Kern County farmers take on oil industry, California

SHAFTER — In this lush pocket of Kern County, where the agriculture and oil industries have long coexisted, Mike Hopkins' almond orchard has become a battlefield in a dispute that extends to the governor's office.

Hopkins is standing up to the oil industry — and Gov. Jerry Brown — by filing a lawsuit against the state to bar energy company Venoco Inc. from drilling an exploratory well on his farm without a full environmental review. Venoco has the mineral rights to Hopkins' 38-acre farm.

Across Kern County, other farmers are waging similar fights. With oil prices booming and energy companies eager to develop new wells, the state has granted oil companies permission to drill on farms without first assessing possible harm to the environment, as called for under the California Environmental Quality Act.

"I want the oil industry to make money," Hopkins said. But not if the drilling damages his farm and livelihood.

The exemptions from CEQA are precisely what Brown sought late in 2011 when he replaced two top officials in the state Conservation Department with appointees who agreed to ease environmental restrictions on energy companies.

In the months afterward, the department granted oil companies 19 exemptions statewide — a six-fold increase from the year before — and 14 energy firms gave more than $1.1 million to the governor's tax initiative, Proposition 30, which voters approved in November.

"I've never seen a CEQA exemption I didn't like," Brown told reporters at a news conference earlier this year.

In Kern, farmers pushed back after the state granted 16 exemptions in California's richest oil county. Four farmers wrote a letter to the state accusing officials of skirting the law by granting environmental waivers. The letter, sent in August by Irvine lawyer Gregory Sanders, asked regulators to explain "an institutional pattern and practice … in which the requirements of CEQA are disregarded" when considering oil permits.

"It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what could go wrong with an oil well," Sanders said in an interview.

State officials and the governor's office declined to respond to questions for this story. But in a written statement to The Times, the Conservation Department's Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources defended the general use of exemptions.

The statement said oil projects are evaluated case by case, taking into consideration several factors, including proximity to residential communities and whether sites are in existing oil fields.

Nearly all of the state's exemptions cite the same CEQA provision: The operation would result in only a "minor alteration to land."

Environmental groups challenge that interpretation. They note that the provision is typically applied to small projects. The law gives such examples as painting bicycle lanes on a street, clearing flammable vegetation around a home and hosting a carnival in a parking lot.

"It's difficult for us to see how the exemption would ever apply to a new oil and gas well," said George Torgun, an attorney with Earthjustice, one of several environmental groups that have filed lawsuits against the state.

The energy industry contends the exemptions are needed to avoid lengthy delays, helping the economy in the process.

State data shows that the drive for oil is helping Kern County's recovery. The county is just 3,400 jobs short of matching its peak employment of 239,600, reached in 2007 at the height of the housing boom.

Emails obtained by The Times through a Public Records Act request show that before Brown fired the two Conservation Department officials, oil lobbyists had pushed regulators for exemptions — and appealed to higher-ranking state officials when the requests were denied.

In one case, Elena Miller, the Conservation Department's oil and gas supervisor, complained to her boss that AERA Energy had cleared land for well construction and built roads before doing a CEQA study.

"We can presume that little critters lived in that vegetation," she wrote. "This is their environmental program, tear it up, build a road, and then hire a (CEQA) consultant."

Brown fired Miller, saying she and others had needlessly slowed the permit process.

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Euro zone crisis drags down European ad spending: report

LONDON (Reuters) – The euro zone crisis has left Western Europe the only world region to see a fall in advertising spending this year, market research group ZenithOptimedia said.

The forecasting group said advertising expenditure in Western Europe fell 2.2 percent to $ 106.8 billion this year compared with an average increase of 3.3 percent worldwide.

North American ad spending rose 4.1 percent to $ 171.9 billion and Asia’s expenditure was up 6.1 percent to $ 140.1 billion this year.

“Developing markets, social media and online video are all growing rapidly, supporting continued expansion in global ad expenditure despite stagnation in the eurozone,” said Steve King, global chief executive of ZenithOptimedia Group.

The company, part of advertising agency Publicis, also said European ad spending would be flat next year before growing by about 2 percent in 2014 and 2015.

This leaves Europe lagging faster-growing regions such North America, which will grow by 3.5 percent next year, as well as Asia (5.5 percent) and Latin America (10 percent).

“The euro zone crisis is dragging down economic growth at the moment,” ZenithOptimedia said on Monday.

“Because the eurozone is in recession, its imports from other countries are slowing down or shrinking, and the risk of eurozone collapse adds to global uncertainty, leading companies to hoard cash instead of investing in growth,” the firm said in an emailed statement.

Ad spending generally tracks economic growth, so recessions tend to hit the shares of advertising agencies, including market leaders WPP, Omnicom, Interpublic Group and Publicis.

ZenithOptimedia said global ad expenditure would rise 4.1 percent next year to reach $ 518 billion, driven largely by faster growth in the developing markets.

(Editing by Helen Massy-Beresford)

Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Young down by boardwalk for benefit show

NEW YORK (AP) — Neil Young said Sunday that he couldn't see performing in the area devastated by Superstorm Sandy without doing something to help people who were affected by it.

Young and his longtime backing band, Crazy Horse, will hold a benefit concert for the American Red Cross' storm relief effort Thursday at the Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa in Atlantic City. The New Jersey coastline areas were hit hard by the storm in late October.

People in the New York area who suffered damage in the storm have been supporting him for 40 years, he said.

"I couldn't see coming back here and just playing and have it be business as usual," he said. Young is touring in the area, with concerts scheduled for Monday in Brooklyn and Tuesday in Bridgeport, Conn.

Minimum ticket prices for the standing-room show in Atlantic City will be $75 and $150, although Young notes there's no maximum. He hopes to raise several hundred thousand dollars for the Red Cross.

Young said he was invited to join the Dec. 12 benefit at New York's Madison Square Garden that will feature Bruce Springsteen, Paul McCartney, the Who, Kanye West and others, but had other obligations. Besides, there's enough star power there, he said.

"It wasn't going to make much difference whether I was there or not, so I decided to go someplace where I could make a difference," he said.

Young performed at a televised benefit in 2001 following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, memorably covering John Lennon's "Imagine."

Fans can expect a two-hour plus rock show on Thursday with opening band Everest. No special guests are planned, although Young issued an invitation to "anyone who wants to come in and play with us that we know and we know can play."

It's hard to resist wondering whether Young's epic "Like a Hurricane" will make it onto the set list, given the occasion.

"Anything's possible," Young said. "We have the equipment."

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Unboxed: Stand-Up Desks Gaining Favor in the Workplace

THE health studies that conclude that people should sit less, and get up and move around more, have always struck me as fitting into the “well, duh” category.

But a closer look at the accumulating research on sitting reveals something more intriguing, and disturbing: the health hazards of sitting for long stretches are significant even for people who are quite active when they’re not sitting down. That point was reiterated recently in two studies, published in The British Journal of Sports Medicine and in Diabetologia, a journal of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes.

Suppose you stick to a five-times-a-week gym regimen, as I do, and have put in a lifetime of hard cardio exercise, and have a resting heart rate that’s a significant fraction below the norm. That doesn’t inoculate you, apparently, from the perils of sitting.

The research comes more from observing the health results of people’s behavior than from discovering the biological and genetic triggers that may be associated with extended sitting. Still, scientists have determined that after an hour or more of sitting, the production of enzymes that burn fat in the body declines by as much as 90 percent. Extended sitting, they add, slows the body’s metabolism of glucose and lowers the levels of good (HDL) cholesterol in the blood. Those are risk factors toward developing heart disease and Type 2 diabetes.

“The science is still evolving, but we believe that sitting is harmful in itself,” says Dr. Toni Yancey, a professor of health services at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Yet many of us still spend long hours each day sitting in front of a computer.

The good news is that when creative capitalism is working as it should, problems open the door to opportunity. New knowledge spreads, attitudes shift, consumer demand emerges and companies and entrepreneurs develop new products. That process is under way, addressing what might be called the sitting crisis. The results have been workstations that allow modern information workers to stand, even walk, while toiling at a keyboard.

Dr. Yancey goes further. She has a treadmill desk in the office and works on her recumbent bike at home.

If there is a movement toward ergonomic diversity and upright work in the information age, it will also be a return to the past. Today, the diligent worker tends to be defined as a person who puts in long hours crouched in front of a screen. But in the 19th and early 20th centuries, office workers, like clerks, accountants and managers, mostly stood. Sitting was slacking. And if you stand at work today, you join a distinguished lineage — Leonardo da Vinci, Ben Franklin, Winston Churchill, Vladimir Nabokov and, according to a recent profile in The New York Times, Philip Roth.

DR. JAMES A. LEVINE of the Mayo Clinic is a leading researcher in the field of inactivity studies. When he began his research 15 years ago, he says, it was seen as a novelty.

“But it’s totally mainstream now,” he says. “There’s been an explosion of research in this area, because the health care cost implications are so enormous.”

Steelcase, the big maker of office furniture, has seen a similar trend in the emerging marketplace for adjustable workstations, which allow workers to sit or stand during the day, and for workstations with a treadmill underneath for walking. (Its treadmill model was inspired by Dr. Levine, who built his own and shared his research with Steelcase.)

The company offered its first models of height-adjustable desks in 2004. In the last five years, sales of its lines of adjustable desks and the treadmill desk have surged fivefold, to more than $40 million. Its models for stand-up work range from about $1,600 to more than $4,000 for a desk that includes an actual treadmill. Corporate customers include Chevron, Intel, Allstate, Boeing, Apple and Google.

“It started out very small, but it’s not a niche market anymore,” says Allan Smith, vice president for product marketing at Steelcase.

The Steelcase offerings are the Mercedes-Benzes and Cadillacs of upright workstations, but there are plenty of Chevys as well, especially from small, entrepreneurial companies.

In 2009, Daniel Sharkey was laid off as a plant manager of a tool-and-die factory, after nearly 30 years with the company. A garage tinkerer, Mr. Sharkey had designed his own adjustable desk for standing. On a whim, he called it the kangaroo desk, because “it holds things, and goes up and down.” He says that when he lost his job, his wife, Kathy, told him, “People think that kangaroo thing is pretty neat.”

Today, Mr. Sharkey’s company, Ergo Desktop, employs 16 people at its 8,000-square-foot assembly factory in Celina, Ohio. Sales of its several models, priced from $260 to $600, have quadrupled in the last year, and it now ships tens of thousands of workstations a year.

Steve Bordley of Scottsdale, Ariz., also designed a solution for himself that became a full-time business. After a leg injury left him unable to run, he gained weight. So he fixed up a desktop that could be mounted on a treadmill he already owned. He walked slowly on the treadmill while making phone calls and working on a computer. In six weeks, Mr. Bordley says, he lost 25 pounds and his nagging back pain vanished.

He quit the commercial real estate business and founded TrekDesk in 2007. He began shipping his desk the next year. (The treadmill must be supplied by the user.) Sales have grown tenfold from 2008, with several thousand of the desks, priced at $479, now sold annually.

“It’s gone from being treated as a laughingstock to a product that many people find genuinely interesting,” Mr. Bordley says.

There is also a growing collection of do-it-yourself solutions for stand-up work. Many are posted on Web sites like howtogeek.com, and freely shared like recipes. For example, Colin Nederkoorn, chief executive of an e-mail marketing start-up, Customer.io, has posted one such design on his blog. Such setups can cost as little as $30 or even less, if cobbled together with available materials.

UPRIGHT workstations were hailed recently by no less a trend spotter of modern work habits and gadgetry than Wired magazine. In its October issue, it chose “Get a Standing Desk” as one of its “18 Data-Driven Ways to Be Happier, Healthier and Even a Little Smarter.”

The magazine has kept tabs on the evolving standing-desk research and marketplace, and several staff members have become converts themselves in the last few months.

“And we’re all universally happy about it,” Thomas Goetz, Wired’s executive editor, wrote in an e-mail — sent from his new standing desk.

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Chinatrust Bank headquarters coming to downtown Los Angeles

Chinatrust Bank has agreed to move its U.S. headquarters from Torrance to downtown Los Angeles.

The bank will rent two floors in 801 Tower, a company representative said. The high-rise is in the financial district north of Staples Center.

“We wanted to be in a major financial area,” said Brian Gregson, head of Chinatrust U.S.A.’s retail banking group. “This is the early stage of getting our ducks in a row to start some expansion.”

The bank’s name will be affixed on top of the 25-story tower at 801 S. Figueroa St., he said.

Taiwan-based Chinatrust has 12 branches in the United States, seven of which are in Southern California. The bank will move about 175 employees to the new headquarters by the middle of next year, Gregson said.

Terms of the lease with landlord Mani Brothers Real Estate Group were not disclosed, but data provider CoStar said the agreement is for 10 years. At current rents, the lease for nearly 40,000 square feet would be valued at nearly $20 million.

Chinabank’s decision to move downtown is part of a recent trend for businesses to relocate their main offices to the financial center, reversing the exodus of previous decades, real estate broker Ted Simpson of Cushman & Wakefield said.

“This speaks to the emergence of downtown L.A. as a corporate headquarters destination not seen since the 1980s,” said Simpson, who represented the bank in the transaction with his partner Michael Ma.

Other companies to recently move their main offices or regional headquarters downtown include law firm Haight Brown Bonesteel and architecture firm Gensler.

“Corporations are once again choosing downtown for its attractiveness to its employees, not just low cost,” Simpson said.

Average rents are cheaper downtown than on the popular Westside, in part because downtown has higher vacancy. Large corporations including Arco and First Interstate Bank left downtown in past decades or substantially reduced their offices.

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Boy Scouts' opposition to background checks let pedophiles in

Amid reports of widespread sexual abuse of children in the late 1980s, several leading youth organizations began conducting criminal background checks of volunteers and staff members.

Big Brothers Big Sisters ordered the checks for all volunteers starting in 1986. Boys and Girls Clubs of America recommended their use the same year.

One of the nation's oldest and largest youth groups, however, was opposed — the Boy Scouts of America.

FULL COVERAGE: Inside the Boy Scouts' "perversion files"

Scouting officials argued that background checks would cost too much, scare away volunteers and provide a false sense of security. They successfully lobbied to kill state legislation that would have mandated FBI fingerprint screening.

While touting their efforts to protect children, the Scouts for years resisted one of the most basic tools for preventing abuse. The result: The organization let in hundreds of men with criminal histories of child molestation, many of whom went on to abuse more children, according to a Times analysis of the Scouts' confidential abuse files.

Scouting did not require criminal background checks for all volunteers until 2008 — despite calls from parents and staff who said its vetting system didn't work.

In 1989, a Scout committee chairman in St. Paul, Minn., decried the organization's "half-hearted" screening in a letter to headquarters.

"BSA is only creating an illusion of performing what they claim," K. Russell Sias wrote to Scout Chief Executive Ben Love. "It becomes quite clear that BSA is more concerned in 'passing the buck' than in accepting responsibility for those who are its adult leaders."

That same year, a Las Vegas scoutmaster with a criminal history of exposing himself to boys was arrested for sexually abusing a 12-year-old Scout. One parent said casinos did a better job of screening workers.

"The black eye which scouting has suffered in this … could easily have been avoided if the council had taken the simple expedient of doing a background investigation," the parent wrote to Scouting officials.

From 1985 to 1991 — when the detailed files obtained by The Times end — the Boy Scouts admitted more than 230 men with previous arrests or convictions for sex crimes against children, the analysis found.

The men were accused of molesting nearly 400 boys while in Scouting. They accounted for one in six of those expelled for alleged abuse during those years.

Scouting officials declined to be interviewed but said in a prepared statement that they have enhanced their policies over the years and tried "to ensure we are in line with and, where possible, ahead of society's knowledge of abuse and best practices for prevention."

"Numerous independent experts have recognized that our programs for protecting Scouts from abuse are among the best in the youth-serving community," it said.

The Scouts' past handling of child sexual abuse has come under increased scrutiny since October, after the court-ordered release of hundreds of confidential files dating back decades. The Times earlier obtained and analyzed a larger and more recent set of files — about 1,900 dossiers opened from 1970 to 1991.

The records, dubbed the "perversion files" by Scouting officials, have been a key tool for nearly a century, intended to keep out men expelled for alleged abuse.

The files also offer a detailed record of the system's failures. The Times reported in August that from 1970 to 1991 dozens of men previously expelled had slipped back into the program, only to be accused of molesting again. The Times later reported that Scouting officials failed to report hundreds of alleged abusers to police and often hid the allegations from parents and the public.

The organization has fought in court to prevent the release of more recent files, making it impossible to determine how many men with criminal histories were caught in the organization after 1991.

Court records and news accounts, however, show that convicted molesters continued to find new victims in Scouting.

Read More..

Ricky Martin finds new home on small screen

NEW YORK (AP) — Ricky Martin is saying goodbye to Broadway's "Evita." But don't cry for him.

The Latin superstar has a slew of new projects in the works, including two television series and a children's book.

"It's about growing," said Martin in an interview Friday. "It's a moment in my life where I just need to absorb and be surrounded by amazing actors and musicians and grow as an entertainer. I think this is going to be an amazing year for that."

Martin takes his final bow in the Andrew Lloyd Webber revival on Jan. 26. Then he heads down under to join the second season of the Australian edition of "The Voice." But the Grammy winner says not to expect any biting, Simon Cowellesque critiques.

"I don't believe in tough love. I believe in love, and I believe in being nurturing to new talented men and women," he said at an M.A.C. Viva Glam event for Saturday's World AIDS Day. Martin partnered with the cosmetics brand to raise awareness and funding for HIV/AIDS programs worldwide.

The "Livin' la Vida Loca" singer is developing a new series for NBC, expected in 2013. He's producing, writing and will star in the currently untitled dramedy, where he hopes to tackle social issues with humor.

He's also writing his second book and admitted he didn't have to look far for inspiration.

"I think it's time to write about things that I've been through with my kids that I'm sure many daddys out there will understand," said the father of 4-year-old twins Matteo and Valentino.

The family-friendly story about self-esteem is slated for release next summer.

___

AP writer Sigal Ratner-Arias contributed to this story.

___

Follow Nicole Evatt on Twitter at http://twitter.com/NicoleEvatt

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Unboxed: Stand-Up Desks Gaining Favor in the Workplace

THE health studies that conclude that people should sit less, and get up and move around more, have always struck me as fitting into the “well, duh” category.

But a closer look at the accumulating research on sitting reveals something more intriguing, and disturbing: the health hazards of sitting for long stretches are significant even for people who are quite active when they’re not sitting down. That point was reiterated recently in two studies, published in The British Journal of Sports Medicine and in Diabetologia, a journal of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes.

Suppose you stick to a five-times-a-week gym regimen, as I do, and have put in a lifetime of hard cardio exercise, and have a resting heart rate that’s a significant fraction below the norm. That doesn’t inoculate you, apparently, from the perils of sitting.

The research comes more from observing the health results of people’s behavior than from discovering the biological and genetic triggers that may be associated with extended sitting. Still, scientists have determined that after an hour or more of sitting, the production of enzymes that burn fat in the body declines by as much as 90 percent. Extended sitting, they add, slows the body’s metabolism of glucose and lowers the levels of good (HDL) cholesterol in the blood. Those are risk factors toward developing heart disease and Type 2 diabetes.

“The science is still evolving, but we believe that sitting is harmful in itself,” says Dr. Toni Yancey, a professor of health services at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Yet many of us still spend long hours each day sitting in front of a computer.

The good news is that when creative capitalism is working as it should, problems open the door to opportunity. New knowledge spreads, attitudes shift, consumer demand emerges and companies and entrepreneurs develop new products. That process is under way, addressing what might be called the sitting crisis. The results have been workstations that allow modern information workers to stand, even walk, while toiling at a keyboard.

Dr. Yancey goes further. She has a treadmill desk in the office and works on her recumbent bike at home.

If there is a movement toward ergonomic diversity and upright work in the information age, it will also be a return to the past. Today, the diligent worker tends to be defined as a person who puts in long hours crouched in front of a screen. But in the 19th and early 20th centuries, office workers, like clerks, accountants and managers, mostly stood. Sitting was slacking. And if you stand at work today, you join a distinguished lineage — Leonardo da Vinci, Ben Franklin, Winston Churchill, Vladimir Nabokov and, according to a recent profile in The New York Times, Philip Roth.

DR. JAMES A. LEVINE of the Mayo Clinic is a leading researcher in the field of inactivity studies. When he began his research 15 years ago, he says, it was seen as a novelty.

“But it’s totally mainstream now,” he says. “There’s been an explosion of research in this area, because the health care cost implications are so enormous.”

Steelcase, the big maker of office furniture, has seen a similar trend in the emerging marketplace for adjustable workstations, which allow workers to sit or stand during the day, and for workstations with a treadmill underneath for walking. (Its treadmill model was inspired by Dr. Levine, who built his own and shared his research with Steelcase.)

The company offered its first models of height-adjustable desks in 2004. In the last five years, sales of its lines of adjustable desks and the treadmill desk have surged fivefold, to more than $40 million. Its models for stand-up work range from about $1,600 to more than $4,000 for a desk that includes an actual treadmill. Corporate customers include Chevron, Intel, Allstate, Boeing, Apple and Google.

“It started out very small, but it’s not a niche market anymore,” says Allan Smith, vice president for product marketing at Steelcase.

The Steelcase offerings are the Mercedes-Benzes and Cadillacs of upright workstations, but there are plenty of Chevys as well, especially from small, entrepreneurial companies.

In 2009, Daniel Sharkey was laid off as a plant manager of a tool-and-die factory, after nearly 30 years with the company. A garage tinkerer, Mr. Sharkey had designed his own adjustable desk for standing. On a whim, he called it the kangaroo desk, because “it holds things, and goes up and down.” He says that when he lost his job, his wife, Kathy, told him, “People think that kangaroo thing is pretty neat.”

Today, Mr. Sharkey’s company, Ergo Desktop, employs 16 people at its 8,000-square-foot assembly factory in Celina, Ohio. Sales of its several models, priced from $260 to $600, have quadrupled in the last year, and it now ships tens of thousands of workstations a year.

Steve Bordley of Scottsdale, Ariz., also designed a solution for himself that became a full-time business. After a leg injury left him unable to run, he gained weight. So he fixed up a desktop that could be mounted on a treadmill he already owned. He walked slowly on the treadmill while making phone calls and working on a computer. In six weeks, Mr. Bordley says, he lost 25 pounds and his nagging back pain vanished.

He quit the commercial real estate business and founded TrekDesk in 2007. He began shipping his desk the next year. (The treadmill must be supplied by the user.) Sales have grown tenfold from 2008, with several thousand of the desks, priced at $479, now sold annually.

“It’s gone from being treated as a laughingstock to a product that many people find genuinely interesting,” Mr. Bordley says.

There is also a growing collection of do-it-yourself solutions for stand-up work. Many are posted on Web sites like howtogeek.com, and freely shared like recipes. For example, Colin Nederkoorn, chief executive of an e-mail marketing start-up, Customer.io, has posted one such design on his blog. Such setups can cost as little as $30 or even less, if cobbled together with available materials.

UPRIGHT workstations were hailed recently by no less a trend spotter of modern work habits and gadgetry than Wired magazine. In its October issue, it chose “Get a Standing Desk” as one of its “18 Data-Driven Ways to Be Happier, Healthier and Even a Little Smarter.”

The magazine has kept tabs on the evolving standing-desk research and marketplace, and several staff members have become converts themselves in the last few months.

“And we’re all universally happy about it,” Thomas Goetz, Wired’s executive editor, wrote in an e-mail — sent from his new standing desk.

Read More..

Port labor talks shift into higher gear, but strike continues

In a potentially hopeful sign, contract talks in the now 5-day-old strike at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach went all night Friday and into early Saturday morning.

"Representatives of the harbor employers and [union] leadership have resumed negotiations today in an effort to reach a fair agreement that will end the strike," according to a statement released Saturday by the Los Angeles/Long Beach Harbor Employers Assn., which represents some of the world's largest shipping lines and terminal operators.

The strike, by the 800-member International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 63 Office Clerical Unit, has shut down 10 of the 14 cargo container terminals at the nation's busiest seaport complex.

In 2011, the two ports handled 14 million cargo containers. The next five biggest U.S. ports combined -- New York-New Jersey, Savannah, Oakland, Seattle, and Virginia -- moved only slightly more, at 14.6 million containers.

Even more telling of the two ports' economic impact, they last year handled 39.5% of the total value of all container imports entering the U.S. from origins worldwide, according to Jock O'Connell, international trade economist and adviser to Beacon Economics.

O'Connell and other economists have placed the impact of the strike at about $1 billion a day in forfeited worker pay, missing revenue for truckers and other businesses, and the value of the cargo that has been diverted to other ports.

O'Connell added that, based on last November's trade flows through the ports, the closures are stranding an estimated $1.125 billion worth of merchandise a day.

The union, which handles the vast amount of paperwork associated with the ports' container cargo, has been working without a contract since June 30, 2010.

Its strike has crippled the port because of support from the ILWU dockworkers, who have 50,000 members on the U.S. West Coast, in Canada and in Hawaii. The dockworkers negotiate their contracts separately, but the 10,000 members who work at the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports have honored the smaller union's picket lines.

As a result, seven of the eight cargo container terminals at the Port of Los Angeles remain closed. Three of the six cargo container terminals at the Port of Long Beach are also closed.

The union says that its main issue is what it claims is the outsourcing of its jobs, which are being lost through attrition, retirements, illnesses or other reasons.

The shipping lines and terminal operators say the union's outsourcing claims are bogus and say they have offered "absolute job security."

The employers have repeatedly said the union members are the highest-paid clerical workers in the U.S., having a total compensation package of $165,000 a year, including wages, benefits, pension contributions and paid vacation. That package would be worth $195,000 a year under management's new offer, the employers have said.

On Saturday, the union offered a rebuttal, saying that the employers' claims were misleading. Wages reached $40 to $41 an hour, for an annual pay level of $80,000 to $82,200 a year, not counting overtime, retirement or benefits. The union has asked for a 2.5% raise, said union spokesman Craig Merrilees. 

Since the strike started, nine ships have either diverted at sea or briefly anchored outside the ports before leaving to unload at another harbor.

But there were no new ship diversions on Saturday, said Capt. Dick McKenna, executive director of the Marine Exchange of Southern California, which tracks vessel movements. McKenna said some ships inbound to Los Angeles and Long Beach appeared to have slowed down, lengthening their cruise times, in hopes that the strike might be resolved before they arrived.

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Losses mount as port strike persists

Wal-Mart blamed for poor working conditions

Los Angeles-Long Beach labor talks run late as strike continues

Read More..

L.A. County seeing high-risk offenders entering its probation system

One year into California's state prison realignment program, Los Angeles County is seeing an unexpected number of high-risk offenders coming into its probation system, including some with a history of severe mental illness.

It remains unclear whether realignment — which shifted responsibility for some nonviolent offenders from prisons to county jails and from state parole to county probation — is having an effect on crime rates. But a report by a county advisory body found that a majority of state prison inmates who have been released to county probation are at a high risk of reoffending.

In the first year of the new system, which took effect in October 2011, 11,136 offenders were released from state prison to Los Angeles County probation. Of those who reported to probation for assessment, 59% were classed as high risk, 40% as medium risk and only 1% as low risk.

The department uses probationers' criminal history and other factors to determine the risk that they will commit new crimes and the resources required to supervise them.

Deputy Chief Reaver Bingham said the department originally projected that 50% of the offenders coming out of state prison would fall into the high-risk category.

And a handful of people previously classified as mentally disordered offenders — people considered dangerous because of mental illness — were downgraded or "decertified" while in state hospitals, making them eligible for county supervision, according to the report issued Thursday by the Countywide Criminal Justice Coordination Committee.

County officials said that runs contrary to the spirit of realignment, which was pitched as a money-saving measure for the state that would transfer low-level offenders to less costly county supervision. The committee's report said the decertified mentally disordered offenders "present high public safety risk, present significant placement issues, and consume high levels of resources."

Jeffrey Callison, a spokesman with the state corrections department, said the courts, not the department, determine who is decertified and that under the current law, people not classified as mentally disordered who are eligible for realignment are required to go to county supervision.

"It's not for me to say that a given county does or doesn't have the resources to supervise a person who has been decertified," he said.

The committee's report recommended that the county seek legislation to shift back to the state responsibility for probationers formerly designated as mentally disordered offenders as well as "medically fragile" people and prisoners serving long sentences in county jail.

abby.sewell@latimes.com

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