Phil Jackson meets with Lakers Vice President Jim Buss

The Lakers concluded preliminary talks Saturday with former coach Phil Jackson, a feeling-out process that would continue, The Times has learned.

Team Vice President Jim Buss and Jackson met Saturday morning to explore the prospects of Jackson returning to the team.

The Lakers are unwavering that there’s still a 95% certainty he will be their next coach. It's known that Jackson has already contacted assistant coaches who have worked with him previously about joining the Lakers' staff. It doesn't appear to be a problem for Lakers management.

The desire of Lakers fans and players to have Jackson return has been matched by management's desire to have him back on the bench. There's been speculation since Jackson's departure of a rift between Buss and him. It does not appear to be a deterrent in present discussions.

Until it becomes a certainty that Jackson is ready to return to coaching, the Lakers will continue the search process. It's believed they have an interest in talking to former NBA coaches Mike D'Antoni, Nate McMillan and Mike Dunleavy.

No formal offer was made Saturday, but it’s well understood the job is Jackson’s if he wants it. Sources were unclear whether discussions had advanced to the stage of salary and contract length.

The Lakers appear to be willing to give Jackson all the time necessary to determine if he wants to return to coaching. Interim coach Bernie Bickerstaff will guide the team Sunday against Sacramento at Staples Center.

Jackson’s health is fine, according to people who have spoken to him, but he is hedging a bit because of all the travel done by NBA teams. He has always disliked the routine of 41 regular-season road games — 39 for the Lakers, who play two designated away games against the Clippers at Staples Center.

The Lakers have played only two road games this season, neither of them against the Clippers, meaning a long, steady stream of road trips awaits the team.

As Jackson ponders his immediate future, he’ll consider the late-arriving flights in different time zones, the sometimes unpalatable food, the unfamiliar beds and unpredictable weather that might be ahead of him.

No stronger testimonial for Jackson came than the one from Kobe Bryant, who seemed almost apologetic for sustaining game-changing soreness in his right knee toward the end of the 2010-11 season.

The Lakers were swept by Dallas in the Western Conference semifinals that year, Bryant scoring only 17 points in the last two losses. He went to Germany a month later for an innovative procedure on his ailing right knee.

“The one thing that’s kind of always bothered me is that in his last year I wasn't able to give him my normal self,” Kobe Bryant said Friday night. “I was playing on one leg and that’s kind of always eaten away at me. The last year of his career I wasn't able to give him all I had.”

“He’s too great of a coach to have it go out that way. That’s my personal sentiment. I took it to heart because I couldn’t give it everything I had because I physically couldn’t. My knee was shot. That’s always bothered me.”

Jackson would replace Mike Brown, who was fired Friday amid the Lakers' 1-4 start, their worst since 1993.

Logical choices to join Jackson's staff would be Kurt Rambis, if he can get out of TV analyst commitments, Jim Cleamons and Frank Hamble, all of whom have been assistants under Jackson in the past.

Times staff writer Broderick Turner contributed to this report.

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War photography exhibit debuts in Houston museum

HOUSTON (AP) — It was a moment Nina Berman did not expect to capture when she entered an Illinois wedding studio in 2006. She knew Tyler Ziegel had been horribly injured, his face mutilated beyond recognition by a suicide bombing in the Iraq War. She knew he was marrying his pretty high school sweetheart, perfect in a white, voluminous dress.

It was their expressions that were surprising.

"People don't think this war has any impact on Americans? Well here it is," Berman says of the image of a somber bride staring blankly, unsmiling at the camera, her war-ravaged groom alongside her, his head down.

"This was even more shocking because we're used to this kind of over-the-top joy that feels a little put on, and then you see this picture where they look like survivors of something really serious," Berman added.

The photograph that won a first place prize in the World Press Photos Award contest will stand out from other battlefield images in an exhibit "WAR/PHOTOGRAPHY: Images of Armed Conflict and Its Aftermath" that debuts Sunday — Veterans Day — in the Houston Museum of Fine Arts. From there, the exhibit will travel to The Annenberg Space for Photography in Los Angeles, the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington and The Brooklyn Museum in Brooklyn, N.Y.

The exhibit was painstakingly built by co-curators Anne Wilkes Tucker and Will Michels after the museum purchased a print of the famous picture of the raising of the flag at Iwo Jima, taken Feb. 23, 1945, by Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal. The curators decided the museum didn't have enough conflict photos, Tucker said, and in 2004, the pair began traveling around the country and the world in search of pictures.

Over nearly eight years and after viewing more than 1 million pictures, Tucker and Michels created an exhibit that includes 480 objects, including photo albums, original magazines and old cameras, by 280 photographers from 26 countries.

Some are well-known — such as the Rosenthal's picture and another AP photograph, of a naked girl running from a napalm attack during the Vietnam War taken in 1972 by Huynh Cong "Nick" Ut. Others, such as the Incinerated Iraqi, of a man's burned body seen through the shattered windshield of his car, will be new to most viewers.

"The point of all the photographs is that when a conflict occurs, it lingers," Tucker said.

The pictures hang on stark gray walls, and some are in small rooms with warning signs at the entrance designed to allow visitors to decide whether they want to view images that can be brutal in their honesty.

"It's something that we did to that man. Americans did it, we did it intentionally and it's a haunting picture," Michels said of the image of the burned Iraqi that hangs inside one of the rooms.

In some images, such as Don McCullin's picture of a U.S. Marine throwing a grenade at a North Vietnamese soldier in Hue, it is clear the photographer was in danger when immortalizing the moment. Looking at his image, McCullin recalled deciding to travel to Hue instead of Khe Sahn, as he had initially planned.

"It was the best decision I ever made," he said, smiling slightly as he looked at the picture, explaining that he took a risk by standing behind the Marine.

"This hand took a bullet, shattered it. It looked like a cauliflower," he said, pointing to the still-upraised hand that threw the grenade. "So the people he was trying to kill were trying to kill him."

McCullin, who worked at that time for The Sunday Times in London, has covered conflicts all over the world, from Lebanon and Israel to Biafra. Now 77, McCullin says he wonders, still, whether the hundreds of photos he's taken have been worthwhile. At times, he said, he lost faith in what he was doing because when one war ends, another begins.

Yet he believes journalists and photographers must never stop telling about the "waste of man in war."

"After seeing so much of it, I'm tired of thinking, 'Why aren't the people who rule our lives ... getting it?' " McCullin said, adding that he'd like to drag them all into the exhibit for an hour.

Berman didn't see the conflicts unfold. Instead, she waited for the wounded to come home, seeking to tell a story about war's aftermath.

Her project on the wounded developed in 2003. The Iraq War was at its height, and there was still no database, she said, to find names of wounded warriors returning home. So she scoured local newspapers on the Internet.

In 2004 she published a book called "Purple Hearts" that includes photographs taken over nine months of 20 different people. All were photographed at home, not in hospitals where, she said, "there's this expectation that this will all work out fine."

The curators, meanwhile, chose to tell the story objectively — refusing through the images they chose or the exhibit they prepared to take a pro- or anti-war stance, a decision that has invited criticism and sparked debate.

And maybe, that is the point.

___

Plushnick-Masti can be followed on Twitter at https://twitter.com/RamitMastiAP

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U.S. Extends Deadline on Health Coverage for States

WASHINGTON — With many states lagging far behind schedule, the Obama administration said Friday that it would extend the deadline for them to submit plans for health insurance exchanges, the online markets where millions of Americans are expected to obtain private coverage subsidized by the federal government.

The original Nov. 16 deadline will be extended to Dec. 14 — and in some cases to Feb. 15, the administration said.

The Congressional Budget Office predicts that 25 million people will obtain coverage through the new online shopping malls known as insurance exchanges. Most of them will receive federal subsidies averaging more than $5,000 a year per person to help them pay premiums.

Every state is supposed to have an exchange by Jan. 1, 2014, when the federal government will require most Americans to have insurance. Many states delayed work on the exchanges to see the outcome of a Supreme Court case challenging the health care law, then waited to see if President Obama would be re-elected.

If a state wants to run its own exchange, its governor still must submit a declaration of intent — generally a brief letter of one or two pages — by Nov. 16. But states will have more time to submit the detailed applications required by federal officials.

The White House has repeatedly said that states were making excellent progress toward creation of the exchanges, even as Republican governors and state legislators expressed ambivalence or outright opposition. In addition, state officials who want to establish exchanges said they were having difficulty because Mr. Obama had yet to issue crucial regulations and guidance.

In a letter to governors on Friday, Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services, said that many states had asked for “additional time” to submit applications indicating whether they wanted to run their own exchanges or help the federal government run exchanges in their states.

Under the Affordable Care Act, the federal government will run the exchanges in any states that are unable or unwilling to do so. Fewer than half the states have indicated that they will set up their own exchanges.

If states want to run their own exchanges, Ms. Sebelius said, they will have until Dec. 14 to submit applications, or blueprints. And if states want to run exchanges in partnership with the federal government, she said, they will have until Feb. 15 to file applications.

Ms. Sebelius said the new timetable would not defer the dream of affordable insurance for millions of Americans.

“Consumers in all 50 states and the District of Columbia will have access to insurance through these new marketplaces on Jan. 1, 2014, as scheduled, with no delays,” Ms. Sebelius told governors. “This administration is committed to providing significant flexibility for building a marketplace that best meets your state’s needs.”

Senator Orrin G. Hatch of Utah, the senior Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, said the change in the deadline was “no surprise” because the White House had not given states enough information or guidance to make decisions.

“Frankly,” Mr. Hatch said, “the fact that the exchanges are such a mess is pretty emblematic of how flawed the president’s health law is — with states having to bear the brunt.”

Representative Charles Boustany Jr. of Louisiana, a spokesman for House Republicans on health policy, said he doubted that extending the deadline would make the law any more workable.

Even in states where governors want to establish insurance exchanges, they need legal authority to do so, and Republican legislators have balked in some states.

Federal officials hope that fierce competition among insurers offering health plans in the exchanges will drive down premiums.

Joel S. Ario, a former director of the federal office for insurance exchanges who now advises states as a consultant at Manatt Health Solutions, said: “The administration’s decision is a good move. It increases the chances that more states will opt for a partnership exchange, rather than default to a federal exchange.”

An administration official said that Mr. Obama was on schedule in carrying out the law, and that starting in October, Americans will be able to enroll in health plans for coverage starting in January 2014.

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Canada looks to lure energy workers from the U.S.

EDMONTON, Canada — With a daughter to feed, no job and $200 in the bank, Detroit pipe fitter Scott Zarembski boarded a plane on a one-way ticket to this industrial capital city.

He'd heard there was work in western Canada. Turns out he'd heard right. Within days he was wearing a hard hat at a Shell oil refinery 15 miles away in Fort Saskatchewan. Within six months he had earned almost $50,000. That was 2009. And he's still there.

"If you want to work, you can work," said Zarembski, 45. "And it's just getting started."

U.S. workers, Canada wants you.

Here in the western province of Alberta, energy companies are racing to tap the region's vast deposits of oil sands. Canada is looking to double production by the end of the decade. To do so it will have to lure more workers — tens of thousands of them — to this cold and sparsely populated place. The weak U.S. recovery is giving them a big assist.

Canadian employers are swarming U.S. job fairs, advertising on radio and YouTube and using headhunters to lure out-of-work Americans north. California, with its 10.2% unemployment rate, has become a prime target. Canadian recruiters are headed to a job fair in the Coachella Valley next month to woo construction workers idled by the housing meltdown.

The Great White North might seem a tough sell with winter coming on. But the Canadians have honed their sales pitch: free universal healthcare, good pay, quality schools, retention bonuses and steady work.

"California has a lot of workers and we hope they come up," said Mike Wo, executive director of the Edmonton Economic Development Corp.

The U.S. isn't the only place Canada is looking for labor. In Alberta, which is expecting a shortage of 114,000 skilled workers by 2021, provincial officials have been courting English-speaking tradespeople from Ireland, Scotland and other European nations. Immigrants from the Philippines, India and Africa have found work in services. But some employers prefer Americans because they adapt quickly, come from a similar culture and can visit their homes more easily.

Since 2010, about 35,000 U.S. workers a year have been issued work permits, according to Canadian immigration statistics. That's up 13% from earlier in the decade. And that figure is expected to grow as provinces continue to loosen requirements for temporary foreign workers.

Rudolf Kischer, a Vancouver-based immigration attorney, said his firm can hardly keep up with the processing of work permits for employers hiring U.S. help.

"We're the busiest we've ever been," he said.

Many of those workers are heading to where the labor market is hottest: Edmonton.

One of the fastest growing cities in Canada, this capital city owes its prosperity to the oil sands. Lying a few hours to the north, the sands are a mixture of sand, clay, water and bitumen — a heavy, black, viscous petroleum — that must be mined and processed to extract the oil. Alberta's massive deposits, which rival the conventional crude oil reserves of Venezuela and Saudi Arabia, are being developed at breakneck speed to meet the growing global demand for energy.

Edmonton has become a staging ground for oil companies that include Canada's Suncor Energy Inc., Shell Canada Ltd. and Chevron Canada Ltd. The energy sector has in turn boosted industries such as manufacturing, home building and retailing.

With a population of about 812,000, Edmonton looks a lot like many American cities. There are large strip malls anchored by U.S. retailers such as Costco and Home Depot, and ubiquitous coffee shops — except here Tim Horton's doughnut shops outnumber Starbucks 3 to 1.

The biggest difference: The unemployment rate here is 4.5%, and "We're Hiring" signs are posted in almost every window.

Moving to a city where the economy is firing on all cylinders was a sharp turn from struggling Motor City, Zarembski said.

Fat paychecks allowed him to ditch his battered Pontiac Grand Am for a late-model Dodge pickup truck. He has vacationed in the Dominican Republic and taken his 14-year-old daughter to Universal Studios in Florida. He's planning to buy a house in Edmonton's western suburbs soon.

With so much work available, Zarembski said, trade workers can afford to pick and choose. Jobs near Fort McMurray, a remote town six hours north, are the best-paid; a welder can make up $37 an hour. (At present Canadian and U.S. dollars are almost equivalent in value.) But laborers must stay in barracks-style camps, which energy companies have upgraded to woo them. The best ones offer private rooms with flat-screen TVs, gyms, prime dining and wireless Internet access.

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New Yorkers in long lines ask: Where's the gas?

When Mike Williams moved to New York City from Miami four months ago, he expected cold winters and slushy streets. He was not especially worried by the arrival of a Category 1 hurricane named Sandy. They have plenty of hurricanes in Florida. But gas lines, nearly two weeks after the storm’s departure?

“I don’t get it. I’m blown away,” said Williams, asking the question on New Yorkers’ minds as they began gas rationing Friday, the latest downshift from the city’s usual rapid-fire pace and a measure aimed at relieving hours-long – sometimes daylong waits – in gas lines. “Where is the gas? “ Williams asked incredulously.

It’s a question nobody seems able to answer with total certainty, not even Mayor Michael Bloomberg or the city’s police commissioner, Raymond Kelly, who dropped by the Brooklyn station where Williams had been waiting in his SUV for 2 1/2 hours.  “It’s hard to pin down,” said Kelly, not a man given to uncertainty when asked a question. “We’re still trying to figure out the details of where it is.”

FULL COVERAGE: East Coast battered by storms

Kelly said as far as he understood, part of the bottleneck was at refineries, some of which were knocked out of commission by Sandy. That meant that even after bridges and tunnels linking New York City to New Jersey and suburban Long Island and Westchester County had been reopened -- clearing the way for tankers to resume deliveries -- there was not enough fuel ready for distribution.

Bloomberg seemed similarly confounded by the fact that so few gas stations were operating. He estimated 30% were pumping. 

"There has been a lot of gas coming in, but it has not gotten a lot of gas stations to open,” said Bloomberg, speaking during his usual Friday interview on the John Gambling Show on WOR radio. Several factors appeared to be at work, Bloomberg said, noting that after power came back, some fuel distribution terminals discovered that damage to their facilities was far greater than initially thought.  

PHOTOS: Devastation and recovery after Sandy

He guessed that some station owners were reluctant to open if they feared the terminals were not operating at full speed. “I think part of it, really, is they just don’t think these terminals can fill the trucks anywhere near fast enough and so they wouldn’t get gas. They’d only be open for a couple of hours and maybe have to pay their employees a full day,” he said. “I don’t know.”

By midday Friday, the city, as well as neighboring Nassau and Suffolk counties on Long Island, appeared to be adjusting well to the new system. Because Friday was Nov. 9 – an odd number – only people with license plates ending in odd numbers were permitted to gas up. The restrictions don’t apply to emergency vehicles, commercial vehicles such as rental cars and taxis, or to people not in vehicles. 

“We’ve seen no problems,” said Kelly, as he gamely posed for pictures with the giddy gas station crowd, whose main diversion until the commissioner’s arrival had consisted of watching the occasional dust-up at the cash register.  

Police officers watched the two lines of cars – each with about 40 vehicles – creep pincer-like into the huge station from different access points. About 50 people stood at the one pump set aside for walk-ups like Erika Bowden, who had three containers to fill.

Her vehicle, parked across the road, was at a half-tank, but she has two children to drive to school and a job in the Bronx, so Bowden wasn’t taking any chances. She also didn’t want to spend her weekend in a gas line. Asked why she didn’t take the subway to work, Bowden replied: “It’s three hours, with three trains and two buses. Or 20 minutes to drive. So my choice is this.”

At one point, it seemed Bowden might not reach the pump. A man in a van began arguing with the harried woman working the cash register, insisting he had given her $45 but had received only $25 worth of gas. He waved his receipt at her through the glass window separating her from the clamoring crowd. She insisted she was powerless to overrule the pump. As the standoff continued, one of the police officers keeping watch on the lines threatened to shut down the station unless the problem was resolved. The driver eventually left, with a written promise to be reimbursed.

“It is what it is,” Williams said as he returned to his car and moved a few feet closer to filling up.

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Philip Roth says he's done writing

NEW YORK (AP) — Exit, Philip Roth? Having conceived everything from turning into a breast to a polio epidemic in his native New Jersey, Roth has apparently given his imagination a rest.

The 79-year-old novelist recently told a French publication, Les inRocks, that his 2010 release "Nemesis" would be his last. Spokeswoman Lori Glazer of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt said Friday that she had spoken with Roth and that he confirmed his remarks. Roth's literary agent, Andrew Wylie, declined comment.

Roth certainly produced, completing more than 20 novels over half a century and often turning out one a year. He won virtually every prize short of the Nobel and wrote such classics as "American Pastoral" and "Portnoy's Complaint."

His name will remain on new releases, if only because the Library of America has been issuing hardcover volumes of his work. Roth also is cooperating with award-winning biographer Blake Bailey on a book about his life.

The author chose an unexpected forum to break the news, but he has been hinting at his departure for years. He has said that he no longer reads fiction and seemed to say goodbye to his fictional alterego, Nathan Zuckerman, in the 2007 novel "Exit Ghost."

Retirement is rarely the preferred option for writers, for whom the ability to tell stories or at least set down words is often synonymous with life itself. Poor health, discouragement and even madness are the more likely ways literary careers end. Roth apparently is fit and his recent novels had been received respectfully, if not with the awe of his most celebrated work.

"I don't believe it," Roth's friend and fellow writer Cynthia Ozick said upon learning the news. "A writer who stops writing while still breathing has already declared herself posthumous."

His parting words from "Nemesis": "He seemed to us invincible."

Roth's interview appeared in French and has been translated, roughly, by The Associated Press. He tells Les inRocks that "Nemesis" was "mon dernier livre" ("My last book") and refers to "Howard's End" author E.M. Forster, and how he quit fiction in his 40s. Roth said he doesn't plan to write a memoir, but will instead go through his archives and help ensure that Bailey's biography comes out in his lifetime.

Explaining why he stopped, Roth said that at age 74 he became aware his time was limited and that he started re-reading his books of the past 20-30 years, in reverse order. He decided that he agreed with what the boxer Joe Louis had said late in life, that he had done the best he could with what he had.

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Malaria Vaccine Candidate Produces Disappointing Results in Clinical Trial

The latest clinical trial of the world’s leading malaria vaccine candidate produced disappointing results on Friday. The infants it was given to had only about a third fewer infections than a control group.

But researchers said they wanted to press on, assuming they keep getting financial support, because the number of children who die of malaria is so great that even an inefficient vaccine can save thousands of lives.

Three shots of the vaccine, known as RTS, S or Mosquirix and produced by GlaxoSmithKline, gave babies fewer than 12 weeks old 31 percent protection against detectable malaria and 37 percent protection against severe malaria, according to an announcement by the company at a vaccines conference in Cape Town.

Last year, in a trial in children up to 17 months old, the same vaccine gave 55 percent protection against detectable malaria and 47 percent against severe malaria.

The new trial “is less than we’d hoped for,” Moncef Slaoui, chairman of research and development at Glaxo, said in a telephone interview. “But if a million babies were vaccinated, we would prevent 260,000 cases of malaria a year. This is a disease that kills 655,000 babies a year — 31 percent of that is a very large number.”

The company, which has already spent more than $300 million on the vaccine, wants to keep forging ahead, Mr. Slaoui said, “but it is not just our decision.”

It also depends on the PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative, which has put more than $200 million of its Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation financing into the vaccine, and on the World Health Organization, which has helped talk seven African countries into allowing the vaccine to be tested on their children.

The Gates Foundation declined to say how much money it was ultimately prepared to spend on an imperfect vaccine; this set of trials is set to go into 2014.

“The efficacy came back lower than we had hoped, but developing a vaccine against a parasite is a very hard thing to do,” Bill Gates said in a prepared statement. “The trial is continuing, and we look forward to getting more data to help determine whether and how to deploy this vaccine.”

All the families in the trial were given insecticide-treated mosquito nets and encouraged to use them; 86 percent did, so the vaccine’s results were achieved on top of other anti-malaria measures.

RTS, S contains a protein found on the parasite’s surface that provokes an immune reaction. It was first identified decades ago by two New York University scientists, Ruth and Victor Nussenzweig. The vaccine was developed by Glaxo in Belgium and initially tested on American volunteers by the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research.

When the Gates Foundation began focusing on global health in the early part of this century, it was one of the first projects the foundation adopted. Different ways to make the vaccine more effective, including adding different boosters and giving more shots, are being experimented with. Other vaccines using different ways to provoke an immune reaction exist, but none are as far along in clinical trials.

Like an H.I.V. vaccine, one against malaria has proved an elusive goal. The parasite morphs several times, exhibiting different surface proteins as it goes from mosquito saliva into blood and then into and out of the liver. Also, even the best natural “vaccine” — catching the disease itself — is not very effective. While one bout of measles immunizes a child for life, it usually takes several bouts of malaria to confer even partial immunity. Pregnancy can cause women to stop being immune, and immunity can fade out if someone moves away from a malarial area — presumably because they no longer get “boosters” from repeated mosquito bites.

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Managers spend almost a day a week on slacker workers, study says

Slacker employees don't pull their weight. But they do a great job attaching it to their bosses.

Managers spend nearly 17% of their working hours dealing with poor performers, according to a report from staffing firm Robert Half International. That's basically a full day a week that could have been spent being productive.

And sucking up supervisors' time isn't the only downside to subpar workers, according to the report. Of the more than 1,400 chief financial officers interviewed by Robert Half, 95% said laggards can bring down office spirits.

"Bad hires are costly, not just for the drain they place on the budget but also in terms of lost morale, productivity and time," Max Messmer, chief executive of Robert Half, said in a statement.

They're like the human embodiment of a holiday or March Madness, except not nearly as enjoyable. During such periods, productivity slumps as workers become more distracted and take more time off, according to consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

So, how best to avoid bringing aboard Peter Gibbons, the disgruntled programmer made famous from the movie "Office Space"?

First, managers shouldn't try to lone-wolf the hiring process, according to Robert Half. Instead of relying solely on their own instincts, they should ask employees what they're looking for in a teammate.

And supervisors should extend an offer immediately after making a hiring decision to avoid losing promising workers to competitors, according to the report.

Finally, lowball salaries won't get a good worker, according to the study, which reasons that if a company pays employees what they deserve, they're more likely to want to work harder.

tiffany.hsu@latimes.com

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Mexico reports capture of alleged Zetas cartel commander

MEXICO CITY — An alleged local commander of the Zetas paramilitary cartel in the troubled border state of Coahuila has been captured, the Mexican navy announced Thursday, expressing hope that he might lead authorities to the notorious group's remaining top leader.

Said Omar Juarez was taken into custody on a prominent street in Saltillo, Coahuila's capital, the navy said in a statement released as the suspect was presented to reporters in Mexico City. In his possession were weapons and packages containing what may be cocaine and marijuana, the statement said.

Juarez was described by the navy as the Zeta operative in charge of Saltillo, who "presumably" has direct ties to Miguel Angel Treviño, the Zetas' top leader. Treviño emerged as the undisputed Zetas capo after Heriberto Lazcano was killed in a shootout with navy special forces last month.

Coahuila, which borders Texas and is Mexico's third-largest state, has recently been the subject of increased scrutiny after a series of high-profile events that revealed the extent to which the Zetas had grown to dominate the region.

In addition to Lazcano's killing, the subsequent stealing of his body by armed commandos, and the acknowledgment by officials that he was living freely in Coahuila, there were other events:

The former governor's son was slain in October, allegedly by Zeta operatives working in cahoots with local police, and in September one of the largest mass prison breaks in history took place, in the Coahuila town of Piedras Negras, staged by Zetas to free Zetas. The warden and 16 guards and other officials were detained on suspicion of aiding the escape; eight of the officials were released Thursday.

All of that was followed by a stunning series of interviews by the former governor, Humberto Moreira, who accused the state's lucrative mining industry of entering into a devil's pact with the Zetas and helping to finance their murderous ways. Moreira, who is mired in a scandal involving a $3-billion debt that he saddled the state with, offered to supply proof of the complicity but has not yet done so.

With less than a month left in office, President Felipe Calderon has sought to vigorously fend off a mounting chorus of criticism of the military-led offensive against drug trafficking networks, which he launched in the first days of his administration but which has yielded mixed results. More than 55,000 people have been killed in what authorities describe as drug war-related violence, and the two largest organizations, the Sinaloa cartel and the Zetas, have grown to dominate large swaths of territory throughout Mexico and deep into Central America.

The Calderon strategy has been to go after cartel leaders like Lazcano and many others in hope of fragmenting the groups and making them easier to contain. But often, more violence follows as power struggles erupt, and new leaders eventually emerge.

"There are fewer leaders, but the operational capacity of the criminal groups does not seem to be weakened," Ernesto Lopez Portillo, executive director of the Mexico City-based Institute for Security and Democracy, said Thursday. "Organized crime is more powerful today than ever."

wilkinson@latimes.com

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Exclusive: Google Ventures beefs up fund size to $300 million a year

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Google will increase the cash it allocates to its venture-capital arm to up to $300 million a year from $200 million, catapulting Google Ventures into the top echelon of corporate venture-capital funds.

Access to that sizeable checkbook means Google Ventures will be able to invest in more later-stage financing rounds, which tend to be in the tens of millions of dollars or more per investor.

It puts the firm on the same footing as more established corporate venture funds such as Intel's Intel Capital, which typically invests $300-$500 million a year.

"It puts a lot more wood behind the arrow if we need it," said Bill Maris, managing partner of Google Ventures.

Part of the rationale behind the increase is that Google Ventures is a relatively young firm, founded in 2009. Some of the companies it backed two or three years ago are now at later stages, potentially requiring larger cash infusions to grow further.

Google Ventures has taken an eclectic approach, investing in a broad spectrum of companies ranging from medicine to clean power to coupon companies.

Every year, it typically funds 40-50 "seed-stage" deals where it invests $250,000 or less in a company, and perhaps around 15 deals where it invests up to $10 million, Maris said. It aims to complete one or two deals annually in the $20-$50 million range, Maris said.

LACKING SUPERSTARS

Some of its investments include Nest, a smart-thermostat company; Foundation Medicine, which applies genomic analysis to cancer care; Relay Rides, a carsharing service; and smart-grid company Silver Spring Networks. Last year, its portfolio company HomeAway raised $216 million in an initial public offering.

Still, Google Ventures lacks superstar companies such as microblogging service Twitter or online bulletin-board company Pinterest. The firm's recent hiring of high-profile entrepreneur Kevin Rose as a partner could help attract higher-profile deals.

Soon it could have even more cash to play around with. "Larry has repeatedly asked me: 'What do you think you could do with a billion a year?'" said Maris, referring to Google chief executive Larry Page.

(Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)

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Marilyn Monroe photos on auction in Poland

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Who doesn't want a picture of Marilyn Monroe?

Hundreds of photographs of the blonde bombshell and other celebrities, including famous ones of Monroe in bed and as a ballerina, were being sold Thursday evening at an auction house in Poland.

Bidders and spectators packed the Desa Unicum house in Warsaw, where 238 pictures by the late American fashion and celebrity photographer Milton H. Greene were up for sale.

Most of these pictures of Monroe were taken from 1953 to 1957 when Greene was her advisor and business partner. He made many of the prints during Monroe's lifetime and they are highly valued by collectors. They include series of refined black-and-white studio photos and shots taken in natural surroundings, sometime in provocative poses.

As the bidding began, a black-and-white photo of a reclining Monroe in black stockings sold for 50,000 zlotys ($16,000), and another of her in a ballerina's dress sold for almost $20,000. A picture of her in bed sold for 26,000 zlotys.

The auction also offered Greene's pictures of Audrey Hepburn, Grace Kelly, Marlene Dietrich and Liza Minnelli. Other greats in the vast portrait collection, which was estimated at $680,000, included Cary Grant, Frank Sinatra, Paul Newman, Alfred Hitchcock and Marlon Brando.

The photos come from a collection of some 4,000 Greene pictures that Poland obtained from Chicago businessman Dino Matingas in the mid-1990s as the result of a complex communist-era embezzlement scandal linked to the buy-out of Poland's state debt. Proceeds from the auction will go to the Polish government.

Some of the images have never been published before, according to Marta Maciazek, the Polish official in charge of cleaning up the mess from the corruption affair.

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Ask an Expert: Wondering About Alzheimer’s? Ask Here

This week’s Ask the Expert features Dr. P. Murali Doraiswamy, who will answer questions related to Alzheimer’s disease and memory loss. He is a professor of psychiatry at Duke University Medical Center and an author of “The Alzheimer’s Action Plan.” Dr. Doraiswamy has also served as an adviser to government agencies, advocacy groups and businesses.

About five million Americans today live with Alzheimer’s disease, and a new diagnosis is made about every 70 seconds. Cases are expected to triple over the coming decades as baby boomers age.

Misperceptions and misdiagnoses are common about Alzheimer’s, which ranks second to only cancer among diseases that adults fear the most. Many people do not understand that there are dozens of causes for memory loss besides Alzheimer’s, including many that can be fully reversed if caught early.

Among the questions Dr. Doraiswamy is prepared to answer:

What are the best tests to determine if it is or isn’t Alzheimer’s?

How do you determine your own risk?

What are the family-care options? Medications for memory? Medications for behavior problems? Preventive strategies?

What has been learned from the latest clinical trials?

How can you improve your memory?

Please leave your questions in the comments section. Answers will be posted on Wednesday.

You can follow Booming via RSS here or visit nytimes.com/booming.

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Priceline agrees to acquire Kayak Software for $1.8 billion

Priceline.com, the popular online travel service, agreed Thursday to acquire Kayak Software Corp. for $1.8 billion, a deal that would boost Priceline's customer base as it wrestles with a sluggish economy and newer, more nimble rivals.

Under the terms of the deal, Priceline will pay $500 million in cash and $1.3 billion in stock for Kayak, a comparison travel website. The sale values Kayak at $40 a share, a 26% premium to its closing price of $31.04 on Thursday and 57% higher than its July initial public offering price of $26.

Shares of Kayak jumped 27% to $39.30 in after-hours trading Thursday, while Priceline shares fell slightly.

"We are delighted for Kayak to join our group," Priceline Chief Executive Jeffrey Boyd said on a conference call with investors Thursday. "Our approach to this is consistent with our approach to earlier acquisitions."

Kayak will operate as a separate website and keep its current management. The deal, pending approval from regulators, will close in early 2013.

Priceline, born during the dot-com boom, has acquired several online travel companies as the economy slowed and competition increased. Its competitors include start-ups like Hipmunk as well as Google Inc., which recently acquired travel firm ITA Software.

Kayak's search engine lets users compare prices on hotels, flights and rental cars from hundreds of websites, including Priceline competitors such as Orbitz and Expedia.com. It also sells advertising.

Now that they're family, Norwalk, Conn.-based Priceline will pick up some "cross-pollination of knowledge" from Kayak, Boyd said. That includes Kayak's success using mobile applications, which is growing its user base. Kayak, based in Concord, Mass., processes more than 100 million searches a month.

Kayak hopes to use Priceline's customer base and established presence in Europe through earlier acquisition Booking.com, Boyd said. Kayak executives recently announced an expansion into Russia, and the company has acquired travel search companies in Germany and Austria.

In its third-quarter earnings report released Thursday, Kayak recorded an $8-million profit, an increase of 14% from a year earlier.

Kayak shares closed down 50 cents, or 1.6%, before the deal was announced. Priceline shares closed down $6.74, or 1.1%, at $627.87.

laura.nelson@latimes.com

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