Senate Democrats huddle on gun measures

WASHINGTON – Vice President Joe Biden met Thursday with Senate Democrats to brief the caucus about the rationale behind the administration’s recommendations on guns, arguing that, in the wake of the Newtown, Conn., shooting, the nation “will not understand if we don’t act.”

Biden seemed intent to emphasize that the most politically challenging of the initiatives he has  recommended – an assault weapons ban – was still a priority for the administration, mentioning it first in remarks to reporters afterward.

“My message was to lay out for my colleagues what our game plan was, what we thought needed to be done,” Biden said after the more than hourlong meeting. “I made the case for not only assault weapons but for the entire set of recommendations the president laid out.”

Biden said he also asked to sit down with the key parties on Capitol Hill to plot strategy going forward.

All 23 of President Obama's gun policy proposals

A day after the Senate Judiciary Committee held its first hearing on guns, the vice president said there has been a “sea change” in public opinion since the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, calling it the “straw that broke the camel’s back” to get the public behind gun measures for the first time in decades.

“I’m not saying there’s an absolute consensus on all these things,” he said. “But there is a sea change in attitudes of the American people. And I believe that the American people will not understand – and I know everyone in that caucus agrees with me – will not understand if we don’t act.”

Participants in the meeting said the vice president indicated he will continue to travel to make the administration’s case, as will the president. A week ago Biden traveled to Richmond, Va., to focus on the call for universal background checks, which is seen as the most likely of the slate of proposals to pass.

PHOTOS: President Obama’s past

At that time, Biden did not mention the assault weapons ban in remarks to reporters afterward, though aides said it did come up in the private discussion with officials present.

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) said Biden told the caucus Thursday that the administration is still behind the ban, a priority of her California colleague, Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein.

“He said this is something that they support. And that the reports that he’s seen have shown that it did make a difference,” Boxer said.

That remains a challenge though, even in the Democratic-controlled Senate because the Democrats must defend 21 seats in 2014.

“Until I see the bills and the language, the only thing I’m going to say is I’m a strong supporter of the 2nd Amendment. We’ve got to find a balanced approach, and I will take each amendment and bill as it comes,” said Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), who will be seeking reelection next year in a deeply Republican state.

Biden maintained that while there is no way to eliminate the possibility of another mass shooting, “there are things that we can do … that have virtually zero impact on your 2nd Amendment right to own a weapon for both self-defense and recreation that can save some lives.”

“I’ve always been confident we can reach a consensus on a broad cross-section of issues that can reduce some of this violence, even knowing it will be imperfect,” said Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.).

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Online bingo shows its worth at Rank

LONDON (Reuters) – It may lack the noisy camaraderie of a trip to the bingo hall, but the online version of the numbers game has proved more profitable for Britain‘s Rank Group than the original.

The merits of the online business were further emphasized when Rank said a snowy January had cost it 3 million pounds ($ 4.7 million) in revenue as Britons opted not to venture out to its bingo halls and casinos.

Operating profit from online bingo was 11.4 million pounds, just beating the 11.1 million earned from the venues themselves.

The company, majority owned by Malaysia’s Guoco, reported a 4 percent decline in pretax profit to 31.3 million pounds in the six months to December, with its loss-making Blue Square betting business proving a drag.

Many parts of Britain have seen heavy snow over the last two weeks and there are fears that the bad weather will hit economic activity and push the country back into recession.

Pub groups Enterprise Inns and Mitchell & Butlers both said the recent cold snap had hit sales.

“Allowing for the slow start to the second half we remain confident in our prospects for the remainder of the year and in our longer-term growth strategy,” Rank Chief Executive Ian Burke said.

Rank’s main activities are in Britain where it runs 35 Grosvenor Casinos and more than 100 Mecca bingo clubs.

Profits growth in its online bingo business mirrors that in the gambling industry as a whole where online betting is the fastest growing part of the market, helped by the popularity of smart phones and tablets.

However, Rank has said it is reviewing the future of its own struggling online betting business Blue Square, a relative minnow in a crowded sector.

“We felt the losses were not losses we could continue to sustain,” said Burke.

Blue Square reported an operating loss of 4.8 million pounds in the six months and Rank has now cut its spending on marketing the business.

“There were 11 or 12 competitors advertising and that spending just wasn’t cutting through,” said Burke.

He declined to comment further on the future of the business pending completion of the review.

Rank is awaiting regulatory clearance for a planned 205 million pound deal to buy the casino business of Gala Coral.

A preliminary report by the Competition Commission said Rank could have to sell six casinos to get the deal approved.

($ 1 = 0.6332 British pounds)

(Editing by Louise Ireland and Brenda Goh)

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Appeals judges: Anti-paparazzi law appears legal

LOS ANGELES (AP) — An appeals panel says California's anti-paparazzi statute appears to be constitutional based on a brief filed by prosecutors.

A preliminary statement by three judges in Los Angeles requires a judge who dismissed charges aimed at a paparazzo who authorities say was driving recklessly to review his order. The judge may stick to his ruling, which would trigger a full appeal, or he could schedule further arguments on the case against freelance photographer Paul Raef.

Raef was the first person charged under the new law after a high-speed chase involving Justin Bieber last year.

Superior Court Judge Thomas Rubinson dismissed two charges in November, ruling the law is too broad and is unconstitutional.

Raef's attorney David S. Kestenbaum says he is asking Rubinson to stand by his ruling and allow a full appeal.

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Well: Waiting for Alzheimer's to Begin

My gray matter might be waning. Then again, it might not be. But I swear that I can feel memories — as I’m making them — slide off a neuron and into a tangle of plaque. I steel myself for those moments to come when I won’t remember what just went into my head.

I’m not losing track of my car keys, which is pretty standard in aging minds. Nor have I ever forgotten to turn off the oven after use, common in menopausal women. I can always find my car in the parking lot, although lots of “normal” folk can’t.

Rather, I suddenly can’t remember the name of someone with whom I’ve worked for years. I cover by saying “sir” or “madam” like the Southerner I am, even though I live in Vermont and grown people here don’t use such terms. Better to think I’m quirky than losing my faculties. Sometimes I’ll send myself an e-mail to-do reminder and then, seconds later, find myself thrilled to see a new entry pop into my inbox. Oops, it’s from me. Worse yet, a massage therapist kicked me out of her practice for missing three appointments. I didn’t recall making any of them. There must another Nancy.

Am I losing track of me?

Equally worrisome are the memories increasingly coming to the fore. Magically, these random recollections manage to circumnavigate my imagined build-up of beta-amyloid en route to delivering vivid images of my father’s first steps down his path of forgetting. He was the same age I am now, which is 46.

“How old are you?” I recall him asking me back then. Some years later, he began calling me every Dec. 28 to say, “Happy birthday,” instead of on the correct date, Dec. 27. The 28th had been his grandmother’s birthday.

The chasms were small at first. Explainable. Dismissible. When he crossed the street without looking both ways, we chalked it up to his well-cultivated, absent-minded professor persona. But the chasms grew into sinkholes, and eventually quicksand. When we took him to get new pants one day, he kept trying on the same ones he wore to the store.

“I like these slacks,” he’d say, over and over again, as he repeatedly pulled his pair up and down.

My dad died of Alzheimer’s last April at age 73 — the same age at which his father succumbed to the same disease. My dad ended up choosing neurology as his profession after witnessing the very beginning of his own dad’s forgetting.

Decades later, grandfather’s atrophied brain found its way into a jar on my father’s office desk. Was it meant to be an ever-present reminder of Alzheimer’s effect? Or was it a crystal ball sent to warn of genetic fate? My father the doctor never said, nor did he ever mention, that it was his father’s gray matter floating in that pool of formaldehyde.

Using the jarred brain as a teaching tool, my dad showed my 8-year-old self the difference between frontal and temporal lobes. He also pointed out how brains with Alzheimer’s disease become smaller, and how wide grooves develop in the cerebral cortex. But only after his death — and my mother’s confession about whose brain occupied that jar — did I figure out that my father was quite literally demonstrating how this disease runs through our heads.

Has my forgetting begun?

I called my dad’s neurologist. To find out if I was in the earliest stages of Alzheimer’s, he would have to look for proteins in my blood or spinal fluid and employ expensive neuroimaging tests. If he found any indication of onset, the only option would be experimental trials.

But documented confirmation of a diseased brain would break my still hopeful heart. I’d walk around with the scarlet letter “A” etched on the inside of my forehead — obstructing how I view every situation instead of the intermittent clouding I currently experience.

“You’re still grieving your father,” the doctor said at the end of our call. “Sadness and depression affect the memory, too. Let’s wait and see.”

It certainly didn’t help matters that two people at my father’s funeral made some insensitive remarks.

“Nancy, you must be scared to death.”

“Is it hard knowing the same thing probably will happen to you?”

Maybe the real question is what to do when the forgetting begins. My dad started taking 70 supplements a day in hopes of saving his mind. He begged me to kill him if he wound up like his father. He retired from his practice and spent all day in a chair doing puzzles. He stopped making new memories in an all-out effort to preserve the ones he already had.

Maybe his approach wasn’t the answer.

Just before his death — his brain a fraction of its former self — my father managed to offer up a final lesson. I was visiting him in the memory-care center when he got a strange look on his face. I figured it was gas. But then his eyes lit up and a big grin overtook him, and he looked right at me and said, “Funny how things turn out.”

An unforgettable moment?

I can only hope.

---

Nancy Stearns Bercaw is a writer in Vermont. Her book, “Brain in a Jar: A Daughter’s Journey Through Her Father’s Memory,” will be published in April 2013 by Broadstone.

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Are razor blade makers just ensuring a big cut?

We can put men on the moon. We can make computers small enough to carry around in our pockets. But we can't make a razor blade that stays sharp longer than a week?

It sounds trivial. But the utter lack of progress on the razor front raises fundamental questions about America's industrial might.

Has the sun set on the age of innovation in this country? Is it possible that American ingenuity has met its match in a relatively modest personal-hygiene product used by millions of consumers?

Or are the likes of Gillette and Schick, which account for about 90% of the replacement-blade market, conspiring to keep razor advances off the shelf to deliberately fleece customers and maintain multibillion-dollar revenue streams?

Either way you look at it, it's not a terribly flattering portrayal of U.S. business.

The global market for all shaving products is forecast to top $33 billion by 2015, according to Global Industry Analysts, a market researcher.

Procter & Gamble's Gillette, the market leader, estimates that about two-thirds of American guys age 15 and older shave with a razor, representing a U.S. market for razors and blades worth more than $2.4 billion a year. Worldwide, that market is more than $14 billion.

Schick says most men shave at least three times a week. Razor-Gator.com, a shaving-related website, figures that a man devotes roughly 3,300 hours of his life to shaving.

With those numbers in mind, you'd think teams of engineers would be busy improving the ways and means of a good shave. For example, water causes corrosion on blades, which contributes to making them dull. Isn't there an alloy, or a coating, to address that?

Moore's Law famously predicted that computer chips will double in processing power every couple of years or so. The result has been breakneck advances in the technology field. The first iPhone was introduced just six years ago, for instance, and we're already up to the iPhone 5.

Oh sure, Gillette and Schick keep adding more features. Gillette says its battery-operated Fusion ProGlide razor "delivers soothing micropulses." Schick says its Hydro Power Select boasts "three vibration settings, easy-to-read indicators and a one-touch control button, allowing men to interact with their razor in a new way."

Micropulses, vibration settings — this they can do. But they can't come up with a blade that stays sharp more than a few days?

"Sure they can," said Jeff Grant, president of Coating Services Group, a Lakeside company that makes scalpels for medical use and thus knows a thing or two about sharp edges. "They could make a ceramic blade that maybe costs $100 and lasts for years."

Well, that sounds good. An eight-pack of Gillette Mach3 Turbo shaving cartridges — one of the more popular razors — runs $24 at Walgreens. If you figure on changing the cartridge once a week, that would mean spending $156 each year on razor blades.

So, yeah, I'd spend $100 for a blade that lasts for two, three or more years.

And that, Grant told me, is exactly why we'll never be offered such a chance by Gillette or Schick.

"They'd sell you one blade and they'd be done," he said. "It's a business decision."

Susan Baba, a Gillette spokeswoman, told me she hadn't heard about any research into ceramic razor blades. But she said the company is dedicated to "figuring out the next stage of razors."

As for the longevity of current blades, Baba said you can't generalize. Some people make a blade last a few days, others can go months without changing cartridges.

"It all depends on the length of your hair, how often you shave, how many strokes you use," Baba said.

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Big money gets in on Cabinet nomination fights

WASHINGTON — As former Sen. Chuck Hagel seeks to fend off critics aiming to derail his confirmation as Defense secretary, he has an incongruous ally: a Pittsburgh philanthropist who made his fortune as one of the world's top horse-race bettors.

Bill Benter, a prolific donor to Democrats and liberal groups who keeps a low public profile, financed an ad campaign by a group of centrist national security veterans who hailed Hagel's "bipartisanship and independence of conscience and mind."

Benter's backing of Hagel, who will appear Thursday before the Senate Armed Services Committee, comes as a small number of extremely rich donors are increasingly engaging in independent efforts to shape national politics. The trend has rapidly accelerated in campaigns since federal court decisions in 2010 opened the door to unfettered political spending by corporations and wealthy individuals.

Now the money wars have moved into a new venue: the debate over Cabinet nominees, who traditionally have not had to endure a rough-and-tumble campaign to get confirmed. Some of the players are financed by deep-pocketed interests whose identities are unknown.

A cluster of opaque groups, some of which recently sprang into existence, have run television ads blasting Hagel as weak on Israel and hostile to gays. His critics include some of the conservative advocacy organizations that fought vigorously against President Obama's reelection, such as the Iowa-based American Future Fund, whose donors remain a mystery.

The anti-Hagel campaign, reminiscent of fierce battles over Supreme Court nominees such as Robert H. Bork in 1987, alarmed longtime colleagues of the former Nebraska senator, a Republican.

"This isn't good for America," said Gary Hart, a former Democratic senator from Colorado. "It is terribly poisonous. And it just starts a very, very bad precedent."

Hart and other former top government officials who are part of a loosely organized council called the Bipartisan Group wrote a letter defending Hagel, which Benter had published in a half-page ad in the Washington Post. Benter, a backer of the liberal pro-Israel group J Street, also paid to place the bipartisan group's message for a week in Politico's Playbook, an email digest of political news that is a must-read among capital insiders.

The intense fight over Hagel spotlights how wealthy interests are seeking to shape policy even beyond campaigns and traditional lobbying.

"It's a sign of the times and foreshadows what we're going to see a lot more of in regards to appointments and issue fights," said Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen, which advocates for campaign finance reform. "Obviously, anyone who spends huge amounts of money to advocate for a Cabinet official is going to have a reasonable expectation of special access to that person."

Administration officials, who requested anonymity to discuss the nomination process, dismissed the notion that Hagel would be indebted to Benter, noting that a wide array of prominent foreign policy veterans have endorsed the former senator to lead the Pentagon.

Benter, whose role in the Hagel fight was first reported by Foreign Policy magazine, did not respond to interview requests. Messages left for him were returned by Tony Podesta, a prominent Washington lobbyist, who described Benter as "an active citizen" who was asked by the Bipartisan Group to spread its message.

Podesta would not say how much Benter had spent, but added that the campaign did not include any lobbying. "In the greater scheme of things, it was a pittance," he said.

A math whiz who parlayed his knack for statistics into a computerized system that helped him win untold millions betting on horse races in Hong Kong, Benter has given more than $450,000 to Democrats and liberal political groups in the last decade, according to Federal Election Commission reports.

Benter now runs a medical transcription company in Pittsburgh, where he is a regular on the opera scene and gives generously to cultural and educational institutions, according to financial records and published reports.

He keeps a low profile in national politics, but his name surfaced two years ago when the Washington Times reported that a Hong Kong business associate of Benter, named Consolacion Esdicul, had donated more than $800,000 to J Street at Benter's behest. She was the group's biggest donor in the 2008-09 fiscal year.

Associates said they did not think Benter knew Hagel personally or had any business interests in the defense industry. They said he appeared motivated to jump into the controversy after seeing the attacks mounted against Hagel.

"He said he was very upset because he felt there was a great deal of distortion of the facts and personal attacks that were unwarranted," said Henry Siegman, president of the New York-based U.S./Middle East Project, who was contacted by Benter about organizing a pro-Hagel effort. "He is not someone to the best of my knowledge involved in defense issues per se. His concern is American policy in the region."

Siegman reached out to members of the Bipartisan Group, an advisory council to his group that has included former national security advisors Brent Scowcroft and Zbigniew Brzezinski, as well as Hagel. Siegman said its members decided there was a need to clarify positions Hagel had taken on the Israel-Palestinian negotiations as part of the group, and Benter offered to pay to publicize the group's defense of his record.

Siegman said he thought the campaign Benter financed had some impact on Hagel's behalf.

"I hope that at the very least he calls him and thanks him," he said.

matea.gold@latimes.com

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Rape trial of teenaged football players to be open to public: Ohio judge

(Reuters) – The controversial trial of two high school football players accused of raping a classmate will remain open to the public and will not be relocated to another town, an Ohio judge ruled on Wednesday.

Prosecutors and an attorney representing the accuser had sought a closed trial, arguing that public access to the juvenile trial would subject the accuser to unwanted publicity and make potential witnesses reluctant to testify.

Visiting Hamilton County Judge Tom Lipps said the presence of the media would prevent inaccurate reporting and enhance public confidence in the juvenile justice system, according to his written ruling, a copy of which was seen by Reuters.

“An open hearing is especially valuable where rumors, mischaracterizations and opinions unsupported by facts have reportedly been repeated in social media postings and other published outlets,” Lipps wrote. “An open hearing will diminish the influence of such postings and publications.”

Prosecutors have accused Ma’Lik Richmond and Trent Mays, both 16, of raping a classmate at a party attended by many teammates last August in Steubenville, a close-knit city of 19,000 near the Pennsylvania border.

The case attracted national attention after the hacker activist group Anonymous publicized a picture of two young men carrying a girl by her wrists and ankles and released a video showing other young men joking about the alleged assault.

Richmond’s lawyer, Walter Madison, said previously on CNN that his client was one of the young men in the photograph – which he said was taken out of context – but does not appear in the video. A lawyer for Mays has not publicly commented on the postings.

Community leaders have accused authorities of protecting the school’s popular football program by not charging more players who could have prevented the alleged attack.

Lipps also ruled on Wednesday that the trial will remain in Steubenville. He set a trial date for March 13.

Reuters generally does not identify people who say they have been victims of sex crimes.

(Editing by Paul Thomasch, Bernard Orr)

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Patty Andrews of Andrews Sisters dead at 94

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Patty Andrews, the last surviving member of the singing Andrews Sisters trio whose hits such as the rollicking "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company B" and the poignant "I Can Dream, Can't I?" captured the home-front spirit of World War II, died Wednesday. She was 94.

Andrews died of natural causes at her home in the Los Angeles suburb of Northridge, said family spokesman Alan Eichler in a statement.

Patty was the Andrews in the middle, the lead singer and chief clown, whose raucous jitterbugging delighted American servicemen abroad and audiences at home.

She could also deliver sentimental ballads like "I'll Be with You in Apple Blossom Time" with a sincerity that caused hardened GIs far from home to weep.

"When I was a kid, I only had two records and one of them was the Andrews Sisters. They were remarkable. Their sound, so pure," said Bette Midler, who had a hit cover of "Bugle Boy" in 1973. "Everything they did for our nation was more than we could have asked for. This is the last of the trio, and I hope the trumpets ushering (Patty) into heaven with her sisters are playing "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy."

From the late 1930s through the 1940s, the Andrews Sisters produced one hit record after another, beginning with "Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen" in 1937 and continuing with "Beat Me Daddy, Eight to the Bar," ''Rum and Coca-Cola" and more. They recorded more than 400 songs and sold over 80 million records, several of them going gold.

Other sisters, notably the Boswells, had become famous as singing acts, but mostly they huddled before a microphone in close harmony. The Andrews Sisters — LaVerne, Maxene and Patty — added a new dimension. During breaks in their singing, they cavorted about the stage in rhythm to the music.

Their voices combined with perfect synergy. As Patty remarked in 1971: "There were just three girls in the family. LaVerne had a very low voice. Maxene's was kind of high, and I was between. It was like God had given us voices to fit our parts."

Kathy Daris of the singing Lennon Sisters recalled on Facebook late Wednesday that the Andrews Sisters "were the first singing sister act that we tried to copy. We loved their rendition of songs, their high spirit, their fabulous harmony."

The Andrews Sisters' rise coincided with the advent of swing music, and their style fit perfectly into the new craze. They aimed at reproducing the sound of three harmonizing trumpets.

"I was listening to Benny Goodman and to all the bands," Patty once remarked. "I was into the feel, so that would go into my own musical ability. I was into swing. I loved the brass section."

Unlike other singing acts, the sisters recorded with popular bands of the '40s, fitting neatly into the styles of Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller, Jimmy Dorsey, Bob Crosby, Woody Herman, Guy Lombardo, Desi Arnaz and Russ Morgan. They sang dozens of songs on records with Bing Crosby, including the million-seller "Don't Fence Me In." They also recorded with Dick Haymes, Carmen Miranda, Danny Kaye, Al Jolson, Jimmy Durante and Red Foley.

The Andrews' popularity led to a contract with Universal Pictures, where they made a dozen low-budget musical comedies between 1940 and 1944. In 1947, they appeared in "The Road to Rio" with Bing Crosby, Bob Hope and Dorothy Lamour.

The trio continued until LaVerne's death in 1967. By that time the close harmony had turned to discord, and the sisters had been openly feuding.

Midler's cover of "Bugle Boy" revived interest in the trio. The two survivors joined in 1974 for a Broadway show, "Over Here!" It ran for more than a year, but disputes with the producers led to the cancellation of the national tour of the show, and the sisters did not perform together again.

Patty continued on her own, finding success in Las Vegas and on TV variety shows. Her sister also toured solo until her death in 1995.

Her father, Peter Andrews, was a Greek immigrant who anglicized his name of Andreus when he arrived in America; his wife, Olga, was a Norwegian with a love of music. LaVerne was born in 1911, Maxine (later Maxene) in 1916, Patricia (later Patty, sometimes Patti) in 1918.

All three sisters were born and raised in the Minneapolis area, spending summers in Mound, Minn., on the western shores of Lake Minnetonka, about 20 miles west of Minneapolis.

Listening to the Boswell Sisters on radio, LaVerne played the piano and taught her sisters to sing in harmony; neither Maxene nor Patty ever learned to read music. All three studied singers at the vaudeville house near their father's restaurant. As their skills developed, they moved from amateur shows to vaudeville and singing with bands.

After Peter Andrews moved the family to New York in 1937, his wife, Olga, sought singing dates for the girls. They were often turned down with comments such as: "They sing too loud and they move too much." Olga persisted, and the sisters sang on radio with a hotel band at $15 a week. The broadcasts landed them a contract with Decca Records.

They recorded a few songs, and then came "Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen," an old Yiddish song for which Sammy Cahn and Saul Kaplan wrote English lyrics. (The title means, "To Me You Are Beautiful.") It was a smash hit, and the Andrews Sisters were launched into the bigtime.

Their only disappointment was the movies. Universal was a penny-pinching studio that ground out product to fit the lower half of a double bill. The sisters were seldom involved in the plots, being used for musical interludes in film with titles such as "Private Buckaroo," ''Swingtime Johnny" and "Moonlight and Cactus."

Their only hit was "Buck Privates," which made stars of Abbott and Costello and included the trio's blockbuster "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy from Company B."

In 1947, Patty married Martin Melcher, an agent who represented the sisters as well as Doris Day, then at the beginning of her film career. Patty divorced Melcher in 1949 and soon he became Day's husband, manager and producer.

Patty married Walter Weschler, pianist for the sisters, in 1952. He became their manager and demanded more pay for himself and for Patty. The two other sisters rebelled, and their differences with Patty became public. Lawsuits were filed between the two camps.

"We had been together nearly all our lives," Patty explained in 1971. "Then in one year our dream world ended. Our mother died and then our father. All three of us were upset, and we were at each other's throats all the time."

Patty Andrews is survived by her foster daughter, Pam DuBois, a niece and several cousins. Weschler died in 2010.

A memorial service is planned in Los Angeles, with the date to be determined.

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Well: Myths of Weight Loss Are Plentiful, Researcher Says

If schools reinstated physical education classes, a lot of fat children would lose weight. And they might never have gotten fat in the first place if their mothers had just breast fed them when they were babies. But be warned: obese people should definitely steer clear of crash diets. And they can lose more than 50 pounds in five years simply by walking a mile a day.

Those are among the myths and unproven assumptions about obesity and weight loss that have been repeated so often and with such conviction that even scientists like David B. Allison, who directs the Nutrition Obesity Research Center at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, have fallen for some of them.

Now, he is trying to set the record straight. In an article published online today in The New England Journal of Medicine, he and his colleagues lay out seven myths and six unsubstantiated presumptions about obesity. They also list nine facts that, unfortunately, promise little in the way of quick fixes for the weight-obsessed. Example: “Trying to go on a diet or recommending that someone go on a diet does not generally work well in the long term.”

Obesity experts applauded this plain-spoken effort to dispel widespread confusion about obesity. The field, they say, has become something of a quagmire.

“In my view,” said Dr. Jeffrey M. Friedman, a Rockefeller University obesity researcher, “there is more misinformation pretending to be fact in this field than in any other I can think of.”

Others agreed, saying it was about time someone tried to set the record straight.

“I feel like cheering,” said Madelyn Fernstrom, founding director of the University of Pittsburgh Weight Management Center. When it comes to obesity beliefs, she said, “We are spinning out of control.”

Steven N. Blair, an exercise and obesity researcher at the University of South Carolina, said his own students believe many of the myths. “I like to challenge my students. Can you show me the data? Too often that doesn’t come into it.”

Dr. Allison sought to establish what is known to be unequivocally true about obesity and weight loss.

His first thought was that, of course, weighing oneself daily helped control weight. He checked for the conclusive studies he knew must exist. They did not.

“My goodness, after 50-plus years of studying obesity in earnest and all the public wringing of hands, why don’t we know this answer?” Dr. Allison asked. “What’s striking is how easy it would be to check. Take a couple of thousand people and randomly assign them to weigh themselves every day or not.”

Yet it has not been done.

Instead, people often rely on weak studies that get repeated ad infinitum. It is commonly thought, for example, that people who eat breakfast are thinner. But that notion is based on studies of people who happened to eat breakfast. Researchers then asked if they were fatter or thinner than people who happened not to eat breakfast — and found an association between eating breakfast and being thinner. But such studies can be misleading because the two groups might be different in other ways that cause the breakfast eaters to be thinner. But no one has randomly assigned people to eat breakfast or not, which could cinch the argument.

So, Dr. Allison asks, why do yet another study of the association between thinness and breakfast? “Yet, I can tell you that in the last two weeks I saw an association study of breakfast eating in Islamabad and another in Inner Mongolia and another in a country I never heard of.”

“Why are we doing these?” Dr. Allison asked. “All that time and effort is essentially wasted. The question is: ‘Is it a causal association?’” To get the answer, he added, “Do the clinical trial.”

He decided to do it himself, with university research funds. A few hundred people will be recruited and will be randomly assigned to one of three groups. Some will be told to eat breakfast every day, others to skip breakfast, and the third group will be given vague advice about whether to eat it or not.

As he delved into the obesity literature, Dr. Allison began to ask himself why some myths and misconceptions are so commonplace. Often, he decided, the beliefs reflected a “reasonableness bias.” The advice sounds so reasonable it must be true. For example, the idea that people do the best on weight-loss programs if they set reasonable goals sounds so sensible.

“We all want to be reasonable,” Dr. Allison said. But, he said, when he examined weight-loss studies he found no consistent association between the ambitiousness of the goal and how much weight was lost and how long it had stayed off. This myth, though, illustrates the tricky ground weight-loss programs have to navigate when advising dieters. The problem is that on average people do not lose much – 10 percent of their weight is typical – but setting 10 percent as a goal is not necessarily the best strategy. A very few lose a lot more and some people may be inspired by the thought of a really life-changing weight loss.

“If a patient says, ‘Do you think it is reasonable for me to lose 25 percent of my body weight,’ the honest answer is, ‘No. Not without surgery,’” Dr. Allison said. But, he said, “If a patient says, ‘My goal is to lose 25 percent of my body weight,’ I would say, ‘Go for it.’”

Yet all this negativism bothers people, Dr. Allison conceded. When he talks about his findings to scientists, they often say: “O.K., you’ve convinced us. But what can we do? We’ve got to do something.” He replies that scientists have an ethical duty to make clear what is established and what is speculation. And while it is fine to recommend things like bike paths or weighing yourself daily, scientists must make sure they preface their advice with the caveat that these things seem sensible but have not been proven.

Among the best established methods is weight-loss surgery, which, of course, is not right for most people. But surgeons have done careful studies to show that on average people lose substanial amounts of weight and their health improves, Dr. Allison said. For dieters, the best results occur with structured programs, like ones that supply complete meals or meal replacements.

In the meantime, Dr. Allison said, it is incumbent upon scientists to change their ways. “We need to do rigorous studies,” he said. “We need to stop doing association studies after an association has clearly been demonstrated.”

“I never said we have to wait for perfect knowledge,” Dr. Allison said. But, as John Lennon said, “Just give me some truth.”

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Boeing defends using lithium-ion batteries in 787 Dreamliner jet

Despite numerous incidents and high-profile fires involving lithium-ion batteries on its new 787 Dreamliner passenger jet, aerospace giant Boeing Co. defended installing the technology on the plane and vowed to quickly determine what went wrong.

The 787 has been grounded since Jan. 16 by the Federal Aviation Administration because of problems with onboard lithium-ion batteries. Investigators around the world are looking into the matter.

In a conference call announcing Boeing's fourth-quarter earnings, Chief Executive James McNerney said the company is working with customers and the regulatory agencies to get the matter resolved but is not permitted to comment directly on the ongoing investigations.

"I'm confident we will identify the root cause of these incidents," he said. "When we know the answer, we'll know the answer and we'll act on it."

On Monday, the National Transportation Safety Board released its sixth update on the investigation into the lithium-ion battery systems. It said it has begun analyzing the chemical and elemental makeup of the areas of internal short-circuiting and thermal damage. Work is underway in Washington, D.C., Seattle and Japan.

The agency hasn't reached a conclusion on the cause of the incidents, but McNerney said he didn't doubt Boeing's decision to use the new technology.

"Nothing we've learned has told us yet that we have made the wrong choice on the battery technology," he said. "We feel good about the battery technology and its fit for the airplane. We've just got to get to the root cause of these incidents, and we'll take a look at the data as it unfolds."

Japan's All Nippon Airways disclosed that over the last seven months it had to replace 10 of the batteries on its 17 Dreamliner jets because of an array of issues.

"These replacements included not only battery malfunction cases but also that of charging systems," said Jean Saito, a spokeswoman with the airline. "No flights were canceled or delayed due to these cases."

Boeing's McNerney said the number of battery replacements had been slightly higher than expected, but he did not know the exact number of batteries that had been replaced on the 50 Dreamliners the company had delivered so far.

"What I do know is that batteries are replaced on airplanes every day, every type of battery including these batteries," he said. "What we do know is that the replacement cycle that we've been experiencing there has been for maintenance reasons. There's been no instance that we're aware of where a battery has been replaced due to any kind of safety concerns."

Boeing said in its financial statement that it expected "no significant financial impact" from the 787 grounding this year — even though it will not deliver any new 787s as long as the plane is grounded.

Analysts were less confident. Wayne Plucker, an aerospace analyst with research firm Frost & Sullivan, said Boeing was "painting the rosiest picture" it could, assuming there was one solution for the ongoing problems.

"If there's a quick fix with minimum pain then there shouldn't be much of a problem," he said. "But if it involves a major change in technology it will hit their bottom line in this quarter for sure and next quarter as well."

The 787's battery systems were called into question Jan. 7 when a smoldering fire was discovered on the underbelly of a Dreamliner in Boston operated by Japan Airlines after the 183 passengers and 11 crew members had deplaned at the gate.

In an incident Jan. 16 involving All Nippon Airways in southwestern Japan, smoke was seen swirling from the right side of the cockpit after an emergency landing related to the plane's electrical systems. All 137 passengers and crew members were evacuated from the aircraft and slid down the 787's emergency slides. Video of the event was captured by an onboard passenger and has been broadcast worldwide.

Boeing's lithium-ion batteries are made in Japan by Kyoto-based GS Yuasa Corp. The Japan Transport Safety Board, the country's version of the FAA, is heading the investigation into All Nippon's emergency landing and reported fire.

No one was reported injured in the incidents. But the recent events have become a public relations nightmare for Boeing, which has long heralded the Dreamliner as a representation of 21st century air travel.

The 787, a twin-aisle aircraft that can seat 210 to 290 passengers, is the first large commercial jet with more than half its structure made of composite materials (carbon fibers meshed together with epoxy) rather than aluminum sheets. It's also the first large commercial aircraft that extensively uses electrically powered systems involving lithium-ion batteries.

In the fourth quarter, Boeing earned $978 million, or $1.28 per share, a 30% drop from $1.39 billion, or $1.84 per share, a year earlier, but that period included a tax benefit.

Boeing's fourth-quarter profit topped analyst estimates of $1.19 a share. Fourth-quarter revenue reached $22.3 billion, up 14% from the same period in 2011.

Boeing has taken 848 orders for 787s from airlines and aircraft leasing firms around the world. Depending on the version ordered, the price ranges from $206.8 million to $243.6 million per jet.

The Chicago company has delivered 50 of the 787s to eight airlines worldwide. Six are owned by United Airlines, the only U.S. carrier that currently has 787s in its fleet.

Boeing said it expects earnings this year to be $5 to $5.20 per share, with revenue of $82 billion to $85 billion.

Boeing's shares closed up 94 cents, or more than 1%, at $74.59.

william.hennigan@latimes.com

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