Bell jurors ordered to begin anew after panelist is dismissed

After nearly five days of deliberations, jurors in the Bell corruption trial were ordered Thursday to begin anew after a member of the panel was dismissed for misconduct and replaced by an alternate.

The original juror, a white-haired woman identified only as Juror No. 3, told Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Kathleen Kennedy she had gone onto a legal website to look up jury instructions and then asked her daughter to help find a definition for the word "coercion."

Although all but one defense attorney requested that the woman stay, Kennedy said the juror needed to be removed. "She has spoken about the deliberations with her daughter, she has conducted research on the Internet, and I've repeatedly, repeatedly throughout this trial — probably hundreds of times — cautioned the jury not to do that," the judge said.

The removal came after jurors notified the judge that they were deadlocked and that continued deliberations seemed fruitless.

It was unclear how to interpret the day's events, whether the dismissed juror had been a lone holdout or an indication of a fractured jury.

The juror started to tell the judge which way she was leaning in the case, saying she had gone online "looking to see at what point can I get the harassment to stop.... How long do I have to stay in there and deliberate with them when I have made my decision that I didn't think there was —"

Kennedy cut her off before she could finish.

The woman clasped her hands over her mouth and said, "I'm sorry."

Two defense attorneys thought she was leaning toward acquittal and wanted her to stay. "I would have preferred the deadlock to a guilty verdict," said Alex Kessel, the attorney for George Mirabal, one of six former council members charged with misappropriation of public funds.

The council members are charged with inflating their salaries in what prosecutors contend was a far-reaching web of corruption in which fat paychecks were placed ahead of the needs of the city's largely immigrant, working-poor constituents.

When attorneys and defendants were summoned to the courtroom Thursday morning, they were initially told that the jury appeared to be deadlocked.

"Your honor, we have reached a point where as a jury we have fundamental disagreements and cannot reach a unanimous verdict in this case," read a note signed by two jurors, including the foreman, that was given to Kennedy.

A note from another juror alerted the judge that Juror No. 3 had consulted an outside attorney. That did not appear to be the case, but her other actions were revealed under questioning from the judge.

The same juror made a tearful request Monday to be removed from the panel because she felt others were picking on her. Kennedy told the woman that although discussions can get heated, it was important to continue deliberating.

On Thursday, however, the juror again broke into tears and said she had spoken with her daughter about "the abuse I have suffered." She said her daughter told her, "Mom, they're trying to find the weak link."

The woman said she had turned to the Internet to better understand the rules about jury deliberations and came across the word "coercion." After her daughter helped her look up the word's definition, she wrote it down on a piece of paper and brought it with her to court. When the judge asked to see the paper she went into the jury room to retrieve it.

The woman later left the courtroom in tears.

With an alternate in place, Kennedy told the panel to act as if the earlier deliberations had not taken place. The alternate had sat in the jury box during the four-week trial but did not take part in deliberations.

Former council members Luis Artiga, Victor Bello, George Cole, Oscar Hernandez, Teresa Jacobo and Mirabal are accused of drawing annual salaries of as much as $100,000 a year by serving on boards that did little work and seldom met, part of a scandal that drew national attention to the small city in 2010.

Prosecutors said that Bell's charter follows state law regarding council members' compensation. In a city the size of Bell, council members should be paid no more than $8,076 a year.

The trial began in late January, and the case went to the jury last Friday.

As the jury resumed deliberations in downtown Los Angeles, the verdict was clearly in on the streets of Bell.

One resident unfurled old protest banners and signs from the days when the pay scandal was first exposed and then called former members of an activist group that had led the charge for reform in the city.

"We're holding our breaths and waiting," Denise Rodarte, a member of the grassroots group Bell Assn. to Stop the Abuse, said in regard to a verdict.

"It's cut and dry: Local elected officials were supposed to make a certain amount of money, and they made a lot more."

corina.knoll@latimes.com

jeff.gottlieb@latimes.com

Times staff writer Ruben Vives contributed to this report.

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'Switched at Birth' goes silent to make a point

LOS ANGELES (AP) — "Until hearing people walk a day in our shoes, they will never understand," says a guidance counselor at a high school for deaf students in "Switched at Birth."

Such insights are a staple of the ABC Family drama, a TV rarity that puts deaf characters, played by deaf or hard-of-hearing actors, at the center of the action.

But Monday's episode takes it a bold step further: Save for a few spoken words at the beginning and the end, it is silent. The actors' hands do the talking with American Sign Language, even rapping together in one gleeful sequence.

Subtitles, which are typically sprinkled throughout "Switched at Birth" episodes, keep the viewer clued in. But when a deaf character is confused because she can't hear something vital, the audience is too. It's powerfully disconcerting.

The cast, including Oscar-winner Marlee Matlin as the school counselor, are excited about what they see as a grand experiment and eager for viewer reaction.

"This is an opportunity for the hearing person to watch at home and try to experience it," said Katie Leclerc, who stars as deaf teenager Daphne Vasquez. "It's not exactly the same, but maybe you can try to imagine what your everyday life would be like."

"It's a risk," added Leclerc, who has an inner ear disorder, Meniere's disease, that can cause hearing loss and vertigo.

"A big risk," Matlin said through a sign language-interpreter. "But it's going to be an eye-opener. I'm very proud to be part of this risk-taking, history-making episode."

Matlin knows about making history. She was the first — and remains the only — deaf person to receive an Academy Award acting trophy, honored as best actress for 1986's "Children of a Lesser God."

The "Switched at Birth" episode pivots on another key moment for the deaf community: A 1988 student protest at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., that ended the unbroken succession of hearing presidents at the school for the deaf.

For fictional Carlton High School (inspired by real-life LA school, Marlton), more is at stake: The school faces closure because of funding cuts, which means its students will be "mainstreamed" with hearing teens.

(It mirrors a real-life trend caused by budget constraints, Leclerc said. There's also an increasing number of children being given cochlear implants to counter hearing loss, itself a controversial issue, according to series creator and executive producer Lizzy Weiss.)

The prospect is dreaded by the Carlton students, either because they've felt the sting of being an outsider or because they treasure being part of a deaf-oriented school.

"Deaf people feel that moving into the mainstream chips away at their community, which is about language and culture," said Jack Jason, Matlin's longtime interpreter and the series' on-set arbiter for correct sign-language use.

With Daphne as the driving force and invoking Gallaudet, students mobilize to take over the administration building and demand Carlton's survival. The conflict's ending will wait for the March 11 season finale.

The uprising panics parents and puts relationships at risk, including that of Daphne and Bay Kennish (Vanessa Marano), the switched-at-birth characters of the title who have come together as teenagers from two very different households.

"We started in the pilot with just one scene that was pure ASL," involving Daphne and Emmett (Sean Berdy), said Weiss. As the series developed, she and her writing team began pondering the "what-if" of an all-sign language episode for the second season.

Then ABC Family approached her with the same idea, and the challenge was on to find a logical and engaging way to realize the ASL-only goal and a big enough story to make the most of it.

Last year, a "CSI: NY" episode took a stab at a nearly silent episode, using music by Green Day for most of its storytelling before reverting to dialogue in the final act.

The solution for "Switched at Birth" was to make sure every scene included a deaf character: "The truth is, when you're around people who are deaf, it's considered rude not to sign if you know how," Weiss said.

To avoid overloading viewers with subtitles the story was designed to be highly visual, including scenes of the student protest complete with picket signs and a defiant "Take Back Carlton" banner unfurled from the occupied school building.

Although some moments depict the pitfalls of being a deaf person in a hearing world, Weiss said, that's balanced by positive aspects.

"If you have been anything that's in the minority — gay, Jewish, a woman, anything — you have some piece of your identity that brings with it a lot of baggage and hardship, but also a lot of pride," Weiss said. "That's what we're trying to connect with."

The episode also highlights the beauty of ASL and its "coolness," such as being able to sign across a crowded theater and have an essentially private conversation, she said.

As with a silent movie — last year's Oscar-winning "The Artist" the latest case in point — "Switched at Birth" includes music intended to reflect the characters' internal lives. A viewer could add to the silence by muting it, but Weiss said that misses the point.

The episode "is not about silence, or 'absence of' sound. It's about language and culture and seeing the world from the point of view of a deaf person, and our perspective is that deaf people's inner lives are not silent," she said.

Matlin, whose counselor is a recurring character on "Switched at Birth," said the episode is an emotional and professional high point for her, one she would like to see exceeded.

"I never thought in my life I would see this happen. But I want to go further in terms of using deaf actors. ... I want (Steven) Spielberg to say, 'Hey, we want to use deaf actors.' Why not? And, hey, let's have the same respect for actors who are deaf as for those who are hearing.

"I don't know if we'll ever get there, but never say never," Matlin said.

___

Online:

http://www.abcfamily.go.com

___

Lynn Elber is a national television columnist for The Associated Press. She can be reached at lelber(at)ap.org and on Twitter (at)lynnelber.

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Think Like a Doctor: The Man Who Wobbled

The Challenge: Can you solve the medical mystery of a man who suddenly becomes too dizzy to walk?

Every month, the Diagnosis column of The New York Times Magazine asks Well readers to try their hand at solving a medical mystery. Below you will find the story of a 56-year-old factory worker with dizziness and panic attacks. I have provided records from his two hospital visits that will give you all the information available to the doctor who finally made the diagnosis.

The first reader to offer the correct diagnosis gets a signed copy of my book, “Every Patient Tells a Story,” and the satisfaction of solving a case that stumped a roomful of specialists.

The Patient’s Story:

The middle-aged man clicked his way through the multiple reruns of late-late-night television. He should have been in bed hours ago, but lately he hadn’t been able to get to sleep. Suddenly his legs took on a life of their own. Stretched out halfway to the center of the room, they began to shake and twitch and jump around. The man watched helplessly as his legs disobeyed his mental orders to stop moving. He had no control over them. He felt nauseous, sweaty and out of breath, as if he had been running some kind of race. He called out to his wife. She hurried out of bed, took one look at him and called 911.

The Patient’s History:

By the time the man arrived at Huntsville Hospital, in Alabama, the twitching in his legs had subsided and his breathing had returned to normal. Still, he had been discharged from that same hospital for similar symptoms just two weeks earlier. They hadn’t figured out what was going on then, so they weren’t going to send him home now.

The patient considered himself pretty healthy, but the past year or so had been tough. In 2011, at the age of 54, he had had a mild stroke. He had no medical problems that put him at risk for stroke — no high blood pressure, no high cholesterol, no diabetes. A work-up at that time showed that he had a hole in his heart that allowed a tiny clot from somewhere in his body to travel to the brain and cause the stroke. He was discharged on a couple of blood thinners to keep his blood from making more clots. He hadn’t really felt completely well, though, ever since. His balance seemed a little off, and he was subject to these weird panic attacks, in which his heart would pound and he would feel short of breath whenever he got too stressed. Mostly he could manage them by just walking away and focusing on his breathing. Still, he never felt as if he was the kind of guy to panic.

And he had always been quick on his feet. The first half of his career he had been in the steel business — building huge metal trusses and supports. He and his team put together 60-plus tons of steel structures every day. For the past decade he had been machining car parts. After his stroke, work seemed to get a lot harder.

The Dizziness:

A few weeks ago, he stood up and wham — suddenly the whole world went off-kilter. He felt as if he was constantly about to fall over in a world that no longer lay down flat. His first thought was that he was having another stroke. He went straight to his doctor’s office. The doctor wasn’t sure what was going on and sent him to that same emergency room at Huntsville Hospital. After three days of testing and being evaluated by lots of specialists, his doctors still were not sure what was going on. He hadn’t had a heart attack; he hadn’t had a stroke. There was no sign of infection. All the tests they could think of were normal.

The only abnormal finding was that when he stood up, his blood pressure dropped. Why this happened wasn’t clear, but the doctors in the hospital gave him compression stockings and a pill — both could help keep his blood pressure in the normal range. Then they sent him home. He was also started on an antidepressant to help with the panic attacks he continued to have from time to time.

You can read the report from that hospital admission below.

You can also read the consultation and discharge notes from that hospital visit here.

He had been home for nearly two weeks and still he felt no better. He tried to go back to work after a week or so at home, but after driving for less than five miles, he felt he had to turn around. He wasn’t sure what was wrong; he just knew he didn’t feel right. Then his legs started jumping around, and he ended up back in the hospital.

The Doctor’s Exam:

It was nearly dawn by the time Dr. Jeremy Thompson, the first-year resident on duty that night, saw the patient. Awake but tired, the patient told his story one more time. He had been at home, watching TV, when his legs started jumping on their own and he started feeling short of breath. His wife sat at the bedside. She looked just as worried and exhausted as he did. She told the resident that when he spoke that night at home, his speech was slurred. And when the ambulance came, he could barely walk. He has never missed this much work, she told the young doctor. It’s not like him. Can’t you figure out what’s wrong?

The resident had already reviewed the records from the patient’s previous hospital admissions. He asked a few more questions: the patient had never smoked and rarely drank; his father died at age 80; his mother was still alive and well. The patient exam was normal, as were the studies done in the E.R.

The first E.R. doctor thought that his symptoms were a result of anxiety, culminating in a full-blown panic attack. The resident thought that was probably right. In any case he would discuss the case with the attending in a couple of hours during rounds on the new patients. Till then, he told the worried couple, they should just try to get a little sleep.

An Important Clue:

Dr. Robert Centor was definitely a morning person. His cheerful enthusiasm about teaching and taking care of patients made him a favorite among residents. At 7:30 that morning, he stood outside the patient’s door as Dr. Thompson relayed the somewhat frustrating case of the middle-aged man with worsening dizziness and panic attacks. Then they went into the room to meet the patient. He was a big guy, tall and muscular with the first signs of middle-aged thickening around his middle. His complexion had the look of someone who spent a lot of time outdoors. Dr. Centor introduced himself and pulled up a chair as the rest of the team watched. He asked the patient what brought him to the hospital.

“Every time I get up, I get dizzy,” the man replied. Sure, he had had some balance problems ever since his stroke, he explained, but this felt different – somehow worse. He could hardly walk, he told the doctor. He just felt too unstable.

“Can you get up and show us how you walk?” Dr. Centor asked.

“Don’t let me fall,” the patient responded. He carefully swung his legs over the side of the bed. The resident and intern stood on either side as he slowly rose. He stood with his feet far apart. When asked to close his eyes as he stood there, he wobbled and nearly fell over. When he took a few steps, his heel and toes hit the ground at the same time, making a strange slapping sound.

Seeing that, Dr. Centor knew where the problem lay and ordered a few tests to confirm his diagnosis.

You can see the review report and notes for the patient’s second hospital visit below.

Solving the Mystery:

What tests did Dr. Centor order? Do you know what is making this middle-aged man wobble? Enter your guesses below. I’ll post the answer tomorrow.

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Rules and Regulations: Post your questions and diagnosis in the Comments section below. The correct answer will appear tomorrow on Well. The winner will be contacted. Reader comments may also appear in a coming issue of The New York Times Magazine.

Friday March 1, 1:21 p.m. | Updated Thanks for all your responses! You can learn the correct diagnosis at “Think Like a Doctor: The Wobble Solved!”

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Stocks waver as incomes fall and budget cuts loom

The stock market turned mixed Friday, erasing an early loss, after a report showed a rise in manufacturing.

U.S. manufacturing expanded in February at the fastest pace since June 2011, helped by new orders and rising production. The Institute for Supply Management said its manufacturing index reached 54.2, up from January's reading of 53.1. Any reading above 50 signals growth.

The Dow Jones industrial average edged up 24 points to 14,078 at 12:13 p.m. It was down as much as 117 points in early trading and was wavering between small gains and losses around midday.

The Standard & Poor's 500 index was up two points at 1,514. The Nasdaq composite rose one point to 3,161

The Dow nearly hit its record close of 14,164 Thursday afternoon, before sliding back in late trading, leaving the index lower for the day.

The stock market has surged in recent weeks even in the face of $85 billion automatic across-the-board spending cuts that start kicking in Friday in the absence of a deal to avert them. The cuts are part of a 10-year, $1.5 trillion deficit reduction plan that was designed to be so unpalatable to both Democrats and Republicans that they would be forced to drum up a longer-term budget deal.

President Barack Obama summoned the top congressional leadership to the White House for a meeting designed to give all sides a chance to stake out their positions, though there are no expectations of a breakthrough on Friday.

Any agreement between the White House and Congress on the spending cuts could drive the market up next week, regardless of whether investors consider it a good deal or not, said Stephen Carl, head equity trader at The Williams Capital Group in New York. It's the uncertainty that unsettles investors.

“The lack of clarity is the problem,” he said. “I think it will be a positive for the market just as long as there's concrete news.”

U.S. consumers increased spending modestly in January but cut back on major purchases, the Commerce Department said Friday. The report suggests that the expiration of tax cuts on Jan. 1 may have made consumers more cautious.

Consumer spending rose 0.2 percent in January compared with December. The gain was driven by an increase in spending on services, partly reflecting higher heating bills. Spending on durable goods, such as cars and appliances, fell 0.8 percent. Spending on non-durable goods, such as clothing, was essentially flat.

The government also reported that American incomes plunged in January at the fastest pace in two decades. American incomes fell 3.6 percent in January, the biggest drop since January 1993. That followed a solid 2.6 percent rise in December.

The Dow is up 7 percent this year and the S&P 500 index is up 6 percent.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury note, which moves inversely to its price, fell to 1.85 percent. That's down from 1.88 percent late Thursday.

Among other stocks making big moves:

— Gap jumped $1 to $33.92. The retailer said late Thursday that its quarterly profits jumped 61 percent, topping analysts' estimates, helped by better sales at its Old Navy stores. Gap also raised its quarterly dividend to 15 cents.

— Best Buy Co. rose 33 cents to $16.74 after the retailer said that its fourth-quarter loss narrowed as better sales in the U.S. helped offset weakness abroad, particularly China and Canada.

— Groupon rose 35 cents to $4.88 following news that CEO Andrew Mason was fired. The online deals company's stock plunged 24 percent Thursday after the company delivered a weak revenue forecast for the current quarter.

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Jury in Bell corruption trial may be deadlocked

A court spokeswoman said Thursday the jury in the Bell corruption case appears to be deadlocked.

“The jurors may be at an impasse,” said Patricia Kelly, a spokeswoman for L.A. County Superior Court.

Jurors sent a note to the judge Thursday morning, and all the attorneys in the case were called in.

Six former Bell City Council members are accused of stealing public money by paying themselves extraordinary salaries in one of Los Angeles County’s poorest cities.

Luis Artiga, Victor Bello, George Cole, Oscar Hernandez, Teresa Jacobo and George Mirabal are accused of misappropriation of public funds, felony counts that could bring prison terms.

They were arrested in September 2010 and have been free on bail.

The nearly $100,000 salaries drawn by most of the former elected officials are part of a much larger municipal corruption case in the southeast Los Angeles County city in which prosecutors allege that money from the city’s modest general fund flowed freely to top officials.

The three defendants who testified painted a picture of a city as a place led by a controlling, manipulative administrator who handed out enormous salaries, loaned city money and padded future pensions. Robert Rizzo, the former adminstrator, and ex-assistant city manager Angela Spaccia are also awaiting trial.

The four-week trial of the former council members turned on extremes.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Edward Miller said the council members were little more than common thieves who were consumed with fattening their paychecks at the expense of the city’s largely immigrant, working-poor residents.

Miller said the accused represented the “one-percenters" of Bell who had “apparently forgotten who they are and where they live."

Defense attorneys said the former city leaders -- one a pastor, another a mom-and-pop grocery store owner, another a funeral director -- were dedicated public servants who put in long hours and tirelessly responded to the needs of their constituents.

Jacobo testified that Rizzo informed her she could quit her job as a real estate agent and receive a full-time salary as a council member. She said she asked City Attorney Edward Lee if that was possible and he nodded his head.

"I thought I was doing a very good job to be able to earn that, yes," Jacobo said.

Cole said Rizzo was so intimidating that the former councilman voted for a 12% annual pay raise out of fear the city programs he established would be gutted by Rizzo in retaliation if he opposed the pay hikes.

The defense argued that the prosecution failed to prove criminal negligence -- that their clients knew what they were doing was wrong or that a reasonable person would know it was wrong.

The attorney for Hernandez, the city’s mayor at the time of the arrests, said his client had only a grade-school education, was known more for his heart than his intellect and was, perhaps, not overly “scholarly.”

Prosecutors argued that the council members pushed up their salaries by serving on city boards that rarely met and, in one case, existed only as a means for paying them even more money.

Jurors were also left to deal with the question of whether council members were protected by a City Charter that was approved in a special election that drew fewer than 400 voters.

Defense attorneys say the charter allowed council members to be paid for serving on the authorities.

But the prosecutor argued that the charter -- a quasi-constitution for a city -- set salaries at what councils in similar-sized cities were receiving under state law: $8,076 a year. Because council members automatically serve on boards and commissions, the district attorney said the total compensation for all of each council member's work was included in that figure.

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Donald Trump returns to the 'Apprentice' boardroom

NEW YORK (AP) — There is something Donald Trump says he doesn't know.

Trump has welcomed a reporter to his 26th-floor corner office in Trump Tower to talk about "All-Star Celebrity Apprentice." And here in person, this one-of-a-kind TV star, billionaire businessman, ubiquitous brand mogul and media maestro strikes a softer pose than he has typically practiced in his decades on public display.

Relaxed behind a broad desk whose mirror sheen is mostly hidden by stacks of paper that suggest work is actually done there, Trump is pleasant, even chummy, with a my-time-is-your-time easiness greeting his guest.

He even contradicts his status as a legendary know-it-all with this surprising admission: There's a corner of the universe he doesn't understand.

The ratings woes of NBC, which airs his show, are on Trump's mind at the moment, and as he hastens to voice confidence in the network's powers-that-be ("They will absolutely get it right"), he marvels at the mysteries of the entertainment world.

"If I buy a great piece of real estate and do the right building, I'm really gonna have a success," he says. "It may be MORE successful or LESS successful, but you can sort of predict how it's gonna do. But show business is like trial and error! It's amazing!"

He loves to recall the iffy prospects for "The Apprentice" when it debuted in January 2004. With show biz, he declares, "You NEVER know what's gonna happen."

Except, of course, when you do.

"I do have an instinct," he confides. "Oftentimes, I'll see shows go on and I'll say, 'That show will never make it,' and I'm always right. And I understand talent. Does anybody ask me? No. But if they did, I would be doing them a big service. I know what people want."

So maybe he does know it all. In any case, lots of people wanted "The Apprentice." In its first season, it averaged nearly 21 million viewers each week.

And it gave Trump a signature TV platform that clinched his image as corporate royalty. He presided in a mood-lit stagecraft boardroom where celebrity subjects addressed him as "Mr. Trump" and shrank at that dismissive flick of his wrist and dreaded catchphrase, "You're fired."

The two-hour premiere of "All-Star Celebrity Apprentice" (Sunday at 9 p.m. EST) starts by rallying its 14 veteran contenders in the even more evocative setting of the 2,000-year-old Egyptian Temple of Dendur at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

There, grandly, Trump receives such returning players as Gary Busey, Stephen Baldwin, LaToya Jackson and reality mean queen Omarosa.

Soon, teammates are chosen by team leaders Bret Michaels and Trace Adkins. Their first assignment: concoct a winning recipe for meatballs, then sell more of them than the rival team.

This is the 13th edition of the "Apprentice" franchise, which has now slipped to less than one-third its original viewership, according to Nielsen Co. figures. But even an audience matching last season's 6.26 million viewers would be pleasant news for NBC, which has recently fallen to fifth place in prime time, behind even Spanish-language Univision.

"I could probably do another show when I don't enjoy 'The Apprentice' anymore," says the 66-year-old Trump, mulling his TV future. "I have been asked by virtually every network on television to do a show for them. But there's something to sticking with what you have: This is a good formula. It works."

Years before "The Apprentice," Trump had hit on a winning formula for himself: Supercharge his business success with relentless self-promotion, putting a human face — his! — on the capitalist system, and embedding his persona in a feedback loop of performance and fame.

Since then, he has ruled as America's larger-than-life tycoon and its patron saint of material success. Which raises the question: Does he play a souped-up version of himself for his audience as Donald Trump, a character bigger and broader than its real-life inspiration?

He laughs, flashing something like a you-got-me smile.

"Perhaps," he replies. "Not consciously. But perhaps I do. Perhaps I do."

It began as early as 1987, when his first book, "Trump: The Art of the Deal," became a huge best-seller.

And even without a regular showcase, he was no stranger to TV. For instance, in the span of just 10 days in May 1997, Trump not only was seen on his "Miss Universe Pageant" telecast on CBS, but also made sitcom cameo appearances as himself on NBC's "Suddenly Susan" and ABC's "Drew Carey Show."

Meanwhile, as a frequent talk-show guest then (as now), he publicized his projects and pushed his brand.

"I'll be on that show for 20 or 30 or 60 minutes, and it costs me nothing," he notes. "When you have an opportunity for promotion, take it! It's free."

No one has ever accused Trump of hiding his light under a bushel. But his promotional drive (or naked craving for attention) has taken him to extremes that conventional wisdom warns against: saying and doing things that might hurt your bottom line.

Item: Trump's noisy, even race-baiting challenge to President Barack Obama to prove his American citizenship. This crusade has earned Trump the title from one editorialist as "birther blowhard."

For an industrialist and entertainer, where's the profit in voicing political views that could tick off a segment of your market or your audience?

"It's a great question, and a hard question to answer, because you happen to be right," Trump begins. "The fact is, some people love me, and some people the-opposite-of-love me, because of what I do and because of what I say. But I'm a very truthful person. By speaking out, it's probably not a good thing for me personally, but I feel I have an obligation to do it."

But isn't he being divisive with some of his pronouncements?

"I think 'divisive' would be a fair word in some cases, not in all cases," he replies. "But I think 'truthful' is another word."

The publicity he got from his political activism reached a fever pitch during his months-long, media-blitzed flirtation with running for president that seemed conveniently to dovetail with the Spring 2011 season of his TV show.

That May, he announced he would not run. For some, it was the final scene of nothing more than political theatrics.

"They weren't," Trump says quietly. "I was very seriously considering running. It was a race that the Republicans should have won. I made a mistake in not running, because I think I would have won."

He says he has no designs on this year's race for mayor of New York. But his politicizing continues apace. In his Twitter feed, with 2 million followers, he continues to bash China and rant about Washington. He phones in to Fox News Channel's "Fox & Friends" each Monday morning to vent his spleen.

"I believe in speaking my mind," he says, "and I don't mind controversy, as you probably noticed. I think sometimes controversy is a good thing, not a bad thing."

Last summer saw the opening in Aberdeen, Scotland, of Trump International Golf Links after a bitter, yearslong fight waged by environmentalists and local residents against government leaders and, of course, Trump.

A man for whom it seems no publicity is bad publicity, Trump insists the controversy helped the project.

"If there wasn't controversy surrounding it, I don't think anybody would even know it exists," he says, laying out the alternative: "I could take an ad: 'Golf course opening.'"

Trump even seems to profit from the harsh attention focused on his hair.

"I get killed on my hair!" he says, with no trace of remorse. But he wants everyone to know, "It's not a wig!" Nor is it an elaborately engineered coif to hide a hairline in retreat, as many Trump-watchers imagine.

To prove it, Trump does a remarkable thing: He lifts the flaxen locks that flop above his forehead to reveal, plain as day, a normal hairline.

"I wash my hair, I comb it, I set it and I spray it," he says. "That's it. I could comb it back and I'd look OK. But I've combed it this way for my whole life. It's become almost a trademark. And I think NBC would be very unhappy if I combed it back, 'cause — you know what? — maybe I wouldn't get as high a rating."

___

Online:

www.nbc.com

___

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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Study Finds Genetic Risk Factors Shared by 5 Psychiatric Disorders

Their study, published online Wednesday in the Lancet, was based on an examination of genetic data from more than 60,000 people world-wide. Its authors say it is the largest genetic study yet of psychiatric disorders. The findings strengthen an emerging view of mental illness that aims to make diagnoses based on the genetic aberrations underlying diseases instead of on the disease symptoms.

Two of the aberrations discovered in the new study were in genes used in a major signaling system in the brain, giving clues to processes that might go awry and suggestions of how to treat the diseases.

“What we identified here is probably just the tip of an iceberg,” said Dr. Jordan Smoller, lead author of the paper and a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital. “As these studies grow we expect to find additional genes that might overlap.”

The new study does not mean that the genetics of psychiatric disorders are simple. Researchers say there seem to be hundreds of genes involved and the gene variations discovered in the new study only confer a small risk of psychiatric disease.

Steven McCarroll, director of genetics for the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research at the Broad Institute of Harvard and M.I.T., said it was significant that the researchers had found common genetic factors that pointed to a specific signaling system.

“It is very important that these were not just random hits on the dartboard of the genome,” said Dr. McCarroll, who was not involved in the new study.

The work began in 2007 when a large group of researchers began investigating genetic data generated by studies in 19 countries and including 33,332 people with psychiatric illnesses and 27,888 people free of the illnesses for comparison. The researchers studied scans of peoples’ DNA, looking for variations in any of several million places along the long stretch of genetic material containing three billion DNA letters. The question: Did people with psychiatric illnesses tend to have a distinctive DNA pattern in any of those locations?

Researchers had already seen some clues of overlapping genetic effects in identical twins. One twin might have schizophrenia while the other had bipolar disorder. About six years ago, around the time the new study began, researchers had examined the genes of a few rare families in which psychiatric disorders seemed especially prevalent. They found a few unusual disruptions of chromosomes that were linked to psychiatric illnesses. But what surprised them was that while one person with the aberration might get one disorder a relative with the same mutation got a different one.

Jonathan Sebat, chief of the Beyster Center for Molecular Genomics of Neuropsychiatric Diseases at the University of California, San Diego, and one of the discoverers of this effect, said that work on these rare genetic aberrations had opened his eyes. “Two different diagnoses can have the same genetic risk factor,” he said.

In fact, the new paper reports, distinguishing psychiatric diseases by their symptoms has long been difficult. Autism, for example, at was once called childhood schizophrenia. It was not until the 1970s that autism was distinguished as a separate disorder.

But, Dr. Sebat, who did not work on the new study, said that until now it was not clear whether the rare families he and others had studied were an exception or whether they were pointing to a rule about multiple disorders arising from a single genetic glitch.

“No one had systematically looked at the common variations,” in DNA, he said. “We didn’t know if this was particularly true for rare mutations or if it would be true for all genetic risk.” The new study, he said, “shows all genetic risk is of this nature.”

The new study found four DNA regions that conferred a small risk of psychiatric disorders. For two of them, it is not clear what genes are involved or what they do, said Dr. Smoller. The other two, though, involve genes that are part of calcium channels, which are used when nerves send signals in the brain.

“The calcium channel findings suggest that perhaps – and this is a big if – treatments to affect calcium channel functioning might have effects across a range of disorders,” Dr. Smoller said.

There are drugs on the market that block calcium channels – they are used to treat high blood pressure – and researchers had already postulated that they might be useful for bipolar disorder even before the current findings.

One investigator, Dr. Roy Perlis of Massachusetts General Hospital, just completed a small study of a calcium channel blocker in 10 people with bipolar disorder and is about to expand it to a large randomized clinical trial. He also wants to study the drug in people with schizophrenia, in light of the new findings. He cautions, though, that people should not rush out to take a calcium channel blocker on their own.

“We need to be sure it is safe and we need to be sure it works,” Dr. Perlis said.

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Homes in foreclosure process decline in January

The number of homes mired in the foreclosure process fell again last month, according to a new report, the 15th consecutive month of year-over-year declines.
 
Irvine-based CoreLogic said Thursday that roughly 1.2 million homes nationwide, or 2.9% of all homes with a mortgage, were in some stage of foreclosure in January. That's a 3.3% drop from December and a 21% decline from January 2012.

Although the foreclosure inventory shrank, the number of completed foreclosures rose 10.5% from revised December figures. Still, the 61,000 foreclosures completed in January were down 17.8% from a year earlier. 

“The backlog of distressed assets continues to fade as the foreclosure inventory has fallen to a level not seen since mid-2009, with less than 3% of all mortgages in foreclosure,” Mark Fleming, chief economist for CoreLogic, said in a statement.

The improvement was widespread, Fleming said. Only six states and 13 of the largest 100 metro areas had foreclosure rate increases compared to a year ago.

California saw its foreclosure inventory drop 1.2% from January 2012.

Before the housing crash, completed foreclosures averaged 21,000 per month nationwide between 2000 and 2006, CoreLogic said. CEO Anand Nallathambi said the firm forecasts foreclosures to decline as the year progresses amid a stabilizing housing market and increased purchase activity.

ALSO:

One-third of U.S. homeowners have no mortgage

Fewer Americans are stuck in underwater mortgages 

Pending home sales rise in January, industry group reports

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Race for L.A. city controller heats up

A previously low-profile race for Los Angeles city controller has begun to heat up as opponents of City Councilman Dennis Zine accuse him of "double dipping" the city's payroll and question why he is considering lucrative tax breaks for a Warner Center developer.

Zine, who for 12 years has represented a district in the southeast San Fernando Valley, is the better known of the major candidates competing to replace outgoing Controller Wendy Greuel.

The others are Cary Brazeman, a marketing executive, and lawyer Ron Galperin. Zine has raised $766,000 for his campaign, more than double that of Galperin, the next-highest fundraiser, and has the backing of several of the city's powerful labor unions.

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He also has been endorsed by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and several of his council colleagues. Galperin is backed by the Service Employees International Union, one the city's largest labor groups, and Brazeman is supported by retired Rep. Diane Watson and several neighborhood council representatives.

With the primary ballot less than a week away, Brazeman and Galperin have turned up the heat on Zine, hoping to push the race beyond the March 5 vote. If no one wins more than 50% of the ballots cast, the top two vote-getters will face a runoff in the May general election.

In a recent debate, Zine's opponents criticized him for receiving a $100,000 annual pension for his 33 years with the Los Angeles Police Department and a nearly $180,000 council salary. Brazeman and Galperin called it an example of "double dipping" that should be eliminated.

That brought a forceful response from Zine, who shot back that he gives a big portion of his police pension check to charities.

"I am so tired of hearing 'double dipping,' " he said. "I worked 33 years on the streets of Los Angeles. I have given over $300,000 to nonprofits that need it.... That's what's happened with that pension."

In the same debate, Brazeman accused Zine of cozying up to a Warner Center developer by pushing for tax breaks on a project that already has been approved. The nearly 30-acre Village at Westfield Topanga project would add 1 million square feet of new shops, restaurants, office space and a hotel to a faded commercial district on Topanga Canyon Boulevard.

"The councilman proposed to give developers at Warner Center tens of millions of dollars in tax breaks even though it's a highly successful project," he said. "He wants to give it away."

City records show that less than a month after the development was approved in February 2012, Zine asked the council for a study looking at possible "economic development incentives" that could be given to Westfield in return for speeding up street and landscaping enhancements to the project's exterior.

The motion's language notes that similar tax breaks have been awarded to large projects in the Hollywood and downtown areas, and that "similar public investment in the Valley has been lacking." Westfield is paying for the $200,000 study.

Zine defended his decision before the debate audience, saying if the study finds that the city will not benefit, no tax breaks will be awarded. "If there's nothing there, then they get nothing," Zine said.

The controller serves as a public watchdog over the city's $7.3-billion annual operation, auditing the general fund, 500 special fund accounts and the performance of city departments. Those audits often produce recommendations for reducing waste, fraud and abuse.

But the mayor and the council are not obligated to adopt those recommendations, and as a result the job is part accountant, part scolder in chief. All the candidates say they will use their elective position not only to perform audits but also to turn them into action.

Their challenge during the campaign has been explaining how they will do that.

Zine, 65, says his City Hall experience has taught him how to get things done by working with his colleagues. He won't be afraid to publicly criticize department managers, he said, but thinks collaboration works better than being combative.

"You can rant and rave and people won't work with you," he said. "Or you can sit down and talk it out, and you can accomplish things."

Galperin, 49, considers himself a policy wonk who relishes digging into the details to come up with ways to become more efficient with limited dollars and to find ways to raise revenue using the city's sprawling assets. For instance, the city owns two asphalt plants that could expand production and sell some of its material to raise money to fix potholes, he said.

He's served on two city commissions, including one that found millions of dollars in savings by detailing ways to be more efficient. Zine is positioning himself as a "tough guy for tough times," but the controller should be more than that, Galperin said.

"What we really need is some thoughtfulness and some smarts and some effectiveness," he said. "Just getting up there and saying we need to be tough is not going to accomplish what needs to be done."

Brazeman, 46, started his own marketing and public relations firm in West Los Angeles a decade ago and became active in city politics over his discontent with a development project near his home. He has pushed the council to change several initiatives over the last five years, including changes to the financing of the Farmers Field stadium proposal that will save taxpayer dollars, he said.

As controller, he would pick and choose his battles, and, Brazeman said, be "the right combination of constructive, abrasive and assertive."

catherine.saillant@latimes.com

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Van Cliburn, American classical pianist, dies

FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) — Van Cliburn, the internationally celebrated pianist whose triumph at a 1958 Moscow competition helped thaw the Cold War and launched a spectacular career that made him the rare classical musician to enjoy rock-star status, died Wednesday after a fight with bone cancer. He was 78.

Cliburn died at his home in Fort Worth surrounded by loved ones, said his publicist and longtime friend Mary Lou Falcone.

"Van Cliburn was an international legend for over five decades, a great humanitarian and a brilliant musician whose light will continue to shine through his extraordinary legacy," Falcone said in a statement. "He will be missed by all who knew and admired him, and by countless people he never met."

Cliburn made what would be his last public appearance in September at the 50th anniversary of the prestigious piano competition named for him. Speaking to the audience in Fort Worth, he saluted the many past contestants, the orchestra and the city. "Never forget: I love you all from the bottom of my heart, forever," he said to a roaring standing ovation.

Cliburn skyrocketed to fame when he won the first International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow at age 23 in 1958, six months after the Soviets' launch of Sputnik embarrassed the U.S. and propelled the world into the space age. He triumphantly returned to a New York City ticker tape parade — the first ever for a classical musician — and a Time magazine cover proclaimed him "The Texan Who Conquered Russia."

But the win also proved the power of the arts, bringing unity in the midst of strong rivalry. Despite the tension between the nations, Cliburn became a hero to music-loving Soviets who clamored to see him perform and Premier Nikita Khrushchev reportedly gave the go-ahead for the judges to honor a foreigner: "Is Cliburn the best? Then give him first prize."

In the years that followed, Cliburn's popularity soared, and the young man from the small east Texas town of Kilgore sold out concerts, caused riots when spotted in public and even prompted an Elvis Presley fan club to change its name to his. His recording of the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 1 with Russian conductor Kirill Kondrashin became the first classical album to reach platinum status.

Time magazine's 1958 cover story quoted a friend as saying Cliburn could become "the first man in history to be a Horowitz, Liberace and Presley all rolled into one."

Cliburn performed for royalty, heads of state in Europe, Asia and South America, and for every U.S. president since Harry Truman.

"Since we know that classical music is timeless and everlasting, it is precisely the eternal verities inherent in classical music that remain a spiritual beacon for people all over the world," Cliburn once said.

But he also used his skill and fame to help other young musicians through the Van Cliburn International Music Competition.

Created by a group of Fort Worth teachers and citizens in 1962, the competition, held every four years, remains a pre-eminent showcase for the world's top pianists. An amateur contest was added in 1999.

"It is a forum for young artists to celebrate the great works of the piano literature and an opportunity to expose their talents to a wide-ranging international audience," Cliburn said during the 10th competition in 1997. The 14th competition is to be held in May and June.

President George W. Bush presented Cliburn with the Presidential Medal of Freedom — the nation's highest civilian honor — in 2003. In 2004, he received the Order of Friendship of the Russian Federation from Russian President Vladimir Putin.

"I still have lots of friends in Russia," Cliburn said at the time. "It's always a great pleasure to talk to older people in Russia, to hear their anecdotes."

After the death of his father in 1974, Cliburn announced he would soon retire to spend more time with his ailing mother. He stopped touring in 1978.

He told The New York Times in 2008 that among other things, touring robbed him of the chance to enjoy opera and other musical performances. "I said to myself, 'Life is too short.' I was missing so much," he said. After winning the competition, he added, "it was thrilling to be wanted. But it was pressure too."

Cliburn emerged from his sabbatical in 1987, when he played at a state dinner at the White House during the historic visit to Washington of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. Gorbachev leapt from his seat to give the pianist a bear-hug and kisses on the cheeks.

The 13th Cliburn competition, held in 2009, made history when a blind pianist from Japan, Nobuyuki Tsujii, and a teenager from China, Haochen Zhang, both won gold medals. They were the first winners from any Asian country, and Tsujii was the first blind pianist to win. And it was only the second time there were dual first place winners.

Cliburn was born Harvey Lavan Cliburn Jr. on July 12, 1934, in Shreveport, La., the son of oilman Harvey Cliburn Sr. and Rildia Bee O'Bryan Cliburn. At age 3, he began studying piano with his mother, herself an accomplished pianist who had studied with a pupil of the great 19th century Hungarian pianist Franz Liszt.

The family moved back to Kilgore, Texas, within a few years of his birth.

Cliburn won his first Texas competition when he was 12, and two years later he played in Carnegie Hall as the winner of the National Music Festival Award.

At 17, Cliburn attended the Juilliard School in New York, where fellow students marveled at his marathon practice sessions that stretched until 3 a.m. He studied under the famed Russian-born pianist Rosina Lhevinne.

Between 1952 and 1958, he won all but one competition he entered, including the G.B. Dealey Award from the Dallas Symphony, the Kosciusko Foundation Chopin Scholarship and the prestigious Leventritt. By age 20, he had played with the New York Philharmonic and the symphonies of most major cities.

Cliburn's career seemed ready to take off until his name came up for the draft. Cliburn had to cancel all shows but was eventually excused from duty due to chronic nosebleeds.

Over the next few years, Cliburn's international popularity continued as he recorded pieces ranging from Mozart to a concerto by American Edward McDowell. Still, having been trained by arguably the best Russian teachers in the world, Cliburn's heart was Russian, with the Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff concertos.

After 1990, Cliburn toured Japan numerous times and performed throughout the United States. He was in the midst of a 16-city U.S. tour in 1994 when his mother died at age 97.

Cliburn made his home in Fort Worth, where in 1998 he appeared at the opening of the Nancy Lee and Perry R. Bass Performance Hall, both in recital and as soloist with the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra. He endowed scholarships at many schools, including Juilliard, which gave him an honorary doctorate, and the Moscow and Leningrad Conservatories.

In December 2001, Cliburn was presented with the prestigious Kennedy Center Honors Medallion at the televised tribute held in Washington.

Until only recently, Cliburn practiced daily and performed limited engagements.

___

Online:

Van Cliburn Foundation: http://www.cliburn.org

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