California PUC Finalizing Free Cell Phone Service for the Poor

As noted by KGO, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) intends to approve a free lifeline cell phone plan that benefits California‘s poor and homeless residents. Funding for initial setup will come from the federal government.

What are the initial details of the plan?

Qualifying Californians pay an initial $ 20 fee to sign up for a monthly cell coverage plan. It offers 250 free minutes as well as 250 free text messages. From then on, the minutes and message count refill every month as long as the participant qualifies for the program. Assured Wireless — the name of the plan devised by Virgin Mobile, KERN Radio notes — has proposed this coverage to the CPUC.

Unlike the landline lifeline service, which only reduces a phone bill, this cell phone service is actually free of charge for participants. The company notes that plan participants can pay extra for international calling and for the purchase of additional minutes. The phone is free and network service is provided by Sprint. It is not known at this time if paying cell phone service customers will be charged a surcharge or fee to fund the program.

Who benefits from the free cell phone service?

The Coalition on Homelessness notes that those living on the streets will see an immediate benefit. “It’s so huge if you’re living outside you can dial 9-1-1 in the middle of the night; if you need to get in touch with your loved ones, you have a phone, if you’re trying to get in touch with a potential employer,” the Coalition on Homelessness’ Jennifer Friedenbach explained. Low-income wage earners, too, benefit since they no longer have to take money from other budget line items to afford a cell phone.

What is the wage income maximum for a qualifying program participant?

Participants cannot earn more than about $ 15,000 per year to qualify for the free cell phone program.

Is this type of program new?

This is not a new program. There are already 36 states that offer cell phone lifeline programs. The California PUC has thus far been unwilling to approve the program for the State of California.

Why does California need free cell phone service in the first place?

Although the State of California does participate in the federal lifeline landline service via local phone service providers, the number of landlines in service has decreased by 43 percent since 2000. On the flipside, the number of cell phones in use has increased by 123 percent.

What do critics say?

As noted by KERN, there is a question of taxpayer and cell phone customer cost. In other states, Sprint contributes to the program. It then has the option of charging its paying customers a fee that funds the program.

What do proponents say?

As noted by 4-Traders, Assurance Wireless has crunched the numbers for the entire nation and purports, “If all 28.5 million adults eligible for Lifeline Assistance were to take advantage of the program and earn at the same rate and level as [the study] sample, it would result in $ 3.7 billion in fresh income for the poor and near poor.”

What happens next?

As noted by the San Francisco Chronicle, the CPUC has already approved the Golden State’s participation in the program. It now needs to work out the details of Assurance Wireless’ promotional programs to advertise the free cell phone service. Program finalization is tentatively set for two weeks from now.

Sylvia Cochran is a Los Angeles area resident with a firm finger on the pulse of California politics. Talk radio junkie, community volunteer and politically independent, she scrutinizes the good and the bad from both sides of the political aisle.

Wireless News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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LA prosecutors seek to violate Lohan's probation

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Los Angeles prosecutors on Tuesday asked a judge to revoke Lindsay Lohan's probation and schedule a hearing that could lead to the actress' return to jail.

The filing came one day before Lohan is scheduled to be arraigned Wednesday on three misdemeanor charges filed last month related to a June car crash.

Lohan will not need to be present for Wednesday's arraignment on charges she lied to Santa Monica police, was driving recklessly and obstructed an officer from performing duties related to the crash investigation. She remains on probation for a 2011 necklace theft case and could be sentenced to 245 days in jail if a judge determines her conduct was a probation violation.

Her attorney Shawn Holley did not immediately return an email seeking comment.

City attorney's spokesman Frank Mateljan said any probation violation proceedings are likely to be heard after the Santa Monica case. Prosecutors allege Lohan lied about being a passenger in her Porsche when it crashed on Pacific Coast Highway on the way to a film shoot.

The "Liz and Dick" star was released from supervised probation in March after completing several months of court appearances and morgue cleanup duty.

Lohan has yet to be booked on the new charges and a judge on Wednesday will likely set bail and the terms of her release.

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Rate of Childhood Obesity Falls in Several Cities

Jessica Kourkounis for The New York Times

At William H. Ziegler Elementary in Northeast Philadelphia, students are getting acquainted with vegetables and healthy snacks.

PHILADELPHIA — After decades of rising childhood obesity rates, several American cities are reporting their first declines.

The trend has emerged in big cities like New York and Los Angeles, as well as smaller places like Anchorage, Alaska, and Kearney, Neb. The state of Mississippi has also registered a drop, but only among white students.

“It’s been nothing but bad news for 30 years, so the fact that we have any good news is a big story,” said Dr. Thomas Farley, the health commissioner in New York City, which reported a 5.5 percent decline in the number of obese schoolchildren from 2007 to 2011.

The drops are small, just 5 percent here in Philadelphia and 3 percent in Los Angeles. But experts say they are significant because they offer the first indication that the obesity epidemic, one of the nation’s most intractable health problems, may actually be reversing course.

The first dips — noted in a September report by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation — were so surprising that some researchers did not believe them.

Deanna M. Hoelscher, a researcher at the University of Texas, who in 2010 recorded one of the earliest declines — among mostly poor Hispanic fourth graders in the El Paso area — did a double-take. “We reran the numbers a couple of times,” she said. “I kept saying, ‘Will you please check that again for me?’ ”

Researchers say they are not sure what is behind the declines. They may be an early sign of a national shift that is visible only in cities that routinely measure the height and weight of schoolchildren. The decline in Los Angeles, for instance, was for fifth, seventh and ninth graders — the grades that are measured each year — between 2005 and 2010. Nor is it clear whether the drops have more to do with fewer obese children entering school or currently enrolled children losing weight. But researchers note that declines occurred in cities that have had obesity reduction policies in place for a number of years.

Though obesity is now part of the national conversation, with aggressive advertising campaigns in major cities and a push by Michelle Obama, many scientists doubt that anti-obesity programs actually work. Individual efforts like one-time exercise programs have rarely produced results. Researchers say that it will take a broad set of policies applied systematically to effectively reverse the trend, a conclusion underscored by an Institute of Medicine report released in May.

Philadelphia has undertaken a broad assault on childhood obesity for years. Sugary drinks like sweetened iced tea, fruit punch and sports drinks started to disappear from school vending machines in 2004. A year later, new snack guidelines set calorie and fat limits, which reduced the size of snack foods like potato chips to single servings. By 2009, deep fryers were gone from cafeterias and whole milk had been replaced by one percent and skim.

Change has been slow. Schools made money on sugary drinks, and some set up rogue drink machines that had to be hunted down. Deep fat fryers, favored by school administrators who did not want to lose popular items like French fries, were unplugged only after Wayne T. Grasela, the head of food services for the school district, stopped buying oil to fill them.

But the message seems to be getting through, even if acting on it is daunting. Josh Monserrat, an eighth grader at John Welsh Elementary, uses words like “carbs,” and “portion size.” He is part of a student group that promotes healthy eating. He has even dressed as an orange to try to get other children to eat better. Still, he struggles with his own weight. He is 5-foot-3 but weighed nearly 200 pounds at his last doctor’s visit.

“I was thinking, ‘Wow, I’m obese for my age,’ ” said Josh, who is 13. “I set a goal for myself to lose 50 pounds.”

Nationally, about 17 percent of children under 20 are obese, or about 12.5 million people, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which defines childhood obesity as a body mass index at or above the 95th percentile for children of the same age and sex. That rate, which has tripled since 1980, has leveled off in recent years but has remained at historical highs, and public health experts warn that it could bring long-term health risks.

Obese children are more likely to be obese as adults, creating a higher risk of heart disease and stroke. The American Cancer Society says that being overweight or obese is the culprit in one of seven cancer deaths. Diabetes in children is up by a fifth since 2000, according to federal data.

“I’m deeply worried about it,” said Francis S. Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health, who added that obesity is “almost certain to result in a serious downturn in longevity based on the risks people are taking on.”

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U.S. sets price on sale of remaining AIG shares

WASHINGTON — The Treasury Department said it would raise $7.6 billion in the sale of its remaining shares of American International Group Inc., ending the controversial bailout of the insurance giant with a $22.7-billion profit.

The department agreed Tuesday to sell its remaining 234 million shares in AIG, which represented 15.9% of the company, for $32.50 each. The offering is expected to be completed Friday.

The sale, in effect, closes the books on a bailout that, at its height, left the government pledging more than $182 billion in taxpayer funds to rescue the firm in return for owning 92% of its shares.

"The closing of this transaction will mark the full resolution of America's financial support of AIG — with a profit to taxpayers of $22.7 billion to date," AIG Chief Executive Robert Benmosche wrote in an email to company employees Tuesday.

"It marks one of the most extraordinary — and what many believed to be the most unlikely — turnarounds in American business history," Benmosche wrote.

Despite the bailout's profit, critics note the huge toll it took on public confidence in the financial system and the precedent it helped set for government intervention to protect companies deemed too big to fail.

"The bailout was an enormous cost to this country," said Phil Angelides, who headed the government's Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission.

Since 2008, AIG has been selling assets to raise money to repay the government and stabilize the company's finances.

Bad bets on the housing market brought AIG to the brink of bankruptcy in September of that year, helping fuel the financial crisis and drawing an unprecedented effort by the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department to keep the company afloat.

The bailout was the single largest of the crisis and fueled outrage and resentment from the public, Congress and government officials. Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said no single episode involving the near meltdown of the financial system made him more angry than having to help bail out AIG after its risky behavior.

AIG ended up using about $125 billion of the money promised to it. After the company was stabilized, the Fed and the Treasury Department began the long process of unwinding the complex bailout.

"Since the financial crisis, AIG has undertaken a dramatic restructuring effort, which put it in a stronger position to repay taxpayers," the Treasury Department said in a statement Tuesday. "The size of the company has been cut nearly in half as it sold non-core assets and focused on its core insurance operations."

The improvements — AIG's stock price is up 44% this year, gaining $1.90 to $35.26 on Tuesday — enabled the government to end the bailout more quickly than expected.

In August, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York sold the last of the asset-backed securities it acquired from AIG as part of the bailout. The Fed turned a profit of $17.7 billion on its part of the complex bailout.

The Treasury Department began selling its shares of the company in early 2011.

This week's sale will lead to a $5-billion profit, the department said. The Treasury Department will continue to hold warrants to buy about 2.7 million shares of AIG stock, and selling those warrants could generate more money.

"No taxpayer should be pleased that the government had to rescue this company, but all taxpayers should be pleased with [the] announcement, ending the largest of the government's financial industry bailouts with a profit to the Treasury Department," said James Millstein, a former Treasury official who oversaw AIG's restructuring from 2009 to 2011.

"The people of AIG who worked hard the past four years to repay the taxpayers' investment should be very proud of this accomplishment," Millstein said.

jim.puzzanghera@latimes.com

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In Venice, a new business bloom on Rose Avenue

Step inside the Rose Market near the corner of Rose and 5th avenues in Venice, and make your way to the refrigerator in the back. Small orange price stickers say that $3.50 will get you 40 ounces of Bud Light.

To pay, slide your money through a slot to a cashier who sits behind bulletproof glass.

Take 10 steps west and you're staring at a funky building that looks as if it's been covered with moon rocks. At Moon Juice, $3.50 will buy you just a two-ounce shot of a detoxifying acid mineral complex called "Liquid Light" and a bit of change for the tip jar. If you want a full glass of organic cold-pressed "Gracious Greens" juice, it'll cost you $12.

To pay, hand your money to young workers who give each other massages behind the counter while serving their customers.

Skid Rose, meet Restaurant Rose.

Urban planners say Rose Avenue is unlikely to become the next Abbott Kinney — the nearby boulevard recently dubbed "The Coolest Block in America" by GQ magazine — but the breakneck pace of change along these once shabby blocks connecting Lincoln Boulevard to Pacific Avenue suggests that the down-and-out bohemian days of this countercultural beach neighborhood are numbered.

If Rose Avenue could turn white-hot overnight, other Venice streets could soon follow.

"The tipping point," said former City Councilwoman Ruth Galanter, "has been tipped."

::

When he created his "Venice-of-America" in 1905, Abbott Kinney envisioned a showcase of art and culture. Instead, said Betsy Goldman, Venice Historical Society co-founder, the public insisted on a "honky-tonk" carnival atmosphere with gondola excursions and camel rides.

For decades that carnival vibe was reincarnated: In the 1950s and '60s, Goldman said, Venice served as a gathering place for hippies, homeless people and beatnik intellectuals and musicians like Jim Morrison. Beach life and an atmosphere of permissiveness drew motorcycle gang members and drug addicts as well. Pawn shops and liquor stores sprouted.

Venice gained a reputation as a rough outpost among beach communities. Occasional violence and the presence of homeless people deterred business owners for years. By the early 1990s, police say, area crime had hit an all-time high.

But Rose Avenue rents were cheap. A few retailers thought they might draw shoppers from Santa Monica. So Alan Schniderman opened his DNA Clothing store on the block in the 1980s.

People slept in a nearby parking lot, he said. Cockroaches scuttled across the asphalt. Schniderman recalls a red curtain that marked a peep show just off Rose Avenue on Main Street.

The rehabilitation of the Venice Canals in the early 1990s made the surrounding property in the south part of the neighborhood more attractive but largely left Rose Avenue and adjoining Oakwood behind.

Schniderman was shocked when a tiny wine shop opened two blocks down in 2006.

"When they opened," he said, "I thought, 'They're never going to make it.'"

::

"Hey, hey, good to see ya!" Oscar Hermosillo shouted over the chatter, clapping a friend on the back. The owner of Venice Beach Wines couldn't even walk out the back of his wine bar one recent Friday night. The 500-square-foot space was packed tighter than standing room only.

When Hermosillo got some wiggle room, he greeted three more people on the way to the door and then stopped to chat with two men outside. A few steps away, a woman bundled in layers of shirts and jackets emerged from Rose Market with a beer and retrieved a shopping cart filled with her belongings. Two couples wrapped in peacoats and sweater vests strutted past her in the other direction.

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The Wii U uses less than half the power of the Xbox 360 and the PS3

Nintendo’s (NTDOY) Wii prided itself for being a super energy-efficient console that ran nearly silent and sipped very little electricity. And although Microsoft’s (MSFT) Xbox 360 was originally a loud monster with a penchant for Red-Ring-of-Death-ing itself, the amount of power it consumed was never as much as Sony’s (SNE) launch PlayStation 3, which used more power than a refrigerator. Eurogamer took it upon itself to pit the Wii U against the Xbox 360 S and new super slim PS3 and concluded that Nintendo’s new console “draws so little power in comparison to its rivals that its tiny casing still feels cool to the touch during intense gaming.” Most impressive is that the Wii U maintains its low-wattage while fitting in a chassis that’s smaller than both the Xbox 360 and PS3.

According to Eurogamer’s tests, the Wii U draws only 32 watts of power during gameplay of games that are as graphically intensive as the 360 and PS3, with both consoles using 118% and 139$ % more power, respectively.

To achieve such “green” levels, Nintendo clocks the Wii U’s CPU to 1.24GHz and “uses far fewer transistors than the competition.” While there are still some mysteries as to how the hardware remains cool, Eurogamer also discovered that the AMD-built GPU increases performance by “40 per cent per square millimetre of silicon – another big leap in efficiency.”

Most disappointing in Eurogamer’s analysis is that they weren’t able to get the Wii U’s wattage to spike more than 33 watts, suggesting that the console can’t be over-clocked in the future to pump out more polygons.

If you’re still on the fence on which console you should buy or play games on, the Wii U looks to be the one that’ll keep your electric bill nice and low.

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Gaming News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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'Skyfall' launches back to top spot with $10.8M

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The James Bond blockbuster "Skyfall" has risen back to the No. 1 spot at the weekend box office, taking in $10.8 million.

That brought its domestic total to $261.4 million and its worldwide haul to a franchise record of $918 million.

The top 20 movies at U.S. and Canadian theaters Friday through Sunday, followed by distribution studio, gross, number of theater locations, average receipts per location, total gross and number of weeks in release, as compiled Monday by Hollywood.com are:

1. "Skyfall," Sony, $10,780,201, 3,401 locations, $3,170 average, $261,400,281, five weeks.

2. "Rise of the Guardians," Paramount, $10,400,618, 3,639 locations, $2,858 average, $61,774,192, three weeks.

3. "The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn — Part 2," Summit, $9,156,265, 3,646 locations, $2,511 average, $268,691,029, four weeks.

4. "Lincoln," $8,916,813, 2,014 locations, $4,427 average, $97,137,447, five weeks.

5. "Life of Pi," Fox, $8,330,764, 2,946 locations, $2,828 average, $60,948,293, three weeks.

6. "Playing For Keeps," FilmDistrict, $5,750,288, 2,837 locations, $2,027 average, $5,750,288, one week.

7. "Wreck-It Ralph," Disney, $4,859,368, 2,746 locations, $1,770 average, $164,402,934, six weeks.

8. "Red Dawn," FilmDistrict, $4,236,105, 2,754 locations, $1,538 average, $37,240,920, three weeks.

9. "Flight," Paramount, $3,130,305, 2,431 locations, $1,288 average, $86,202,541, six weeks.

10. "Killing Them Softly," Weinstein Co., $2,806,901, 2,424 locations, $1,158 average, $11,830,638, two weeks.

11. "Silver Linings Playbook," Weinstein Co., $2,171,665, 371 locations, $5,854 average, $13,964,405, four weeks.

12. "Anna Karenina," Focus, $1,544,859, 422 locations, $3,661 average, $6,603,042, four weeks.

13. "The Collection," LD Entertainment, $1,487,655, 1,403 locations, $1,060 average, $5,455,328, two weeks.

14. "Argo," Warner Bros., $1,482,346, 944 locations, $1,570 average, $103,160,015, nine weeks.

15. "End of Watch," Open Road Films, $751,623, 1,259 locations, $597 average, $39,989,766, 12 weeks.

16. "Hitchcock," Fox Searchlight, $712,544, 181 locations, $3,937 average, $1,661,670, three weeks.

17. "Talaash," Reliance Big Pictures, $449,195, 161 locations, $2,790 average, $2,397,909, two weeks.

18. "Taken 2," Fox, $387,227, 430 locations, $901 average, $137,700,304, 10 weeks.

19. "Pitch Perfect," Universal, $305,765, 387 locations, $790 average, $63,517,408, 11 weeks.

20. "The Sessions," Fox, $218,973, 197 locations, $1,112 average, $4,948,342, eight weeks.

___

Online:

http://www.hollywood.com

___

Universal and Focus are owned by NBC Universal, a unit of Comcast Corp.; Sony, Columbia, Sony Screen Gems and Sony Pictures Classics are units of Sony Corp.; Paramount is owned by Viacom Inc.; Disney, Pixar and Marvel are owned by The Walt Disney Co.; Miramax is owned by Filmyard Holdings LLC; 20th Century Fox and Fox Searchlight are owned by News Corp.; Warner Bros. and New Line are units of Time Warner Inc.; MGM is owned by a group of former creditors including Highland Capital, Anchorage Advisors and Carl Icahn; Lionsgate is owned by Lions Gate Entertainment Corp.; IFC is owned by AMC Networks Inc.; Rogue is owned by Relativity Media LLC.

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Rate of Childhood Obesity Falls in Several Cities

PHILADELPHIA — After decades of rising childhood obesity rates, several American cities are reporting their first declines.

The trend has emerged in big cities like New York and Los Angeles, as well as smaller places like Anchorage, Alaska, and Kearney, Neb. The state of Mississippi has also registered a drop, but only among white students.

“It’s been nothing but bad news for 30 years, so the fact that we have any good news is a big story,” said Dr. Thomas Farley, the health commissioner in New York City, which reported a 5.5 percent decline in the number of obese schoolchildren from 2007 to 2011.

The drops are small, just 5 percent here in Philadelphia and 3 percent in Los Angeles. But experts say they are significant because they offer the first indication that the obesity epidemic, one of the nation’s most intractable health problems, may actually be reversing course.

The first dips — noted in a September report by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation — were so surprising that some researchers did not believe them.

Deanna M. Hoelscher, a researcher at the University of Texas, who in 2010 recorded one of the earliest declines — among mostly poor Hispanic fourth graders in the El Paso area — did a double-take. “We reran the numbers a couple of times,” she said. “I kept saying, ‘Will you please check that again for me?’ ”

Researchers say they are not sure what is behind the declines. They may be an early sign of a national shift that is visible only in cities that routinely measure the height and weight of schoolchildren. The decline in Los Angeles, for instance, was for fifth, seventh and ninth graders — the grades that are measured each year — between 2005 and 2010. Nor is it clear whether the drops have more to do with fewer obese children entering school or currently enrolled children losing weight. But researchers note that declines occurred in cities that have had obesity reduction policies in place for a number of years.

Though obesity is now part of the national conversation, with aggressive advertising campaigns in major cities and a push by Michelle Obama, many scientists doubt that anti-obesity programs actually work. Individual efforts like one-time exercise programs have rarely produced results. Researchers say that it will take a broad set of policies applied systematically to effectively reverse the trend, a conclusion underscored by an Institute of Medicine report released in May.

Philadelphia has undertaken a broad assault on childhood obesity for years. Sugary drinks like sweetened iced tea, fruit punch and sports drinks started to disappear from school vending machines in 2004. A year later, new snack guidelines set calorie and fat limits, which reduced the size of snack foods like potato chips to single servings. By 2009, deep fryers were gone from cafeterias and whole milk had been replaced by one percent and skim.

Change has been slow. Schools made money on sugary drinks, and some set up rogue drink machines that had to be hunted down. Deep fat fryers, favored by school administrators who did not want to lose popular items like French fries, were unplugged only after Wayne T. Grasela, the head of food services for the school district, stopped buying oil to fill them.

But the message seems to be getting through, even if acting on it is daunting. Josh Monserrat, an eighth grader at John Welsh Elementary, uses words like “carbs,” and “portion size.” He is part of a student group that promotes healthy eating. He has even dressed as an orange to try to get other children to eat better. Still, he struggles with his own weight. He is 5-foot-3 but weighed nearly 200 pounds at his last doctor’s visit.

“I was thinking, ‘Wow, I’m obese for my age,’ ” said Josh, who is 13. “I set a goal for myself to lose 50 pounds.”

Nationally, about 17 percent of children under 20 are obese, or about 12.5 million people, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which defines childhood obesity as a body mass index at or above the 95th percentile for children of the same age and sex. That rate, which has tripled since 1980, has leveled off in recent years but has remained at historical highs, and public health experts warn that it could bring long-term health risks.

Obese children are more likely to be obese as adults, creating a higher risk of heart disease and stroke. The American Cancer Society says that being overweight or obese is the culprit in one of seven cancer deaths. Diabetes in children is up by a fifth since 2000, according to federal data.

“I’m deeply worried about it,” said Francis S. Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health, who added that obesity is “almost certain to result in a serious downturn in longevity based on the risks people are taking on.”

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Wells Fargo settlement over 'pick-a-pay' home loans is challenged

Accusing Wells Fargo & Co. of reneging on a sweeping mortgage-modification deal, a lawyer for troubled homeowners is trying to reopen a lawsuit involving risky "pick-a-pay" loans written during the housing bubble.

Legal filings last week said Wells had failed to provide wide-ranging reductions of loan balances to delinquent borrowers, as it had promised two years ago, when it settled a combined national class-action suit. A bank spokeswoman disputed the filing, calling it riddled with errors.

The litigation illustrates how lawsuits continue to dog major home lenders more than five years after the mortgage industry imploded, including recent challenges to certain cases the banks thought had been put to rest.

The settlement was reached in December 2010 before U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel in San Jose. At the time, the San Francisco bank said it would provide at least $50 million and as much as $600 million in modification benefits to troubled borrowers with the pay-option loans.

Plaintiffs' attorney Jeffrey K. Berns of Woodland Hills had calculated the number might reach $2 billion.

The original lawsuits over pick-a-pay, or pay-option, mortgages contended that the loans were issued with inadequate notice to borrowers that the amount owed would rise if they chose the lowest payment among four options. The loans were made by banks later acquired by Wells.

"Hundreds of thousands of homeowners were suffering the effects of undisclosed negative amortization for their Pick-a-Payment loans, while the declining U.S. housing market was sucking the remaining equity out of their homes," Berns said in a filing Friday.

The filings included a new lawsuit accusing Wells of breaching the settlement, acting in bad faith and violating a state unfair competition law. In a separate filing, Berns asked the court to order the bank to stop all foreclosures on the loans to allow him to investigate the situation.

Of the 66,000 requests for loan modifications made in the 18 months ending Sept. 30, Wells granted only 1,746, or 2.6%, Berns alleged.

"Thousands of people have been denied loan modifications — people who, in our opinion, should not have been denied," Berns said in an interview Monday.

The pay-option loans were made by World Savings, a large Oakland savings and loan that was acquired in 2006 by Wachovia Corp., a major North Carolina bank that continued to make the mortgages. Wachovia was near collapse in 2008 when it was acquired by Wells Fargo.

In a statement, Wells said it would "immediately and forcefully" defend the new lawsuit, which it said "maligns a very effective consumer loan settlement program."

Wells Fargo didn't say how many borrowers covered by the settlement had received principal reductions. But it said its overall efforts on behalf of people with the tricky loans, many of which preceded the lawsuit settlement, had been extensive.

"We have provided modifications for nearly 110,000 borrowers with Pick-a-Pay loans and principal reductions of more than $5 billion for those borrowers," Wells said. "That means that more than a third of all Pick-a-Pay loans — including those covered by the settlement and those not included — have been modified since the beginning of 2009."

scott.reckard@latimes.com

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Boehner, Obama talk 'fiscal cliff' at White House

WASHINGTON -- After days of theatrics and threats from both sides, President Obama met privately with House Speaker John A. Boehner at the White House on Sunday afternoon as the two principal negotiators stepped up discussions aimed at crafting an agreement to thwart a looming budget showdown.

Little more than three weeks remain before the nation could face widespread tax increases and massive spending reductions if they cannot produce a deal.

"This afternoon, the president and Speaker Boehner met at the White House to discuss efforts to resolve the fiscal cliff," said Michael Steel, a spokesman for the Ohio Republican. He provided no details, but added that "lines of communication remain open."

A White House official also declined to share details of the meeting. But it was the clearest sign yet that after a week of public posturing and dire warnings intended to sway public opinion, the private negotiations may be producing progress.

Obama and his allies on Capitol Hill increasingly believe they have the stronger hand over congressional Republicans in their effort to push up marginal tax rates for high-income earners.

Polls indicate the public largely agrees with the president's assertion that income tax rates for households  earning more than $250,000 a year should rise to 39.6% from 35%, as they are scheduled to do in the new year. Some key congressional Republicans have indicated the November election results left them with little leverage to stop a tax rate hike. Democrats widened their majority in the Senate and picked up seats in the GOP-controlled House.

Boehner, of Ohio, continues to press for deep spending reductions, including cuts to Medicare, Social Security and other widely popular programs, and he has said he is prepared to increase revenue by changing the tax code to lower deductions, not by raising taxes. The speaker has proposed a two-part framework that would push some decisions onto the new Congress next year.

The secretive talks Sunday occurred after a week in which Obama held several campaign-style public events aimed at highlighting the White House argument that Republicans risk damaging a fragile but recovering economy by refusing to meet his demands for higher taxes for the wealthy. The president will continue the effort Monday with a trip to the Daimler Detroit Diesel plant in Redford, Mich.

If no agreement is reached, virtually all the tax cuts passed under the George W. Bush administration would expire on Dec. 31, resulting in a $2,200 tax hike for an average family of four next year.

Economists warn that those broad tax increases, along with across-the-board deep spending cuts for virtually every government program and department, could cause the economy to contract sharply and send the nation into another recession.

Congress is expected to resume on Monday, and Republicans who control the House have changed their calendar to remain in session an additional week before the holidays as both sides try to craft a deal.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) joined Obama at the White House for a one-on-one talk Friday that lasted 40 minutes. An aide to the Democratic leader characterized it as a "good meeting."

Obama has also been in regular telephone contact with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), who would be instrumental in any deal with the Democratic-controlled Senate.

Republicans have sought to shift blame for the standoff onto the White House, complaining that the president is spending more time campaigning than negotiating.

"Ask the president to come off the campaign trail," Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield), the majority whip, said on "Meet the Press" Sunday. "Tomorrow he's going to Detroit. It's now time to govern. The election is over."

But Democrats insist Republicans have little choice but to compromise with the White House, or risk raising taxes on ordinary Americans.

"The American people spoke on this issue in the election," said Sen. Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Democrat, on "Meet the Press." "I'd say to Speaker Boehner and Congressman McCarthy, listen to what the American people said in the election; listen to the fact that two out of three Americans believe that the wealthiest should pay a little more; and listen to your own caucus."

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lisa.mascaro@latimes.com

kathleen.hennessey@latimes.com

Twitter: @lisamascaroindc, @khennessey

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