actors' emergence Friday shortly after the defectors went on television to make their announcement. Mulloy spoke with them from an unidentified Miami hotel and they seemed, the director said, "a little bit shaken."

Arrechada said he was still coping with the news. "It was strange to be here [at Tribeca] without them,  but I was really happy to talk to them," he said. "It seemed like they had made the decision really easily, and that surprised me a little."

He added that he did not think about defecting himself. "I have family and a lot of friends at home. I love the Cuban culture, and the heat." He was set to return to Havana this week but was seeking to extend his New York stay by a few days.

Though athletes and actors have commonly defected from Cuba, the pair’s actions had particularly attracted interest because their film has them starring as a brother and sister who also seek to leave  the island, in the movie's case via a homemade raft.

Their situation became even more poignant Thursday night when the movie won three jury prizes, including a best actor kudo for Florian. The actor shared the honor with Arrechada, whose character in the film also seeks  to escape the island.

RELATED:

‘Una Noche,’ ‘War Witch’ win prizes at Tribeca Film Festival

Cuban stars of film screening at Tribeca fest may have defected

Tribeca 2012: 'Lola Versus' aims to be a different sort of romcom

-- Steven Zeitchik

Photo: Javier Nunez Florian and Anailín de la Rúa de la Torre are seen in the film "Una Noche." Credit: Trevor Forest and Shlomo Godder/2012 Tribeca Film Festival

'Think Like a Man' still on moviegoers' minds

'Think Like a Man' still on moviegoers' minds

Four new films hit theaters this past weekend, but moviegoers still had"Think Like a Man"on their minds.

In a surprise win, the ensemble relationship comedy topped the box office for the second consecutive weekend, collecting $18 million and bringing its 10-day domestic total to $60.9 million, according to an estimate from distributor Sony Pictures. Based on a relationship book by comedian Steve Harvey, the movie has a predominantly African American cast and has already outgrossed a number of successful movies aimed at black audiences, including all but two of Tyler Perry's films.

Another holdover, the Zac Efron tear-jerker"The Lucky One," also had a solid second weekend in theaters, grossing $11.3 million. Driven largely by the strength of ticket sales in such cities as Atlanta, Charlotte and Cincinnati, the Nicholas Sparks adaptation has now reached about $40 million worth of receipts

Heading into the weekend, the Judd Apatow-produced romantic comedy"The Five-Year Engagement" was expected to be No. 1. Instead, the movie debuted with a disappointing $11.2 million â€" far below industry projections of $18 million or more and less than even Universal Pictures' modest $13-million prediction.

Three other debuts also failed to make serious dents at the box office. "The Pirates! Band of Misfits,"a 3-D stop-motion animated picture, started with a slightly better $11.4 million â€" though it cost about $30 million more to produce than "Engagement." The Jason Statham action flick "Safe," meanwhile, grossed an unimpressive $7.7 million, roughly as much as the lackluster $7.3 million that the John Cusack horror film"The Raven" opened with.

As a result of the weak performance of the new films, ticket sales were down 30% compared with the same three-day period last year, when"Fast Five"debuted with a massive $86.2 m illion.

"Engagement" marks one of the worst openings for writer-director Nicholas Stoller and actor Jason Segel, who teamed to pen the relationship comedy. The pair have successfully collaborated on projects such as 2008's"Forgetting Sarah Marshall" and last year's solid hit"The Muppets."

Outside of March's"Jeff, Who Lives at Home"â€" a low-budget film that never played in more than 500 theaters â€" Segel has proven to be a reliable box-office draw in recent years. The 32-year-old actor is best known for playing overgrown man-children in movies such as "Sarah Marshall" and 2009's"I Love You, Man"and was a main reason moviegoers said they showed up to see "Engagement" this weekend.

However, moviegoers â€" like critics â€" were ultimately not enamored with the picture, assigning it an average grade of B-, according to market research firm CinemaScore. Not surprisingly, the film appealed to a 64% female audience â€" but the crowd was a bit older than is typ ical for an Apatow film, because 57% were older than 30. The movie, also starring Emily Blunt, follows a couple whose engagement is derailed for half a decade because of career ambitions. Universal and Relativity Media spent about $30 million to make the film.

"It's not quite death, because the movie was made for a reasonable price and it has potential to do well through television and home video deals, "said Nikki Rocco, Universal's president of distribution.

"The Pirates! Band of Misfits" is the latest production from England's Aardman Animations that has failed to resonate in a major way with American audiences. Known for creating "Wallace and Gromit" and "Chicken Run," Aardman's most recent production, last winter's"Arthur Christmas,"grossed only $46 million domestically, though it raked in $100 million abroad. "Pirates" should follow that same trajectory, because it has already collected $63.7 million from 49 foreign countries.

"I think this movie will probably take a little bit longer to permeate here than overseas," said Rory Bruer, Sony's distribution president. "In Europe, there's no doubt about it that the Aardman brand is at the top of its game â€" their movies really resound in a big way there."

In the United States and Canada this weekend, the movie attracted a 76% family audience, who gave the well-reviewed film an average grade of B. The movie, featuring the voice of Hugh Grant as a pirate trying to become buccaneer of the year, had a budget of about $55 million. 

"Safe," which stars Statham as a former cop on a mission to save a girl from international gangs, appealed mostly to older men this past weekend. Its opening was a bit lower than that of the typical Statham film: Last year, the action star's"Killer Elite"started with $9 million, while"The Mechanic"debuted with $11 million. Audiences who saw his most recent film graded it a tad higher than any of the weekend's other new releases, giving i t a B+ CinemaScore.

Lionsgate, releasing the film in the United States and Canada on behalf of film finance company IM Global, paid for only the film's prints and advertising costs.

"The Raven" received the most dismal critical reviews of any film hitting theaters this past weekend â€" earning a paltry 22% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Moviegoers â€" 59% of whom were 25 and older â€" were kinder, giving the film an average grade of B.

The movie stars Cusack as 19th century author Edgar Allen Poe, who ends up having to face reenactments of the scary stories he penned. The film was made for $26 million by production and financing company Intrepid Pictures but was later acquired by Relativity for about $4 million.

In limited debut, the dark comedy "Bernie"scored the best per-theater average of the year for a specialty release. The film, directed by Richard Linklater and starring Jack Black as an undertaker who commits a crime but remains popular in his Texas community, grossed $90,438 over the weekend. Playing in three theaters, that amounted to a strong location average of $30,146. The movie, being released by Millennium Entertainment, debuted at the Los Angeles Film Festival last June and has since earned largely positive critical reviews.

amy.kaufman@latimes.com

Stagecoach succeeds by promoting from within

Stagecoach succeeds by promoting from within

INDIO â€" The Stagecoach Country Music Festival moved into its seventh edition this weekend, and even though that's young by festival standards, Stagecoach has become enough of a cultural force that participants and fans are beginning to use it as a yardstick on their lives, like penciled growth marks scribbled on a family's kitchen wall.

Acts that once were low in the ranks have sprouted up to the top of the heap, some elder members of the musical family have passed on, a few estranged relatives have returned to the fold, and new blood is welcomed into the mix with each succeeding year.

Jason Aldean and Miranda Lambert, the respective headliners of the Friday and Saturday bills, both remarked from the stage on the upward shift in their careers since they played earlier editions of Stagecoach. By comparison, Brad Paisley, who put out his first album in 1999, practically represented the old guard in making his second headl ining Stagecoach appearance Sunday.

"I can't believe I'm playing last tonight," Lambert said Saturday as she gazed across a sold-out crowd on the second of Stagecoach's three nights. "This is crazy!" In a first for the event, 55,000 three-day-weekend passes sold out months in advance.

Likewise, Aldean was just another name on the undercard when he played the first Stagecoach festival in 2006, well before he had scored the biggest-selling country album of the year â€" a feat he achieved in 2011 with his fourth album, "My Kinda Party," which has elevated him to top-dog status as he now regularly sells out arenas and amphitheaters around the country.

"To come back here a few years later and go from opener to headliner of the show is pretty cool, especially the first night when you know everybody's excited to get it going," said Aldean, 35, stretching out in the back of a tour bus parked next to the Mane Stage a couple of hours before he was to go on Friday nig ht.

Humility and congeniality largely ruled the weekend.

"It's such an honor to be here," Sheryl Crow said in her set Sunday evening that preceded Paisley's festival-closing appearance, which took place after press deadline. "I've got a lot of nerve following Martina McBride."

Crow's set unleashed the weekend's biggest impromptu group line dance session drawing in a couple of hundred fans near the stage.

Like a responsible and loving newly emergent matriarch, Lambert on Saturday shared the spotlight with others, giving portions of her set over to her other group, the wonderfully catty Pistol Annies, and she was joined by "The Voice's" recently eliminated 17-year-old country upstart RaeLynn on one number.

Blake Shelton, playing immediately ahead of bride Lambert, capitalized on his newfound fame from his role on NBC's "The Voice" and longtime onstage persona as a bad boy of country. He's a delightful loose cannon in an over-scripted world who's n ot truly threatening, and country fans love that he publicly displays not only his love but also his respect â€" and just the right amount of fear â€" for the Pistol he married last year.

Elsewhere across the grounds of the Empire Polo Club, a crop of up-and-comers took the spots that Aldean and Lambert once held on their way up.

Texas singer and songwriter Sunny Sweeney lived up to her name temperamentally and meteorologically in her Mane Stage set in the bright desert sun on Saturday afternoon, drawing on a small handful of initial hits that have helped her establish a foothold in the country community, a day after rising Illinois singer Brett Eldredge showed off dollops of Midwestern soul at times reminiscent of John Hiatt.

Two reunions brought cult-favorite bands â€" the Mavericks and the Unforgiven â€" back to life, the Mavericks using their time on stage Saturday not just to revisit the past but to bring up the curtain on a career phase by including a handful of songs from an album slated to arrive in September.

The boundary-bending Mavericks' reunion performance was as effervescent as fans of its '90s incarnation might have hoped. With plenty of support from five touring members along with the core quartet, singer Raul Malo once again demonstrated his remarkably evocative voice as the band coursed seamlessly through Bakersfield twang, Texas honky-tonk, Austin Tex-Mex and pan-Latin dance textures.

Country stalwarts from the '70s and '80s including Alabama and Kenny Rogers reconnected with old fans and stood in front of others who hadn't even been born when they were regularly visiting the top of the country charts.

Alabama deserves credit, or blame, for popularizing the trend in country to proclaim one's country cred in song after song more concerned with where life happened than what happened or why.

On the other hand, you'd be hard-pressed this past weekend, or any weekend for that matter, to he ar songs that reach deeper or ring truer than Dave Alvin's portraits of people who often struggle without earthly reward to show for their efforts. Whether on his old Blasters/X classic "Fourth of July" or a more recent song such as "Black Rose of Texas," Alvin unfailingly hits dead center of the human heart.

That contrast is representative of Stagecoach's all-embracing inclusivity of commercial and alternative strains of country, as elucidated by Lambert in one of her newest songs, "All Kinds of Kinds," which celebrates the expansiveness of human experience.

Such we-are-family gatherings also can offer support for new ventures, and that's what Aaron Lewis got for his new foray into country â€" independent of his ongoing role fronting hard-rock group Staind.

Among the freshest faces this year, the San Fernando Valley-based group Old Man Markley applied the brash attitude and visceral energy â€" sans the anger â€" of punk rock to old-timey music bashed out o n banjo, autoharp, washtub bass and washboard.

Sara Watkins, the former singer and fiddler from the avant-bluegrass trio Nickel Creek, which played Stagecoach five years ago, has since moved out on her own and was as winsome and charming in her solo setting as they come, infusing her endearingly homegrown bluegrass-folk with both youthful spunk and sophisticated musicality.

Mountain music patriarch Ralph Stanley was back for the third time with his Clinch Mountain Boys â€" reassuring in his ongoing presence, especially so recently on the heels of the passing of his contemporary and fellow banjo legend Earl Scruggs, who died last month at 84. Stanley, however, has bequeathed the instrumental tasks to a younger-generation member of his band, Mitchell Vandyke. "At 85," he explained on his tour bus shortly after arriving on Saturday, "the body doesn't always want to do what it used to do." But his voice, that hauntingly craggy mixture of gravel and sand, remained a m arvel when applied to the timeless gospel and gothic country-folks songs he's been singing for more than six decades.

At another end of the spectrum, recent-vintage heartthrob Luke Bryan, fresh out of the gate with his debut album when he first played Stagecoach in 2008, moved up the bill and may well be headlining himself in another couple of years if he keeps churning out hits the way he has with his first three albums. He made female fans swoon and male audience members pump their fists in solidarity with his mix of hyper-romantic ballads ("Do I") and wryly humor-filled party tunes ("All My Friends Say").

The Minnesota-bred alt-country Jayhawks highlighted their debt to California sources on Saturday, touching on scintillating Buffalo Springfield/Poco-like vocal harmonies and often surprising chord progression along with periodic Grateful Dead-style solo excursions among the players.

Singer-songwriter J.D. Souther, an architect of the '70s Southern Calif ornia country-rock sound that has become the template for much of what has been coming out of Nashville for the last two decades, brought his recent vintage jazz-inflected sound into the mix on Saturday, adding welcome musical variety to the stylistic mix. Before singing one of his Eagles-associated hits, "Best of My Love," Souther told the crowd: "This is my oldest song â€" it's so old my nieces think it's a folk song."

That's just the way things go in a family.

randy.lewis@latimes.com