Small union is causing big problems for ports

The small band of strikers that has effectively shut down the nation's busiest shipping complex forced two huge cargo ships to head for other ports Thursday and kept at least three others away, hobbling an economic powerhouse in Southern California.

The disruption is costing an estimated $1 billion a day at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, on which some 600,000 truckers, dockworkers, trading companies and others depend for their livelihoods.

"The longer it goes, the more the impacts increase," said Paul Bingham, an economist with infrastructure consulting firm CDM Smith. "Retailers will have stock outages, lost sales for products not delivered. There will be shutdowns in factories, in manufacturing when they run out of parts."

Despite the union's size — about 800 members of a unit of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union — it has managed to flex big muscles. Unlike almost anywhere else in the nation, union loyalty is strong at the country's ports. Neither the longshoremen nor the truckers are crossing the tiny union's picket lines.

The strike started at the L.A. port's largest terminal Tuesday and spread Wednesday to 10 of the two ports' 14 cargo terminals. These resemble seaside parking lots where long metal containers are loaded and unloaded with the help of giant cranes.

The union contends that the dispute is over job security and the transfer of work from higher-paid union members to lower-paid employees in other countries. The 14-employer management group says that no jobs have been outsourced and that the union wants to continue a practice called "featherbedding," or bringing in temporary workers even when there is no work.

The two sides haven't met since negotiations broke down Monday, but they were scheduled to begin talking again Thursday night. The union has worked without a contract for 21/2 years.

The clerical workers are a vital link in the supply chain. They handle the immense flow of information that accompanies each cargo ship as well as every item in the freight. One shipload of shoes, toys and other products is enough to fill five warehouses.

Logistics clerk Trinie Thompson, 41, normally spends her days working with railroad lines and trucking companies to ensure that the right containers are sent along to their proper destinations. On Thursday, she was walking the picket lines at the docks.

"We will be setting up trains to Houston, trains to Dallas, to Chicago, to the Pacific Northwest," said Thompson, who has worked for 10 years for Eagle Marine Services terminal, which is affiliated with the giant APL shipping line.

"For a typical container ship, we will have to set up multiple trains. We might be sending 200 to 300 containers to Chicago alone, and there will be paperwork for all of them."

The strike comes at a time of simmering labor unrest at other U.S. ports, underscoring the unusual power labor holds in maritime trade.

On the East Coast and Gulf Coast, another group of shipping lines and terminal operators called the United States Maritime Alliance has repeatedly failed to reach agreement on a new labor contract with the International Longshoremen's Assn. A strike that might have involved dozens of ports was avoided only after both sides agreed to extend negotiations past the September end of their current contract.

A strike also was narrowly avoided at Portland, Ore., only a few days ago in a dispute between grain shippers and union workers.

Operations at Oakland International Airport and at the Port of Oakland, the third-largest port in the state behind Los Angeles and Long Beach, were affected by a brief strike this month.

Maritime unions "have successfully organized one of the most vital links in the supply chain, and it's a tradition they nurture with all of their younger workers," said Nelson Lichtenstein, a UC Santa Barbara history professor and workplace expert. "They have a very strong ideological sense of who they are, and for now they are strong."

In Los Angeles and Long Beach, the 800 clerical workers have been able to shut down most of the ports because the 10,000-member dockworkers union is honoring the picket lines. Work continues at only four cargo terminals, where the office clerical unit has no workers.

"Longshoremen stand up when other workers need our help," said Ray Ortiz Jr., a member of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union's Coast Committee. "Sure, it's a sacrifice to give up a paycheck when you refuse to cross the picket line, but we believe it's in the long-term interest of the Los Angeles-Long Beach harbor area to retain these good local jobs."

Stephen Berry, lead negotiator for the shipping lines and cargo terminals, said the clerical workers have been offered a deal that includes "absolute job security," a raise that would take average annual pay to $195,000 from $165,000, 11 weeks' paid vacation and a generous pension increase.

At a news conference Thursday, Berry denounced the tactics by the clerical workers, calling them "irresponsible."

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California school districts face huge debt on risky bonds

Two hundred school districts across California have borrowed billions of dollars using a costly and risky form of financing that has saddled them with staggering debt, according to a Times analysis.

Schools and community colleges have turned increasingly to so-called capital appreciation bonds in the economic downturn, which depressed property values and made it harder for districts to raise money for new classrooms, auditoriums and sports facilities.

Unlike conventional shorter-term bonds that require payments to begin immediately, this type of borrowing lets districts postpone the start of payments for decades. Some districts are gambling the economic picture will improve in the decades ahead, with local tax collections increasingly enough to repay the notes.

DATABASE: Bonds by district

CABs, as the bonds are known, allow schools to borrow large sums without violating state or locally imposed caps on property taxes, at least in the short term. But the lengthy delays in repayment increase interest expenses, in some cases to as much as 10 or 20 times the amount borrowed.

The practice is controversial and has been banned in at least one state. In California, prominent government officials charged with watching the public purse are warning school districts to avoid the transactions.

One sounding the alarm is California Treasurer Bill Lockyer, who compares CABs to the sort of creative Wall Street financing that contributed to the housing bubble, the subsequent debt crisis and the nation's lingering economic malaise.

"They are terrible deals," Lockyer said. "The school boards and staffs that approved of these bonds should be voted out of office and fired."

Most school bonds, like home mortgages, require roughly $2 to $3 to be paid back for every $1 borrowed. But CABs compound interest for much longer periods, meaning repayment costs are often many times that of traditional school bonds.

And property owners — not the school system — are likely to be on the hook for bigger tax bills if the agency's revenues can't cover future bond payments, Lockyer and other critics say.

Several financial consultants who advise school districts on CABs declined to comment, as did the chairman of their trade group. Education officials acknowledge some drawbacks with CABs, but argue that the bonds are funding vital educational projects.

The Newport Mesa Unified School District in Orange County issued $83 million in long-term notes in May 2011. Principal and interest will total about $548 million, but officials say they are confident they can pay off the debt.

The bonds "have allowed us to provide for facilities that are needed now," said the district's business manager, Paul Reed. "We could not afford to wait another 10 years."

Overall, 200 school systems, roughly a fifth of the districts statewide, have borrowed more than $2.8 billion since 2007 using CABs with maturities longer than 25 years. They will have to pay back about $16.3 billion in principal and interest, or an average of 5.8 times the amount they borrowed.

Nearly 70% of the money borrowed involves extended 30- to 40-year notes, which will cost district taxpayers $13.1 billion, or about 6.6 times the amount borrowed on average.

State and county treasurers say debt payments of no more than four times principal are considered reasonable, though some recommend a more conservative limit of three times.

"This is part of the 'new' Wall Street," Lockyer said. "It has done this kind of thing on the private investor side for years, then the housing market and now its public entities."

The Poway Unified School District, which serves middle-class communities in north San Diego County, is one of the school systems faced with massive CAB debt payments. In 2011, it issued $105 million in capital appreciation bonds to complete a school rebuilding program.

Because the recession had depressed property values and tax revenue, Poway district officials realized that using conventional bonds might jeopardize a promise to district voters to limit the tax rate.

So on the advice of an Irvine-based financial consulting firm, they turned to the long-term notes. Under the deal, the school board could keep construction moving, avoid reneging on its pledge to voters and stay within the legal limits. And it would not have to repay the bonds for decades.

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Oh, Yoko! Ono's fashion line gropes for Lennon

NEW YORK (AP) — You remember that Beatles classic "I Wanna Hold Your Hand"? Turns out Yoko Ono had other things in mind.

Ono's new menswear collection inspired by John Lennon includes pants with large handprints on the crotch, tank tops with nipple cutouts and even a flashing LED bra.

The collection of menswear for Opening Ceremony is based on a series of drawings she sketched as a gift for Lennon for their wedding day in 1969. Ono said she the illustrations were designs for clothing and accessories to celebrate Lennon's "hot bod."

Also in the collection are a "butt hoodie" with an outline suggesting its name, pants with cutouts at the behind, a jock strap with an LED light, open-toed boots and a transparent chest plaque with bells and a leather neck strap.

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Well: Weight Loss Surgery May Not Combat Diabetes Long-Term

Weight loss surgery, which in recent years has been seen as an increasingly attractive option for treating Type 2 diabetes, may not be as effective against the disease as it was initially thought to be, according to a new report. The study found that many obese Type 2 diabetics who undergo gastric bypass surgery do not experience a remission of their disease, and of those that do, about a third redevelop diabetes within five years of their operation.

The findings contrast with the growing perception that surgery is essentially a cure for Type II diabetes. Earlier this year, two widely publicized studies reported that surgery worked better than drugs, diet and exercise in causing a remission of Type 2 diabetes in overweight people whose blood sugar was out of control, leading some experts to call for greater use of surgery in treating the disease. But the studies were small and relatively short, lasting under two years.

The latest study, published in the journal Obesity Surgery, tracked thousands of diabetics who had gastric bypass surgery for more than a decade. It found that many people whose diabetes at first went away were likely to have it return. While weight regain is a common problem among those who undergo bariatric surgery, regaining lost weight did not appear to be the cause of diabetes relapse. Instead, the study found that people whose diabetes was most severe or in its later stages when they had surgery were more likely to have a relapse, regardless of whether they regained weight.

“Some people are under the impression that you have surgery and you’re cured,” said Dr. Vivian Fonseca, the president for medicine and science for the American Diabetes Association, who was not involved in the study. “There have been a lot of claims about how wonderful surgery is for diabetes, and I think this offers a more realistic picture.”

The findings suggest that weight loss surgery may be most effective for treating diabetes in those whose disease is not very advanced. “What we’re learning is that not all diabetic patients do as well as others,” said Dr. David E. Arterburn, the lead author of the study and an associate investigator at the Group Health Research Institute in Seattle. “Those who are early in diabetes seem to do the best, which makes a case for potentially earlier intervention.”

One of the strengths of the new study was that it involved thousands of patients enrolled in three large health plans in California and Minnesota, allowing detailed tracking over many years. All told, 4,434 adult diabetics were followed between 1995 and 2008. All were obese, and all underwent Roux-en-Y operations, the most popular type of gastric bypass procedure.

After surgery, about 68 percent of patients experienced a complete remission of their diabetes. But within five years, 35 percent of those patients had it return. Taken together, that means that most of the subjects in the study, about 56 percent — a figure that includes those whose disease never remitted — had no long-lasting remission of diabetes after surgery.

The researchers found that three factors were particularly good predictors of who was likely to have a relapse of diabetes. If patients, before surgery, had a relatively long duration of diabetes, had poor control of their blood sugar, or were taking insulin, then they were least likely to benefit from gastric bypass. A patient’s weight, either before or after surgery, was not correlated with their likelihood of remission or relapse.

In Type 2 diabetes, the beta cells that produce insulin in the pancreas tend to wear out as the disease progresses, which may explain why some people benefit less from surgery. “If someone is too far advanced in their diabetes, where their pancreas is frankly toward the latter stages of being able to produce insulin, then even after losing a bunch of weight their body may not be able to produce enough insulin to control their blood sugar,” Dr. Arterburn said.

Nonetheless, he said it might be the case that obese diabetics, even those whose disease is advanced, can still benefit from gastric surgery, at least as far as their quality of life and their risk factors for heart disease and other complications are concerned.

“It’s not a surefire cure for everyone,” he said. “But almost universally, patients lose weight after weight loss surgery, and that in and of itself may have so many health benefits.”

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U.S. economy grew at 'measured pace' in recent weeks, Fed says

Bloomberg News

November 29, 2012

The U.S. economy expanded at a "measured pace" in recent weeks as gains in consumer demand and housing were tempered by a slowdown in manufacturing and the impact of Superstorm Sandy, the Federal Reserve said in its "beige book" survey.

"Consumer spending grew at a moderate pace in most districts, while manufacturing weakened," the central bank said in the survey that comes out eight times a year and is based on reports from the Fed's 12 district banks.

"Contacts in a number of districts expressed concern and uncertainty about the federal budget, especially the fiscal cliff."

The report indicated that Fed policymakers were unlikely to curtail monthly purchases of $40 billion in housing debt to boost the three-year economic expansion. It also bolstered Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke's view that an agreement on reducing long-term federal budget deficits without abrupt tax increases and spending cuts would remove a barrier to growth.

In its prior report, the Fed said that "economic activity generally expanded modestly."

The Fed said seven of 12 districts reported "either slowing or outright contraction in manufacturing" as some contacts "expressed concern about the outlook for 2013, in part, due to the uncertainty regarding the outcome of the fiscal cliff."

Economic activity in the 12th District, which includes California, expanded at a modest pace during the reporting period of October through mid-November, the report said. "Price inflation for final goods and services was subdued overall, and upward wage pressures were quite limited.

"Sales of retail items and most business and consumer services rose further on net, and contacts noted expectations for sales growth during the holiday retail season."

The survey also said that in the district, "housing demand continued to firm, and conditions were largely stable for commercial real estate. Contacts from financial institutions reported that overall loan demand was largely unchanged, while credit quality improved."

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Alleged WikiLeaks source says he was illegally punished in jail

A key pretrial hearing for Pfc. Bradley Manning, accused of giving classified material to the website WikiLeaks, which then made it public, began Tuesday in a case that highlights the government’s resolve to keep war and diplomatic material secret.

Manning, who has been charged on 22 counts, faces life in prison if convicted of aiding the enemy, the most serious charge. His court-martial is scheduled for February.

A former intelligence analyst in Baghdad in 2009 and 2010, Manning is accused of sending hundreds of thousands of logs about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and more than 250,000 diplomatic cables to WikiLeaks.

The hearing at a military court at Ft. Meade outside Baltimore is scheduled to run through Sunday. Manning is expected to testify at some point. It would be the first time he has spoken publicly about the case and the conditions of his detainment since his arrest in 2010.

The defense will argue that all charges should be dismissed because Manning was subjected to “unlawful pretrial punishment,” according to a post on the website of his supporters, the Bradley Manning Support Network.

Manning will get a chance to testify about his treatment. His lawyers argue that he was illegally punished by being put alone in a cell for nine months at the Marine Corps brig in Quantico, Va. Military judges can dismiss all charges if pretrial punishment is particularly egregious, but that rarely happens, though the time in incarceration can be credited toward the sentencing.

“At this extremely important hearing, Bradley’s lawyer David Coombs ... will present evidence that brig psychiatrists opposed the decision to hold Bradley in solitary, and that brig commanders misled the public when they said that Bradley’s treatment was for ‘Prevention of Injury,' " his supporters said.

Manning has offered to take responsibility by pleading guilty to reduced charges. The military has not ruled on that offer.

Manning was in the brig from July 2010 to April 2011. The military argues the treatment there was proper since he classified as a maximum-security detainee. He was later moved to Ft. Leavenworth, Kan., where he was reevaluated and given a medium-security classification.

A United Nations investigator called the conditions of Manning's imprisonment cruel, inhuman and degrading, but stopped short of calling it torture.

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Nintendo Unveils Wii Mini for the Canucks

Nintendo‘s pushing the new $ 299 Wii U console hard (and has already sold 400K units in the process), but in at least one region, the gaming company has a new back-up plan: The $ 99 Nintendo Wii Mini.

[More from Mashable: Wii U Sells 400,000 Units in First Week]

The new smaller, black box with red trim is a simpler game console. It offers no Internet access and cannot play older GameCube console games. What it does do is play virtually all Wii games (Nintendo says there are around 1,300 of them). The other major caveat is that the console is only available in Canada. According to a Nintendo press release on the new system, “Wii Mini is available exclusively in Canada during the holiday season. No information is available about its potential availability in other territories in the future.”

Nintendo also left out some details on the console itself. We do not know the exact size or weight of the box, though judging from the above image, it’s not much wider than a Wii Remote.

[More from Mashable: Meet the Super Fan Who Waited in Line for a Month for a Wii U [VIDEO]]

As Nintendo describes it, the Wii Mini is “all about games,” and without the Internet, it has to be. No Web browsing, cavorting with other Mii’s or multi-player gaming. It’s also worth noting that while the Wii Mini ships with a single Wii Remote Plus and Nunchuk (both red), a brand new Black Wii with Wii Sports and Wii Sports Resort (including Remote and Nunchuk) is currently $ 119 at Best Buy.

What do you think of the Wii Mini? Would you game without the Internet? Is this the perfect gift for young, Canadian children? Let us know in the comments.

GamePad

The Wii U GamePad has a 6.2-inch touchscreen.

Click here to view this gallery.

This story originally published on Mashable here.

Gaming News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Judge bows out of 'pink slime' suit over ABC ties

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) — A federal judge has recused himself from presiding over a $1.2 billion defamation lawsuit against ABC because his daughter-in-law works as a producer on one of the network's morning shows.

Judge Lawrence L. Piersol recused himself from hearing the defamation lawsuit filed by South Dakota-based Beef Products Inc. against ABC because his daughter-in-law works as a producer on "Good Morning America."

The case has been reassigned to Chief Judge Karen Schreier.

Beef Products Inc. sued ABC in September over its coverage of a meat product called lean, finely textured beef. Critics have dubbed the product "pink slime." The meat processor claims the network damaged the company by misleading consumers into believing the product is unhealthy and unsafe.

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Global Update: Investing in Eyeglasses for Poor Would Boost International Economy

BSIP/UIG Via Getty Images

Eliminating the worldwide shortage of eyeglasses could cost up to $28 billion, but would add more than $200 billion to the global economy, according to a study published last month in the Bulletin of the World Health Organization.

The $28 billion would cover the cost of training 65,000 optometrists and equipping clinics where they could prescribe eyeglasses, which can now be mass-produced for as little as $2 a pair. The study was done by scientists from Australia and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

The authors assumed that 703 million people worldwide have uncorrected nearsightedness or farsightedness severe enough to impair their work, and that 80 percent of them could be helped with off-the-rack glasses, which would need to be replaced every five years.

The biggest productivity savings from better vision would not be in very poor regions like Africa but in moderately poor countries where more people have factory jobs or trades like driving or running a sewing machine.

Without the equivalent of reading glasses, “lots of skilled crafts become very difficult after age 40 or 45,” said Kevin Frick, a Johns Hopkins health policy economist and study co-author. “You don’t want to be swinging a hammer if you can’t see the nail.”

If millions of schoolchildren who need glasses got them, the return on investment could be even greater, he said, but that would be in the future and was not calculated in this study.

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Federal budget standoff is nerve-racking for state's long-term jobless

SACRAMENTO — The federal budget crisis in Washington known as the "fiscal cliff" has an estimated 400,000 long-term jobless Californians on the edge.

A 41/2 -year-old program of emergency federal jobless assistance, which provides many of the state's unemployed up to $450 a week in benefits, is scheduled to expire Dec. 29 — unless Congress and President Obama agree to keep it going.

Nationwide, about 2 million people face a cutoff in unemployment benefits, estimated to cost $30 billion in the coming year. An additional 1 million jobless workers are expected to lose unemployment benefits by March.

Quiz: How much do you know about the 'fiscal cliff'?

"There's going to be millions of us who, basically, will be out in the streets," said Lis De Bats, 54, an Agoura Hills resident laid off in January from a job as a new-home sales manager. "I'd lose my home and everything that goes along with it. I've used up all my resources."

Although the federal budget debate has prompted worries in many sectors of the economy, including federal workers and aerospace workers in Southern California, the threat to these emergency benefits is especially nerve-racking to those with no other means of support.

In California, notices of the impending loss of benefits are being mailed this week. The letters also provide information about other types of state support, including food stamps, welfare and healthcare programs for the poor.

And the benefits are important not just to needy individuals and families but also to economically hard-pressed communities, economists say.

"If you take money out of the economy, it will slow economic growth," said Stephen Levy, director of the Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy in Palo Alto. "What's happening in Europe should show us that taking money out of the economy leads to recession."

So far, the nation's policymakers on Capitol Hill and in the Obama administration haven't reached an agreement on whether to extend unemployment benefits, keep the President George W. Bush-era payroll tax cuts, and allow automatic federal spending reductions to kick in, among other options, before Congress adjourns at year's end.

The uncertainty is troubling for Eric Silvern, 53, a Culver City high school teacher laid off in June 2011 and whose federal benefits were scheduled to run out in April. But now they may be gone by the end of the year.

"I'm very scared because I'm eligible for four more months, and I totally depend on them," he said. "I'm biting my nails every day worrying about it. In the past, they postponed the cuts, and I'm hoping they do that again."

For many chronically unemployed, those who haven't found steady work more than a year after being laid off, these emergency benefits are often their only way to pay for mortgages or rent, food and gasoline. As of October, about 35% of the state's nearly 2 million jobless had been out of work for 52 weeks or longer, according to the state Employment Development Department.

De Bats of Agoura Hills said she applies for an average of 50 jobs a week only to see the few openings filled by lower-paid, entry-level job seekers.

"I've cut everything to the bare minimal needed," she said. "It's been really tough."

Her predicament is typical of a large group of stubbornly unemployed despite gradual improvements in both the California and national economies, experts said.

California's unemployment rate in October dropped to 10.1% from 11.5% in October 2011. Still, the state had the third-highest unemployment level in the nation after Nevada and Rhode Island. The national rate was 7.9% in October.

The unemployment insurance program was "only designed for temporary sustenance while looking for a new job. It was never a substitute for welfare," said Employment Development Department spokeswoman Loree Levy.

"What we have is a crisis of long-term unemployment," said Maurice Emsellem, policy co-director on the West Coast for the National Employment Law Project, which advocates for the jobless and working poor. "We've never had this many people unemployed for this long."

Whether the federal unemployment payments get another extension remains uncertain. Unemployment benefits got little attention during the presidential campaign. But the president did address the issue publicly at a town hall meeting in Cincinnati last summer when he responded to a question from the daughter of an out-of-work construction worker.

"We'll continue to negotiate with Congress to make sure that unemployment is there," Obama responded. "But the most important thing I want to do is make sure your dad can get a job."

Drew Hammill, a spokesman for House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco, said that "Democrats have supported extending unemployment insurance benefits over and over again." But he noted that the federal emergency extensions are just one of about "a dozen things that expire at the end of the year" and that might be addressed as part of a "fiscal cliff" deal.

For its part, the administration of Gov. Jerry Brown is lobbying Washington about "the significant impact the end of benefits will have on unemployed Californians," said Elizabeth Ashford, a spokeswoman for Brown.

Jennie Roberson, 29, said she learned the hard way about the importance of the federal unemployment payments. The Los Feliz graduate of UC Santa Barbara "has been searching for solid work since August 2010" and been "couch surfing" — living with a friend — since May because she didn't have enough money for rent.

Roberson just started working part time as a waiter and feeling that her life soon might turn around. The former administrative assistant for a nonprofit golfing organization is eager to find any type of office position.

But until that happens, the extended benefits are "a lifesaver, absolutely," she said, because "if I didn't have that coming in, I wouldn't have had any income."

marc.lifsher@latimes.com

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