Don't impoverish yourself to pay kids' student loans

Dear Liz: I'm in my 50s. My kids have college loan debts that might total more than $200,000. I allowed them to take out loans because I expected to inherit $300,000 to help them pay off the debt. Now that inheritance will not happen.

I have $250,000 saved for retirement. When I'm 58 1/2 years old, I would like to pull that money out and pay some or all of these debts. Or use home equity. I've recently been downsized in employment, but I am looking to increase my income so I can help with their debt. Advice?

Answer: If your goal is to impoverish yourself so your kids will have to take care of you in your old age, by all means proceed with your plan. Otherwise, you need to rethink this.

You've been laid off in the middle of what should be your peak earning years. Older workers often have a tougher time than younger ones finding replacement jobs, even in a better economy than this one. You may not be able to replace your former income, which means you may not be able to add much to the amount you've already saved. You should be conserving your resources, including your home equity, and not squandering it repaying debts that aren't yours.

And "squandering" is the right word. You may be able to avoid paying federal and state tax penalties on withdrawals under certain conditions; distributions made after age 59 1/2 avoid the penalties, as do those made if you're "separated from service" if the job termination occurred in or after the year you turn 55. But you'll still owe income taxes on the withdrawal, and those can be considerable.

Your children are the ones who will benefit from their educations. Those educations should allow them to earn incomes to repay these loans. The amount of debt they've accrued might be excessive — you didn't specify how many kids, or whether this debt is being incurred pursuing undergraduate or graduate degrees. Ultimately, though, they will be in a better position to pay the debt than you are.

If you promised them help you can't deliver, sit down with them now to break the bad news and strategize on how they can finish their educations without incurring substantially more debt.

Your story also should serve as a cautionary tale for anyone counting on an inheritance to pay future bills. Until the money is in your bank account, it's not yours and shouldn't be part of your financial planning.

Refinancing mortgage in divorce may not be wise move

Dear Liz: My soon-to-be ex wants to refinance our mortgage to pay for renovations so we can sell it for more money. He also wants to take out some cash to pay off unsecured loans. (I have $11,000 in credit card debt, and he has over $50,000.) The house recently appraised for $310,000 and we owe $158,000 on it. Is it wise to refinance in this circumstance?

Answer: A cash-out refinance would be a risky maneuver even if you intended to stay married. Renovations rarely boost a home sale price enough to cover their cost. Also, home equity that's used to pay off credit card bills is often wasted, since the borrower never fixes the problem that led to overspending in the first place and simply runs up more debt. Since he would be getting the bulk of the benefit by having more of his debt paid off, you also would need to adjust the rest of your property settlement.

Often, the best and easiest solution in a divorce is to simply sell the house. You certainly wouldn't want to remain on a mortgage with an ex after the divorce was final, if you could possibly avoid it. A good divorce attorney can give you advice about how to proceed from here.

Make saving money automatic

Dear Liz: What's the easiest way to save money? I have the hardest time. I want to save, but I feel that I don't make enough to start saving.

Answer: The easiest way to save is to do it without thinking about it.

That usually means setting up automatic transfers either from your paycheck or from your checking account. If you have to think about putting aside money, you'll probably think of other things to do with that cash. If it's done automatically, you may be surprised at how fast the money piles up.

The second part of this equation is to leave your savings alone. If you're constantly dipping into savings to cover regular expenses, you won't get ahead.

People manage to save even on small incomes because they make it a priority. They "pay themselves first," putting aside money for savings before any other bills are paid. Start with small, regular transfers and increase them as you can.

Questions may be sent to 3940 Laurel Canyon, No. 238, Studio City, CA 91604 or by using the "Contact" form at asklizweston.com. Distributed by No More Red Inc.

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Apple takes investors on a wild ride

SAN FRANCISCO — With only modest expectations, Robert Leitao of Santa Clarita made a decision in 1994 that would change his life. He bought Apple stock.

This was several years before Steve Jobs returned to resurrect Apple, long before the iPod, the iPhone or the iPads that would make Apple the most valuable company in the world. A $1 investment in Apple at the start of 1994 is now worth about $70.

"Even with the recent sell-off, I'm still doing very well with the stock," said Leitao, who works as director of operations at a Catholic church in Burbank. "Apple provided for a down payment on our home for our blended family of four kids."

Leitao is one of the countless people whose lives have been touched by Apple's stock, which has become a global economic force. It is now one of the most widely held stocks, and the most valuable. Even as Apple Inc.'s market value fell to $480 billion on Friday, it was still larger than the gross domestic product of Norway or Argentina, and more than the combined value of Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp.

Yet that astonishing size and economic influence is also what, many analysts believe, contributes to the extraordinary volatility that can make owning Apple's stock a hair-raising experience.

It was inevitable, analysts say, that after Apple's stock rose 74% in the first nine months of this year, a huge wave of selling would occur as fund managers locked in their profits. And yet, in recent years, these huge dips have been followed by even bigger run-ups that led to new record highs, a dynamic that one trader refers to as the "Apple slingshot."

That pattern has some analysts betting Apple will soar above $1,000 a share in 2013, a scenario almost guaranteed to drive the global obsession with the company's stock into an even greater frenzy.

"The impact on shareholders and on the economy is incredible," said Howard Silverblatt, senior index analyst for S&P Dow Jones Indices. "We've not seen anything like this in the modern trading era. Ever."

Even after the remarkable decade of Apple's revival, the company's stock managed to reach new milestones this year. Early in 2012, Apple became the sixth company ever to surpass $500 billion in market value. In August, it became the only company in history with a market value topping $622 billion.

That performance affects just about anyone who has a 401(k) account or a pension. According to FactSet, a research firm that tracks investment funds, 2,555 institutional investors — mutual funds, hedge funds and pension funds, among others — owned stock in Apple, just behind the 2,590 that held Microsoft stock, as of Sept. 30, the most recent date funds had to disclose their holdings. However, the value of that Apple stock held by institutional investors on that day was $427 billion, compared with $172 billion for Microsoft, according to FactSet.

Silverblatt said the only company that has come close to having such a strong influence on the broader stock markets since World War II is IBM in the early 1980s, when the PC revolution was just getting started. But not only is the value of Apple's stock remarkable, so is its volatility. Such large stocks rarely have such big, quick swings.

Apple shares peaked at $702.10 on Sept. 19, up from $401.44 at the start of the year, a run that astonished analysts. But just as remarkable has been its collapse, falling as low as $505.75 in intra-day trading Nov. 16.

"It's just amazing because it's such a large company," said Brian Colello, a senior research analyst at Morningstar. "The company lost about $35 billion in market cap in one day. That's the size of some large-cap stocks."

Yet such swings have become commonplace for Apple stock. Before its latest swoon of 23.4% since its September high, Apple had experienced three previous corrections of more than 10% over the last two years.

The value of Apple's stock and its extreme swings have made researching it and trading it almost a full-time job for some people. Jason Schwarz of Marina del Rey edits EconomicTiming.com, which sends out up to five newsletters each week to its 1,000 clients that focus in large measure on Apple. He also helps run Lone Peak Asset Management, which has about $500 million in assets.

Schwarz says that what he calls the "Apple slingshot" is actually a virtue of the shares.

"The extraordinary volatility is the result of Apple's strength," Schwarz said. "People try to blame the volatility on Apple's weaknesses."

Schwarz and many other Apple believers argue that people are making a big mistake when they try to understand the stock's behavior by focusing on various bits of bad news such as an executive shake-up, the Maps controversy or questions about market share or competition. They have almost nothing to do with the regular hits taken by Apple shares, the argument goes.

Instead, folks like Schwarz say more technical factors are at work, such as the fact that the fiscal year for many stock funds ends Oct. 31. When the stock peaked in September, many fund managers rushed to sell to lock in profits for the year. Apple stock makes so much money for so many people, then plummets when shareholders pause to reap their profits, Schwarz says.

The volatility has continued in recent weeks, the argument goes, because fears of higher taxes next year have many fund managers trying to take advantage of short-term swings to make bigger profits. That volatility offers tantalizing windows for huge, short-term profits for investors willing to take the risk.

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Samsung Smart TVs: The next frontier for data theft and hacking [video]

Smart TVs, particularly Samsung’s (005930) last few generations of flat screens, can be hacked to give attackers remote access according to a security startup called ReVuln. The company says it discovered a “zero-day exploit” that hackers could potentially use to perform malicious activities that range from stealing accounts linked through apps to using built-in webcams and microphones to spy on unsuspecting couch potatoes. Don’t panic just yet, though. In order for the exploit to be activated, a hacker needs to plug a USB drive loaded with malicious software into the actual TV to bypass the Linux-based OS/firmware on Samsung’s Smart TVs. But, if a hacker were to pull that off, every piece of data stored on a Smart TV could theoretically be retrieved.

[More from BGR: Has the iPhone peaked? Apple’s iPhone 4S seen outselling iPhone 5]

[More from BGR: Dell confirms it will exit smartphone business, drop Android]

As if the possibility of someone stealing your information and spying on you isn’t scary enough, according to ComputerWorld, “it is also possible to copy the configuration of a TV’s remote control, which would allow a hacker to copy the remote control’s settings, and remotely change the channel.”

ReVuln told The Register it hasn’t informed Samsung of the vulnerability and plans to sell the details of in hopes of “speeding up” development of a fix. A video of the exploit as proof from ReVuln follows below.

This article was originally published by BGR

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'Family Guy,' 'American Dad' pulled after rampage

NEW YORK (AP) — Hollywood has responded to the rampage at a Connecticut elementary school by pulling back on its offerings, and one star says the entertainment industry should take some responsibility for such violence.

Fox pulled new episodes of "Family Guy" and "American Dad" that were to air Sunday to avoid potentially sensitive content. The originally scheduled episode of "Family Guy" had Peter telling his own version of the nativity story. The "American Dad" episode told the story of a demon who punished naughty children at Christmas. Both series plan to substitute reruns.

In addition, Fox confirmed that a schedule repeat of "The Cleveland Show" for Sunday was swapped for another rerun of that series out of the same concern, and premieres for Tom Cruise's "Jack Reacher" and the family comedy "Parental Guidance" were postponed after Friday's shooting rampage in Newtown, Conn., that ended with 28 people dead, including 20 children as well as the gunman.

Hollywood should take some responsibility for such violence, Jamie Foxx, one of the industry's biggest stars, said Saturday as he promoted Quentin Tarantino's upcoming, ultra-violent, spaghetti Western-style film about slavery, "Django Unchained."

In an interview, Jamie Foxx said actors cannot "turn their back" on that fact that movie violence can influence people.

The film's press junket was continuing in New York as scheduled. Tarantino said he was tired of defending his films each time the nation is shocked by gun violence, saying "tragedies happen" and blame should fall on those guilty of the crimes.

_____

Online:

"Django Unchained": http://www.unchainedmovie.com

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

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School Yoga Class Draws Religious Protest From Christians

T. Lynne Pixley for The New York Times

Miriam Ruiz during a yoga class last week at Paul Ecke Central Elementary School in Encinitas, Calif. A few dozen parents are protesting that the program amounts to religious indoctrination. More Photos »

ENCINITAS, Calif. — By 9:30 a.m. at Paul Ecke Central Elementary School, tiny feet were shifting from downward dog pose to chair pose to warrior pose in surprisingly swift, accurate movements. A circle of 6- and 7-year-olds contorted their frames, making monkey noises and repeating confidence-boosting mantras.

Jackie Bergeron’s first-grade yoga class was in full swing.

“Inhale. Exhale. Peekaboo!” Ms. Bergeron said from the front of the class. “Now, warrior pose. I am strong! I am brave!”

Though the yoga class had a notably calming effect on the children, things were far from placid outside the gymnasium.

A small but vocal group of parents, spurred on by the head of a local conservative advocacy group, has likened these 30-minute yoga classes to religious indoctrination. They say the classes — part of a comprehensive program offered to all public school students in this affluent suburb north of San Diego — represent a violation of the First Amendment.

After the classes prompted discussion in local evangelical churches, parents said they were concerned that the exercises might nudge their children closer to ancient Hindu beliefs.

Mary Eady, the parent of a first grader, said the classes were rooted in the deeply religious practice of Ashtanga yoga, in which physical actions are inextricable from the spiritual beliefs underlying them.

“They’re not just teaching physical poses, they’re teaching children how to think and how to make decisions,” Ms. Eady said. “They’re teaching children how to meditate and how to look within for peace and for comfort. They’re using this as a tool for many things beyond just stretching.”

Ms. Eady and a few dozen other parents say a public school system should not be leading students down any particular religious path. Teaching children how to engage in spiritual exercises like meditation familiarizes young minds with certain religious viewpoints and practices, they say, and a public classroom is no place for that.

Underlying the controversy is the source of the program’s financing. The pilot project is supported by the Jois Foundation, a nonprofit organization founded in memory of Krishna Pattabhi Jois, who is considered the father of Ashtanga yoga.

Dean Broyles, the president and chief counsel of the National Center for Law and Policy, a nonprofit law firm that champions religious freedom and traditional marriage, according to its Web site, has dug up quotes from Jois Foundation leaders, who talk about the inseparability of the physical act of yoga from a broader spiritual quest. Mr. Broyles argued that such quotes betrayed the group’s broader evangelistic purpose.

“There is a transparent promotion of Hindu religious beliefs and practices in the public schools through this Ashtanga yoga program,” he said.

“The analog would be if we substituted for this program a charismatic Christian praise and worship physical education program,” he said.

The battle over yoga in schools has been raging for years across the country but has typically focused on charter schools, which receive public financing but set their own curriculums.

The move by the Encinitas Union School District to mandate yoga classes for all students who do not opt out has elevated the discussion. And it has split an already divided community.

The district serves the liberal beach neighborhoods of Encinitas, including Leucadia, where Paul Ecke Central Elementary is, as well as more conservative inland communities. On the coast, bumper stickers reading “Keep Leucadia Funky” are borne proudly. Farther inland, cars are more likely to feature the Christian fish symbol, and large evangelical congregations play an important role in shaping local philosophy.

Opponents of the yoga classes have started an online petition to remove the course from the district’s curriculum. They have shown up at school board meetings to denounce the program, and Mr. Broyles has threatened to sue if the board does not address their concerns.

The district has stood firm. Tim Baird, the schools superintendent, has defended the yoga classes as merely another element of a broader program designed to promote children’s physical and mental well-being. The notion that yoga teachers have designs on converting tender young minds to Hinduism is incorrect, he said.

“That’s why we have an opt-out clause,” Mr. Baird said. “If your faith is such that you believe that simply by doing the gorilla pose, you’re invoking the Hindu gods, then by all means your child can be doing something else.”

Ms. Eady is not convinced.

“Yoga poses are representative of Hindu deities and Hindu stories about the actions and interactions of those deities with humans,” she said. “There’s content even in the movement, just as with baptism there’s content in the movement.”

Russell Case, a representative of the Jois Foundation, said the parents’ fears were misguided.

“They’re concerned that we’re putting our God before their God,” Mr. Case said. “They’re worried about competition. But we’re much closer to them than they think. We’re good Christians that just like to do yoga because it helps us to be better people.”

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United Airlines pilots ratify new labor contract

CHICAGO — After years of divisive negotiations between United Airlines and its pilots, union members on Saturday ratified a new labor agreement, shedding a bankruptcy-era contract for pilots and marking an important step toward fully integrating United and Continental airlines, which officially merged in 2010.

The Air Line Pilots Assn., which over the last couple of years has staged pickets about its lack of a contract and had taken a preliminary strike vote, said 67% of its 10,000 members voted over the last several weeks to ratify the deal, with nearly 98% casting votes. Voting closed Saturday morning.

The four-year contract will go into effect immediately. It provides gains in pay, job protections, retirement and benefits compensation and work rules.

"The era of bankruptcy and concessionary contracts is now over," union leaders said in a statement. "For too long, the pilots of United and Continental have had to shoulder more than their share of the burden as our respective airlines struggled through the difficult economic times of the past decade. We now stand ready to embark on a fresh start for the pilots and the airline."

With help from federal mediators, the two sides agreed in principle to a deal in August, then took until mid-November to work out language for a contract and send the proposal to the union membership for a vote.

"The ratification of this agreement is an important step forward for our pilots and the company," said Fred Abbott, United senior vice president of flight operations, in a statement.

The finished contract is a bit of good news in what has otherwise been a rocky merger for Chicago-based United Continental Holdings.

Most notable to passengers were rampant flight delays and cancellations after a conversion to a combined passenger reservation system in March. Those operational woes were severe over the summer, and customers started to flee to other airlines. But the problems have subsided in recent months, with United hitting its goal of an 80% on-time rate.

United is still in joint negotiations with other major unions, including those for flight attendants, passenger service agents, dispatchers and ramp and fleet workers. Pilot contracts are traditionally done first and tend to be the most contentious.

gkarp@tribune.com

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Aletheia hedge fund manager defrauded investors, SEC says

Federal regulators accused a Santa Monica hedge fund manager of defrauding investors by saddling them with losing securities trades while claiming winners for himself.

The Securities and Exchange Commission alleged that Peter J. Eichler Jr., chief executive of Aletheia Research and Management Inc., made about $2 million by allocating a disproportionately large share of money-making trades to his personal brokerage accounts. He steered another $2 million in improper profits to favored employees and clients, the SEC alleged.

Clients in two Aletheia-run hedge funds, meanwhile, suffered $4.4 million in losses, according to the civil complaint filed Friday.

"Aletheia and Eichler had an obligation to treat all clients with equal fairness, but instead they cherry-picked winners and losers," Michele Wein Layne, director of the SEC's Los Angeles office, said in a statement.

Eichler also failed to warn clients about mounting financial problems at Aletheia until two days before the firm filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last month, the SEC said.

"Aletheia did not intentionally or otherwise harm any of its investment products or its clients," Eichler, 55, said in a statement.

"Mr. Eichler and Aletheia were both investors in this product," the statement said. "Mr. Eichler made additional personal investments in this fund during the time in question. Aletheia and Mr. Eichler look forward to cooperating with the SEC to resolve any remaining issues."

The allegedly improper trading occurred in options contracts, which give investors the right to buy or sell shares of a stock at a set price. Rather than specifying accounts at the time orders were placed, Eichler often waited more than an hour after making the transactions to designate which account they would go into, the SEC said. By then, the trades already were profitable or not.

In completed trades with a clear profit or loss, 98.3% of the transactions that Eichler assigned to his personal accounts were profitable, yielding a cumulative 19.1% investment return, according to the SEC.

Only 31.7% of trades allocated to the hedge funds turned a profit, resulting in a 1.7% cumulative loss.

The SEC complaint is the latest in a series of woes for the once-successful investment firm.

Aletheia, Eichler and another top executive agreed to pay $400,000 in penalties last year to resolve previous SEC accusations that the firm failed to provide hedge fund investors with quarterly account statements and timely audit reports. The agency also alleged that Aletheia didn't inform potential clients about the results of prior SEC examinations.

Aletheia's co-founder and former chief financial officer, Roger Peikin, sued the company in 2010. He alleges that Eichler wrongfully fired him after Peikin objected to Eichler's management style and handling of the prior SEC inquiry.

Peikin's suit also accuses Eichler of using company assets as "his personal piggy bank" and of paying himself "millions in compensation." Eichler used Aletheia corporate funds for lavish family vacations, including private jet travel and "hotel suites ranging from $10,000 to $18,000 per night," according to the suit.

"Expensive European trips are disguised as business travel when, in fact, the cost of travel far exceeds the revenue by any client Eichler is purporting to visit," Peikin said in the suit.

Eichler has denied those allegations. The lawsuit is pending.

Three investors have filed complaints against Eichler with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, an industry oversight organization. The complaints accused Aletheia and Eichler of making "unsuitable" investments and failing to disclose the risks of certain investments, causing cumulative losses exceeding $2.8 million.

Eichler has denied the allegations.

Aletheia filed for bankruptcy Nov. 11, listing liabilities of between $10 million and $50 million.

The assets Aletheia manages have tumbled from a peak of more than $10 billion to perhaps as little as $250 million, according to a recent filing by a trustee in the bankruptcy case.

Also, California revoked Aletheia's corporate status this year because the company owes the state more than $2 million in unpaid taxes.

walter.hamilton@latimes.com

stuart.pfeifer@latimes.com

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Pope needs help sending out blessing in first tweet

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – After weeks of anticipation bordering on media frenzy, Pope Benedict solemnly put his finger to a computer tablet device on Wednesday and tried to send his first tweet – but something went wrong.

Images on Vatican television appeared to show the first try didn’t work. The pope, who still writes his speeches by hand, seems to have pressed too hard and the tweet was not sent right away. So, he needed a little help from his friends.

Archbishop Claudio Maria Celli of the Vatican‘s communications department showed the pontiff how to do it, but the pope hesitated. Celli touched the screen lightly himself and off went the papal tweet.

“Dear friends, I am pleased to get in touch with you through Twitter. Thank you for your generous response. I bless all of you from my heart,” he said in his introduction to the brave new world of Twitter.

The tweet was sent at the end of weekly general audience in the Vatican before thousands of people.

The pope actually has eight linked Twitter accounts. @Pontifex, the main account, is in English. The other seven have a suffix at the end for the different language versions. For example, the German version is @Pontifex_de, and the Arabic version is @Pontifex_ar.

The tweets will be going out in Spanish, English, Italian, Portuguese, German, Polish, Arabic and French. Other languages will be added in the future.

The pope already had just over a million followers in all of the languages combined minutes before he sent his first tweet and the number was growing.

PAPAL Q AND A

Later on Wednesday after the audience was over and the television cameras turned off, the pontiff answered the first of three questions sent to him at #askpontifex.

The first question answered by the pope was: “How can we celebrate the Year of Faith better in our daily lives?”

His answer: “By speaking with Jesus in prayer, listening to what he tells you in the Gospel and looking for him in those in need.”

The pope, who, as leader of the Roman Catholic Church already has 1.2 billion followers in the standard sense of the word, won’t be following anyone else, the Vatican has said.

After his first splash into the brave new world of Twitter on Wednesday, the contents of future tweets will come primarily from the contents of his weekly general audience, Sunday blessings and homilies on major Church holidays.

They are also expected to include reaction to major world events, such as natural disasters.

The Vatican says papal tweets will be little “pearls of wisdom”, which is understandable since his thoughts will have to be condensed to 140 characters, while papal documents often top 140 pages.

The Vatican said precautions had been taken to make sure the pope’s certified account is not hacked. Only one computer in the Vatican’s secretariat of state will be used for the tweets.

After Wednesday, Benedict won’t be pushing the button on his tweets himself. They will be sent by aides but he will sign off on them.

The pope’s Twitter page is designed in yellow and white – the colors of the Vatican, with a backdrop of the Vatican and his picture. It may change during different liturgical seasons of the year and when the pope is away from the Vatican on trips.

The pope has given a qualified welcome to social media.

In a document issued last year, he said the possibilities of new media and social networks offered “a great opportunity”, but warned of the risks of depersonalization, alienation, self-indulgence, and the dangers of having more virtual friends than real ones.

In 2009, a new Vatican website, www.pope2you.net, went live, offering an application called “The pope meets you on Facebook”, and another allowing the faithful to see the pontiff’s speeches and messages on their iPhones or iPods.

The Vatican famously got egg on its face in 2009 when it was forced to admit that, if it had surfed the web more, it might have known that a traditionalist bishop whose excommunication was lifted had for years been a Holocaust denier.

(Reporting By Philip Pullella, editing by Paul Casciato)

Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Owner of Rivera plane being investigated by DEA

PHOENIX (AP) — The company that owns a luxury jet that crashed and killed Latin music star Jenni Rivera is under investigation by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, and the agency seized two of its planes earlier this year as part of the ongoing probe.

DEA spokeswoman Lisa Webb Johnson confirmed Thursday the planes owned by Las Vegas-based Starwood Management were seized in Texas and Arizona, but she declined to discuss details of the case. The agency also has subpoenaed all the company's records, including any correspondence it has had with a former Tijuana mayor who U.S. law enforcement officials have long suspected has ties to organized crime.

The man widely believed to be behind the aviation company is an ex-convict named Christian Esquino, 50, who has a long and checkered legal past. Corporate records list his sister-in-law as the company's only officer, but insurance companies that cover some of the firm's planes say in court documents that the woman is merely a front and that Esquino is the one in charge.

Esquino's legal woes date back decades. He pleaded guilty to a fraud charge that stemmed from a major drug investigation in Florida in the early 1990s and most recently was sentenced to two years in federal prison in a California aviation fraud case. Esquino, a Mexican citizen, was deported upon his release. Esquino and various other companies he has either been involved with or owns have also been sued for failing to pay millions of dollars in loans, according to court records.

The 43-year-old California-born Rivera died at the peak of her career when the plane she was traveling in nose-dived into the ground while flying from the northern Mexican city of Monterrey to the central city of Toluca early Sunday morning. She was perhaps the most successful female singer in grupero, a male-dominated Mexico regional style, and had branched out into acting and reality television.

It remained unclear Thursday exactly what caused the crash and why Rivera was on Esquino's plane. The 78-year-old pilot and five other people were also killed. Esquino was not on the plane.

The late singer's brother, Pedro Rivera Jr., said that he didn't know anything about the owner or why or how she ended up in his plane.

Esquino told the Los Angeles Times in a telephone interview from Mexico City earlier this week that the singer was considering buying the aircraft from Starwood for $250,000 and the flight was offered as a test ride. He disputed reports that he owns Starwood, maintaining that he is merely the company's operations manager "with the expertise."

In response to an email from The Associated Press, Esquino said he did not want to comment. Calls to various phone numbers associated with him rang unanswered.

Esquino is no stranger to tangles with the law. He was indicted in the early 1990s along with 12 other defendants in a major federal drug investigation that claimed the suspects planned to sell more than 480 kilograms of cocaine, according to court records. He eventually pleaded guilty to conspiring to conceal money from the IRS and was sentenced to five years in prison, but much of the term was suspended for reasons that weren't immediately clear.

He served about five months in prison before being released.

Cynthia Hawkins, a former assistant U.S. attorney who handled the case and is now in private practice in Orlando, remembered the investigation well.

"It was huge," Hawkins said Thursday. "This was an international smuggling group."

She said the case began with the arrest of Robert Castoro, who was at the time considered one of the most prolific smugglers of marijuana and cocaine into Florida from direct ties to Colombian drug cartels in the 1980s. Castoro was convicted in 1988 and sentenced to life in prison, but he then began cooperating with authorities, leading to his sentence being reduced to just 10 years, Hawkins said.

"Castoro cooperated for years," she said. "We put hundreds of people in jail."

He eventually gave up another smuggler, Damian Tedone, who was indicted in the early 1990s along with Esquino and 11 others in a conspiracy involving drug smuggling in Florida in the 1980s at a time when the state was the epicenter of the nation's cocaine trade.

Tedone also cooperated with authorities and has since been released from prison. Telephone messages left Thursday for both Tedone and Castoro were not returned.

Esquino eventually pleaded guilty to the lesser offense of concealing money from the IRS.

Joseph Milchen, Esquino's attorney at the time, said Thursday the case eventually revolved around his client "bringing money into the United States without declaring it."

However, Milchen acknowledged that a plane purchased by Esquino was "used to smuggle drugs."

He denied his former client has ever had anything to do with illegal narcotics.

"The only thing he has ever done is with airplanes," Milchen said.

Court filings also indicate Esquino was sentenced to two years in federal prison after pleading guilty in 2004 to committing fraud involving aircraft he purchased in Mexico, then falsified the planes' log books and re-sold them in the United States.

Also in 2004, a federal judge ordered him and one of his companies to pay a creditor $6.2 million after being accused of failing to pay debts to a bank.

As the years passed, Esquino's troubles only grew.

In February this year, a Gulfstream G-1159A plane the government valued at $500,000 was seized by the U.S. Marshals Service on behalf of the DEA after landing in Tucson on a flight that originated in Mexico

Four months later, the DEA subpoenaed all of Starwood's records dating to Dec. 13, 2007, including federal and state income tax documents, bank deposit information, records on all company assets and sales, and the entity's relationship with Esquino and more than a dozen companies and individuals, including former Tijuana Mayor Jorge Hank-Rhon, a gambling mogul and a member of one of Mexico's most powerful families. U.S. law enforcement officials have long suspected Hank-Rhon is tied to organized crime but no allegations have been proven. He has consistently denied any criminal involvement.

He was arrested in Mexico last year on weapons charges and on suspicion of ordering the murder of his son's former girlfriend. He was later freed for lack of evidence.

The subpoena was obtained by the U-T San Diego newspaper.

A Starwood attorney listed on the subpoena, Jeremy Schuster, declined Thursday to provide details.

"We don't comment on matters involving clients," he said.

In September, the DEA seized another Starwood plane — a 1977 Hawker 700 with an insured value of $1 million — after it landed in McAllen, Texas, from a flight from Mexico.

Insurers of both aircraft have since filed complaints in federal court in Nevada seeking to have the Starwood policies nullified, in part, because they say Esquino lied in the application process when he noted he had never been indicted on drug-related criminal charges. Both companies said they would not have issued the policies had he been truthful.

Another attorney for Starwood has not responded to phone and email messages seeking comment, and no one was at the address listed at its Las Vegas headquarters. The address is a post office box in a shipping and mailing store located between a tuxedo rental shop and a supermarket in a shopping center several miles west of the Las Vegas Strip.

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Associated Press writers Elliot Spagat in San Diego and Ken Ritter in Las Vegas contributed to this report.

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Life Expectancy Rises Around World, Study Finds

A sharp decline in deaths from malnutrition and infectious diseases like measles and tuberculosis has caused a shift in global mortality patterns over the past 20 years, according to a report published on Thursday, with far more of the world’s population now living into old age and dying from diseases mostly associated with rich countries, like cancer and heart disease.

Tony Karumba/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Children in Nairobi, Kenya. Sub-Saharan Africa lagged in mortality gains, compared with Latin America, Asia and North Africa.

The shift reflects improvements in sanitation, medical services and access to food throughout the developing world, as well as the success of broad public health efforts like vaccine programs. The results are striking: infant mortality declined by more than half from 1990 to 2010, and malnutrition, the No. 1 risk factor for death and years of life lost in 1990, has fallen to No. 8.

At the same time, chronic diseases like cancer now account for about two out of every three deaths worldwide, up from just over half in 1990. Eight million people died of cancer in 2010, 38 percent more than in 1990. Diabetes claimed 1.3 million lives in 2010, double the number in 1990.

“The growth of these rich-country diseases, like heart disease, stroke, cancer and diabetes, is in a strange way good news,” said Ezekiel Emanuel, chairman of the department of medical ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania. “It shows that many parts of the globe have largely overcome infectious and communicable diseases as a pervasive threat, and that people on average are living longer.”

In 2010, 43 percent of deaths in the world occurred at age 70 and older, compared with 33 percent of deaths in 1990, the report said. And fewer child deaths have brought up the mean age of death, which in Brazil and Paraguay jumped to 63 in 2010, up from 30 in 1970, the report said. The measure, an average of all deaths in a given year, is different from life expectancy, and is lower when large numbers of children die.

But while developing countries made big strides the United States stagnated. American women registered the smallest gains in life expectancy of all high-income countries’ female populations between 1990 and 2010. American women gained just under two years of life, compared with women in Cyprus, who lived 2.3 years longer and Canadian women who gained 2.4 years. The slow increase caused American women to fall to 36th place in the report’s global ranking of life expectancy, down from 22nd in 1990. Life expectancy for American women was 80.5 in 2010, up from 78.6 in 1990.

“It’s alarming just how little progress there has been for women in the United States,” said Christopher Murray, director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, a health research organization financed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation at the University of Washington that coordinated the report. Rising rates of obesity among American women and the legacy of smoking, a habit women formed later than men, are among the factors contributing to the stagnation, he said. American men gained in life expectancy, to 75.9 years from 71.7 in 1990.

Health experts from more than 300 institutions contributed to the report, which provided estimates of disease and mortality for populations in more than 180 countries. It was published in The Lancet, a British medical journal.

The World Health Organization issued a statement on Thursday saying that some of the estimates in the report differed substantially from those done by United Nations agencies, though others were similar. All comprehensive estimates of global mortality rely heavily on statistical modeling because only 34 countries — representing about 15 percent of the world’s population — produce quality cause-of-death data.

Sub-Saharan Africa was an exception to the trend. Infectious diseases, childhood illnesses and maternity-related causes of death still account for about 70 percent of the region’s disease burden, a measure of years of life lost due to premature death and to time lived in less than full health. In contrast, they account for just one-third in South Asia, and less than a fifth in all other regions. Sub-Saharan Africa also lagged in mortality gains, with the average age of death rising by fewer than 10 years from 1970 to 2010, compared with a more than 25-year increase in Latin America, Asia and North Africa.

Globally, AIDS was an exception to the shift of deaths from infectious to noncommunicable diseases. The epidemic is believed to have peaked, but still results in 1.5 million deaths each year.

Over all, the change means people are living longer, but it also raises troubling questions. Behavior affects people’s risks of developing cancer, heart disease and diabetes, and public health experts say it is far harder to get people to change their ways than to administer a vaccine that protects children from an infectious disease like measles.

“Adult mortality is a much harder task for the public health systems in the world,” said Colin Mathers, a senior scientist at the World Health Organization.

Tobacco use is a rising threat, especially in developing countries, and is responsible for almost six million deaths a year globally. Illnesses like diabetes are also spreading fast.

Donald G. McNeil Jr. contributed reporting.

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