Dorner manhunt: Investigators work to ID charred human remains

After what LAPD Chief Charlie Beck called "a bittersweet night," investigators Wednesday were in the process of identifying the human remains found in the charred cabin where fugitive ex-cop Christopher Dorner was believed to have been holed up after trading gunfire with officers, authorities said.

If the body is identified as Dorner’s, the standoff would end a weeklong manhunt for the ex-LAPD officer and Navy Reserve lieutenant suspected in a string of shootings following his firing by the Los Angeles Police Department several years ago. Four people have died in the case, allegedly at Dorner’s hands.

Beck said he would not consider the manhunt over until the body was identified as Dorner. Police remained on tactical alert and were conducting themselves as if nothing had changed in the case, officials said.

PHOTOS: Manhunt for ex-LAPD officer

The latest burst of gunfire came Tuesday after the suspect, attempting to flee law enforcement officials, fatally shot a San Bernardino County sheriff’s deputy and seriously injured another, officials said. He then barricaded himself in a wooden cabin outside Big Bear, not far from ski resorts in the snow-capped San Bernardino Mountains east of Los Angeles, according to police.

"This could have ended much better, it could have ended worse," said Beck as he drove to the hospital where the injured deputy was located. "I feel for the family of the deputy who lost his life."

The injured deputy is expected to survive but it is anticipated he will need several surgeries. The names of the two deputies have not been released.

TIMELINE: Manhunt for ex-LAPD officer

Just before 5 p.m., authorities smashed the cabin's windows, pumped in tear gas and called for the suspect to surrender, officials said. They got no response. Then, using a demolition vehicle, they tore down the cabin's walls one by one. When they reached the last wall, they heard a gunshot. Then the cabin burst into flames, officials said.

Last week, authorities said they had tracked Dorner to a wooded area near Big Bear Lake. They found his torched gray Nissan Titan with several weapons inside, the said, and the only trace of Dorner was a short trail of footprints in newly fallen snow.

According to a manifesto that officials say Dorner posted on Facebook, he felt the LAPD unjustly fired him several years ago, when a disciplinary panel determined that he lied in accusing his training officer of kicking a mentally ill man during an arrest. Beck has promised to review the case.

DOCUMENT: Read the manifesto

The manifesto vows "unconventional and asymmetrical warfare" against law enforcement officers and their families. "Self-preservation is no longer important to me. I do not fear death as I died long ago," it said.

On Tuesday morning, two maids entered a cabin in the 1200 block of Club View Drive and ran into a man who they said resembled the fugitive, a law enforcement official said. The cabin was not far from where Dorner's singed truck had been found and where police had been holding news conferences about the manhunt.

The man tied up the maids, and he took off in a purple Nissan parked near the cabin, the official said. About 12:20 p.m., one of the maids broke free and called police.

FULL COVERAGE: Sweeping manhunt for ex-cop

Nearly half an hour later, officers with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife spotted the stolen vehicle and called for backup, authorities said. The suspect turned down a side road in an attempt to elude the officers but crashed the vehicle, police said.

A short time later, authorities said, the suspect carjacked a light-colored pickup truck. Allan Laframboise said the truck belonged to his friend Rick Heltebrake, who works at a nearby Boy Scout camp.

Heltebrake was driving on Glass Road with his Dalmatian, Suni, when a hulking African American man stepped into the road, Laframboise said. Heltebrake stopped. The man told him to get out of the truck.

INTERACTIVE MAP: Searching for suspected shooter

"Can I take my dog?" Heltebrake asked, according to his friend.

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Lady Gaga cancels rest of tour due to injured hip

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Lady Gaga has canceled the rest of her tour dates due to a hip injury.

A Wednesday news release from Live Nation Global Touring says Lady Gaga has a tear in her right hip that will require surgery to repair, followed by a recovery period.

The pop star had 21 dates through March 20 remaining on her "Born This Way Ball" tour schedule. She postponed four dates on Tuesday after telling fans in a tweet she'd hurt herself some time ago, but hid the injury from her staff. Over the last month, the injury became worse and she said she was unable to walk following a performance Monday in Montreal.

Fans who have already bought tickets will receive a refund.

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Online:

http://ladygaga.com

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Phys Ed: Getting the Right Dose of Exercise

Phys Ed

Gretchen Reynolds on the science of fitness.

Fitness Tracker

Marathon, half-marathon, 10k and 5K training plans to get you race ready.

A common concern about exercise is that if you don’t do it almost every day, you won’t achieve much health benefit. But a commendable new study suggests otherwise, showing that a fairly leisurely approach to scheduling workouts may actually be more beneficial than working out almost daily.

For the new study, published this month in Exercise & Science in Sports & Medicine, researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham gathered 72 older, sedentary women and randomly assigned them to one of three exercise groups.

One group began lifting weights once a week and performing an endurance-style workout, like jogging or bike riding, on another day.

Another group lifted weights twice a week and jogged or rode an exercise bike twice a week.

The final group, as you may have guessed, completed three weight-lifting and three endurance sessions, or six weekly workouts.

The exercise, which was supervised by researchers, was easy at first and meant to elicit changes in both muscles and endurance. Over the course of four months, the intensity and duration gradually increased, until the women were jogging moderately for 40 minutes and lifting weights for about the same amount of time.

The researchers were hoping to find out which number of weekly workouts would be, Goldilocks-like, just right for increasing the women’s fitness and overall weekly energy expenditure.

Some previous studies had suggested that working out only once or twice a week produced few gains in fitness, while exercising vigorously almost every day sometimes led people to become less physically active, over all, than those formally exercising less. Researchers theorized that the more grueling workout schedule caused the central nervous system to respond as if people were overdoing things, sending out physiological signals that, in an unconscious internal reaction, prompted them to feel tired or lethargic and stop moving so much.

To determine if either of these possibilities held true among their volunteers, the researchers in the current study tracked the women’s blood levels of cytokines, a substance related to stress that is thought to be one of the signals the nervous system uses to determine if someone is overdoing things physically. They also measured the women’s changing aerobic capacities, muscle strength, body fat, moods and, using sophisticated calorimetry techniques, energy expenditure over the course of each week.

By the end of the four-month experiment, all of the women had gained endurance and strength and shed body fat, although weight loss was not the point of the study. The scientists had not asked the women to change their eating habits.

There were, remarkably, almost no differences in fitness gains among the groups. The women working out twice a week had become as powerful and aerobically fit as those who had worked out six times a week. There were no discernible differences in cytokine levels among the groups, either.

However, the women exercising four times per week were now expending far more energy, over all, than the women in either of the other two groups. They were burning about 225 additional calories each day, beyond what they expended while exercising, compared to their calorie burning at the start of the experiment.

The twice-a-week exercisers also were using more energy each day than they had been at first, burning almost 100 calories more daily, in addition to the calories used during workouts.

But the women who had been assigned to exercise six times per week were now expending considerably less daily energy than they had been at the experiment’s start, the equivalent of almost 200 fewer calories each day, even though they were exercising so assiduously.

“We think that the women in the twice-a-week and four-times-a-week groups felt more energized and physically capable” after several months of training than they had at the start of the study, says Gary Hunter, a U.A.B. professor who led the experiment. Based on conversations with the women, he says he thinks they began opting for stairs over escalators and walking for pleasure.

The women working out six times a week, though, reacted very differently. “They complained to us that working out six times a week took too much time,” Dr. Hunter says. They did not report feeling fatigued or physically droopy. Their bodies were not producing excessive levels of cytokines, sending invisible messages to the body to slow down.

Rather, they felt pressed for time and reacted, it seems, by making choices like driving instead of walking and impatiently avoiding the stairs.

Despite the cautionary note, those who insist on working out six times per week need not feel discouraged. As long as you consciously monitor your activity level, the findings suggest, you won’t necessarily and unconsciously wind up moving less over all.

But the more fundamental finding of this study, Dr. Hunter says, is that “less may be more,” a message that most likely resonates with far more of us. The women exercising four times a week “had the greatest overall increase in energy expenditure,” he says. But those working out only twice a week “weren’t far behind.”

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California housing recovery may gain momentum, experts say

New foreclosures in California fell sharply in January as state rules for banks took effect, signaling that repossessions may finally settle in at levels not seen since before the housing bust.

The resulting decline in bank-owned properties listed for sale on the market — as well as record numbers of investors prowling for bargains — should give the state's housing recovery momentum this year, experts said.

In the Southland, the new year kicked off with a sharp annual gain in sales, the highest volume for a January in six years. The region's median home price notched a sharp 23.5% gain over the same month last year. And new foreclosure actions plummeted statewide.

“The recovery is for real, that is what I think is happening,” said Esmael Adibi, director of Chapman University's A. Gary Anderson Center for Economic Research. “It is being driven by real demand, and fundamentals are favorable.”

The price gains reflect a shift in the market away from foreclosures and toward regular sales, indicating a recovery on solid ground, said Christopher Thornberg, founding principal at Beacon Economics.

“The question is, is it the real deal?” Thornberg said. “Sure it is. It is driven of course by a very tight market … about as tight as it gets, and ultimately inventory drives prices.”

Although prices may be gaining, the healthiest contributors to housing strength — employment gains and consumer confidence — appear to be playing less of a factor than investor activity and low mortgage interest rates. That's cause for some concern, but the housing market still has a long way to go to recover from its peak summer 2007 levels, DataQuick President John Walsh said.

“This fledgling housing recovery has momentum,” Walsh said in a statement. “Already, price hikes have caused some to question whether it's sustainable, whether it's a ‘bubble.' Let's not forget, though, that we're still climbing out of a deep hole from the housing downturn.”

The home price and sales gains came as foreclosure starts in California took a massive tumble last month as new state laws aimed at prohibiting certain aggressive bank repossession practices went into effect. The real estate website ForeclosureRadar.com reported a 60.5% decline in California default notices in January from December.

The number of default notices — the first formal step in the state's foreclosure process — fell 77.7% from January 2012. A total of 4,500 such filings were logged last month — the lowest number of default no-
tices since at least September 2006, when the website's records begin.

The website noted that the foreclosure drop came in January, when a package of tough new laws protecting California homeowners went into effect. Most notably, the Homeowner Bill of Rights bans the practice of “dual tracking,” in which a lender seizes a home while the owner is negotiating to lower mortgage payments.

The laws also outlawed so-called robo-signing — the improper or faulty processing of foreclosure documents — and would allow state agencies and private citizens to sue financial institutions, under limited conditions, for economic compensation and for additional civil damages of up to $50,000. Passed last year, the legislative package was sponsored by California Atty. Gen. Kamala D. Harris and written by 10 Democratic lawmakers.

While dramatic, the drop is part of a general decline in foreclosure actions over the last year as banks look toward short sales and loan modifications as alternatives to seizing homes.

“You will see a continued decline in defaults from regulator activity, new laws and from the economy,” said Dustin Hobbs, a spokesman for the California Mortgage Bankers Assn. “As long as the economy, and especially the housing market, continues to slowly heal itself, you will see fewer and fewer defaults.”

Katherine Porter, a UC Irvine law professor who is monitoring the state's accord with the nation's five largest mortgage servicers over foreclosure abuses, said that it was not clear to her whether the dramatic drop in foreclosures resulted directly from new laws. The decrease could be temporary, she said, as mortgage servicers adjust their foreclosure processing systems.

Madeline Schnapp, director of economic research for ForeclosureRadar, believes the low levels of foreclosures will continue.

“The plethora of anti-foreclosure laws have been very effective in reducing foreclosure activity to what you are seeing today,” she said.

Foreclosed homes made up just 15% of the Southern California resale market last month, down dramatically from the worst of the crash, when they hit a high of 56.7% in February 2009, according to DataQuick. Short sales made up an estimated 25.9% of January's resale market.

Fewer foreclosures will probably lead to more gains in home prices, because foreclosures have been the main supply of cheap housing. But rising prices also will lift more underwater homeowners out of a negative equity position, helping them sell their homes, which could also loosen up supply.

Buyers paid a median $321,000 last month in Southern California, a reflection of rising prices and a shift in the buying mix from lower-end starter homes to pricier digs.

Sales of homes in the region's move-up market have continued to gain. Sales of homes priced from $300,000 to $800,000 soared 49.6% year-over-year in January, while sales of homes costing more than $500,000 jumped 74% from a year earlier.

Meanwhile, sales of homes costing less than $200,000 fell 23.5% from the previous January, an indication of tight inventory levels in those markets as investors look to snap up houses and rent them out.

alejandro.lazo@latimes.com

Times staff writer Andrew Khouri contributed to this report.

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Hagel's Defense nomination OKd by Senate Armed Services Committee

WASHINGTON — After a contentious debate, the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday narrowly approved former Sen. Chuck Hagel to be secretary of Defense, moving the fight over President Obama's controversial Cabinet choice to the full Senate.

Hagel, a Republican from Nebraska, won the 26-member panel's endorsement with only Democratic votes. All 11 Republicans present voted against his nomination; one GOP senator was absent.

The full Senate will begin considering Hagel's nomination Wednesday, with a final vote possible by week's end. Several GOP senators have threatened to delay the vote, but the White House appears confident it has enough votes to prevail. Hagel, who would replace Leon E. Panetta, already has scheduled his first foreign trip as secretary for Feb. 20.

The two-hour hearing grew heated after Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) complained that Hagel did not report the source of $200,000 in income, saying it may have come "directly from North Korea." Cruz acknowledged that he had "no evidence" to support that charge.

Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), the chairman, countered that Hagel had complied with all the committee's financial disclosure requirements, including for foreign sources of income. He chided Cruz, the panel's most junior Republican, for offering "innuendo" without evidence.

Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) reacted more strongly, calling Cruz's remarks "out of line."

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a former close friend of Hagel who has been sharply critical of the nominee's views on Iraq, defended him. Like McCain, Hagel served in combat in the Vietnam War, and he was wounded twice in battle.

"Sen. Hagel is an honorable man. He served his country and no one on this committee should impugn his integrity," McCain said.

The tense exchange brought to the surface concerns of several members that the Armed Services Committee, which traditionally has operated in a more bipartisan fashion than other congressional panels, was losing that spirit.

Other Republican criticism focused on issues that emerged before and during Hagel's Jan. 31 confirmation hearing, including his past statements on Iran and Israel, and concerns that he will oversee a significant reduction in Pentagon spending.

Members also cited Hagel's widely panned performance at his confirmation hearing, at which he appeared tentative and unsure at times. McCain called it the worst of any Defense nominee he'd seen.

Even a supporter, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), said she wished he had appeared "feistier."

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), one of Hagel's chief critics, said: "The next secretary of Defense is going to have to deal with a world on fire. I just believe that the testimony of Sen. Hagel was not reassuring."

Several Republicans have vowed to delay or derail a final Senate vote on Hagel.

Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.) has said he would insist that Hagel overcome a filibuster, which would require the support of 60 senators to end debate and move to a final up-or-down vote.

Graham has threatened to hold Hagel's nomination until the White House answers specific questions about Obama's actions on Sept. 11, 2012, when armed militants stormed a U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, and killed four Americans.

Other Republican senators who say they will vote against Hagel also say that they oppose a filibuster.

The White House believes all 53 Democratic senators and the two independents who caucus with the party will support Hagel's confirmation. Two Republicans — Thad Cochran of Mississippi and Mike Johanns of Nebraska — also have said they would vote yes.

michael.memoli@latimes.com

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Alec Baldwin, wife expecting a baby this summer

NEW YORK (AP) — Alec Baldwin and his wife are expecting their first child together.

Publicist Matthew Hiltzik confirmed Tuesday that Hilaria Baldwin is due late this summer.

Alec Baldwin already is the father of a 17-year-old daughter, Ireland, from his previous marriage to actress Kim Basinger (BAY'-sing-ur). Hilaria Baldwin is a special correspondent for the TV show "Extra." The couple wed last June after a three-month engagement.

Alec Baldwin recently won a SAG Award for best actor in a TV series for the NBC comedy "30 Rock," which concluded its seven-year run two weeks ago.

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Well: Straining to Hear and Fend Off Dementia

At a party the other night, a fund-raiser for a literary magazine, I found myself in conversation with a well-known author whose work I greatly admire. I use the term “conversation” loosely. I couldn’t hear a word he said. But worse, the effort I was making to hear was using up so much brain power that I completely forgot the titles of his books.

A senior moment? Maybe. (I’m 65.) But for me, it’s complicated by the fact that I have severe hearing loss, only somewhat eased by a hearing aid and cochlear implant.

Dr. Frank Lin, an otolaryngologist and epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, describes this phenomenon as “cognitive load.” Cognitive overload is the way it feels. Essentially, the brain is so preoccupied with translating the sounds into words that it seems to have no processing power left to search through the storerooms of memory for a response.

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Katherine Bouton speaks about her own experience with hearing loss.

A transcript of this interview can be found here.

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Over the past few years, Dr. Lin has delivered unwelcome news to those of us with hearing loss. His work looks “at the interface of hearing loss, gerontology and public health,” as he writes on his Web site. The most significant issue is the relation between hearing loss and dementia.

In a 2011 paper in The Archives of Neurology, Dr. Lin and colleagues found a strong association between the two. The researchers looked at 639 subjects, ranging in age at the beginning of the study from 36 to 90 (with the majority between 60 and 80). The subjects were part of the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging. None had cognitive impairment at the beginning of the study, which followed subjects for 18 years; some had hearing loss.

“Compared to individuals with normal hearing, those individuals with a mild, moderate, and severe hearing loss, respectively, had a 2-, 3- and 5-fold increased risk of developing dementia over the course of the study,” Dr. Lin wrote in an e-mail summarizing the results. The worse the hearing loss, the greater the risk of developing dementia. The correlation remained true even when age, diabetes and hypertension — other conditions associated with dementia — were ruled out.

In an interview, Dr. Lin discussed some possible explanations for the association. The first is social isolation, which may come with hearing loss, a known risk factor for dementia. Another possibility is cognitive load, and a third is some pathological process that causes both hearing loss and dementia.

In a study last month, Dr. Lin and colleagues looked at 1,984 older adults beginning in 1997-8, again using a well-established database. Their findings reinforced those of the 2011 study, but also found that those with hearing loss had a “30 to 40 percent faster rate of loss of thinking and memory abilities” over a six-year period compared with people with normal hearing. Again, the worse the hearing loss, the worse the rate of cognitive decline.

Both studies also found, somewhat surprisingly, that hearing aids were “not significantly associated with lower risk” for cognitive impairment. But self-reporting of hearing-aid use is unreliable, and Dr. Lin’s next study will focus specifically on the way hearing aids are used: for how long, how frequently, how well they have been fitted, what kind of counseling the user received, what other technologies they used to supplement hearing-aid use.

What about the notion of a common pathological process? In a recent paper in the journal Neurology, John Gallacher and colleagues at Cardiff University suggested the possibility of a genetic or environmental factor that could be causing both hearing loss and dementia — and perhaps not in that order. In a phenomenon called reverse causation, a degenerative pathology that leads to early dementia might prove to be a cause of hearing loss.

The work of John T. Cacioppo, director of the Social Neuroscience Laboratory at the University of Chicago, also offers a clue to a pathological link. His multidisciplinary studies on isolation have shown that perceived isolation, or loneliness, is “a more important predictor of a variety of adverse health outcomes than is objective social isolation.” Those with hearing loss, who may sit through a dinner party and not hear a word, frequently experience perceived isolation.

Other research, including the Framingham Heart Study, has found an association between hearing loss and another unexpected condition: cardiovascular disease. Again, the evidence suggests a common pathological cause. Dr. David R. Friedland, a professor of otolaryngology at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, hypothesized in a 2009 paper delivered at a conference that low-frequency loss could be an early indication that a patient has vascular problems: the inner ear is “so sensitive to blood flow” that any vascular abnormalities “could be noted earlier here than in other parts of the body.”

A common pathological cause might help explain why hearing aids do not seem to reduce the risk of dementia. But those of us with hearing loss hope that is not the case; common sense suggests that if you don’t have to work so hard to hear, you have greater cognitive power to listen and understand — and remember. And the sense of perceived isolation, another risk for dementia, is reduced.

A critical factor may be the way hearing aids are used. A user must practice to maximize their effectiveness and they may need reprogramming by an audiologist. Additional assistive technologies like looping and FM systems may also be required. And people with progressive hearing loss may need new aids every few years.

Increasingly, people buy hearing aids online or from big-box stores like Costco, making it hard for the user to follow up. In the first year I had hearing aids, I saw my audiologist initially every two weeks for reprocessing and then every three months.

In one study, Dr. Lin and his colleague Wade Chien found that only one in seven adults who could benefit from hearing aids used them. One deterrent is cost ($2,000 to $6,000 per ear), seldom covered by insurance. Another is the stigma of old age.

Hearing loss is a natural part of aging. But for most people with hearing loss, according to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, the condition begins long before they get old. Almost two-thirds of men with hearing loss began to lose their hearing before age 44. My hearing loss began when I was 30.

Forty-eight million Americans suffer from some degree of hearing loss. If it can be proved in a clinical trial that hearing aids help delay or offset dementia, the benefits would be immeasurable.

“Could we do something to reduce cognitive decline and delay the onset of dementia?” he asked. “It’s hugely important, because by 2050, 1 in 30 Americans will have dementia.

“If we could delay the onset by even one year, the prevalence of dementia drops by 15 percent down the road. You’re talking about billions of dollars in health care savings.”

Should studies establish definitively that correcting hearing loss decreases the potential for early-onset dementia, we might finally overcome the stigma of hearing loss. Get your hearing tested, get it corrected, and enjoy a longer cognitively active life. Establishing the dangers of uncorrected hearing might even convince private insurers and Medicare that covering the cost of hearing aids is a small price to pay to offset the cost of dementia.

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Katherine Bouton is the author of the new book, “Shouting Won’t Help: Why I — and 50 Million Other Americans — Can’t Hear You,” from which this essay is adapted.

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This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 12, 2013

An earlier version of this article misstated the location of the Medical College of Wisconsin. It is in Milwaukee, not Madison.

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Texas Gov. Rick Perry tries to woo California businesses

Texas Gov. Rick Perry is on a hunting trip in California. And the prey is Golden State businesses — and jobs.

Perry kicked off his in-your-face campaign to woo companies to the Lone Star State this month with radio ads declaring that "building a business in California is next to impossible." Now the governor is on a whirlwind trip through the state courting companies in person.

"You fish where the fish are," Perry said Tuesday during an interview in Beverly Hills, his slow drawl emphasizing each point. "You're at a tipping point in California from the standpoint of high-wealth innovators. Many are looking for somewhere else to go, and we'd like them to consider Texas."

Perry's not the only one who has come knocking.

The Arizona Commerce Authority recently opened offices in California staffed with employees to pitch businesses full-time. Nevada has hired recruiters as well. And Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad said last year that he was making calls to California companies looking to move.

Although interstate job poaching is nothing new, many states and cities have gotten downright aggressive about recruiting California businesses ready to bolt with promises of low taxes, loose regulations and a hard stance on organized labor. They're betting that myriad new policies will push more corporations to look for a new home.

California voters in November approved Proposition 30, which hiked income taxes for the state's wealthiest residents and nudged up the sales tax. They also voted yes on closing a corporate tax loophole for out-of-state businesses. And California's cap-and-trade program requires businesses to pay for emitting carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gases above a certain threshold.

Gov. Jerry Brown has publicly dismissed both Perry and the idea of firms fleeing California. In a statement, his Office of Business and Economic Development noted that 257,000 private-sector jobs were added last year and that firms such as Samsung Electronics Co. and Amazon.com Inc. were expanding in the state.

"No state has ever poached their way to long-term prosperity," the statement said. "This is something so many governors have done before and with the same ineffective results."

Successful or not, poaching "does seem to have surged in the last few years," said Greg LeRoy, executive director of Good Jobs First, a group that tracks government subsidies. "More public officials want to appear aggressive on the economy."

But are California companies really susceptible to the siren call to flee?

Many economists say companies griping over higher taxes or new regulations is nothing new, but relatively few of California's lost jobs can be blamed on businesses moving out of state.

From 1992 to 2006, for example, only 2% of job losses in the Golden State were because of firm relocations, according to a study from the Public Policy Institute of California. Fewer than 1% of the state's jobs leave annually, and that has remained consistent through times of boom or bust.

"It's a tiny percentage of the economy overall," said Jed Kolko, coauthor of the study. "But when a business does actually move, it does get a lot of attention and the public debate about businesses moving is very visible."

After 15 years of being based in Northern California, trash and recycling firm Waste Connections Inc. moved its headquarters to Texas last year. Chief Executive Ron Mittelstaedt said the board also considered Nevada, Arizona and Colorado. But he said one thing was clear: California's high taxes, pricey real estate and budget shortfalls meant that it was imperative to move.

"The overall cost of living and working in California just became too burdensome relative to other options out there," Mittelstaedt said, pointing to the company's top three rivals, which are headquartered in the low-tax states of Florida, Arizona and Texas.

"We didn't make the decision to save dollars and cents, though," he added. "We did it so over time we could retain and recruit the best level talent at a lower price point. Over time we believe it will save several million [dollars] a year."

Such tales don't surprise Joseph Vranich, a business relocation specialist from Irvine. Vranich scoffs at economists who insist that few companies are exiting California, and points out the extreme difficulty of tracking all businesses that flow in and out of the state. He said the number of local firms seeking his advice for relocation has doubled since November.

"The number of calls is literally unprecedented," Vranich said.

The Greater Phoenix Economic Council has already flown out four CEOs from the Golden State this year who were interested in seeing what the region had to offer for companies.

Implemented after the November elections, the tours are a big departure from the council's normal strategy of pitching businesses on expanding in Arizona rather than leaving California altogether, spokeswoman Melissa DeLaney said

"Prop. 30 was the turning point," she said. "It's kind of changed how we are marketing ourselves to California. We used to go with a softer approach, positioning Arizona as a partner. But if companies are leaving, which they definitely are, we want to show them Arizona has a great value."

As for Perry, the governor makes no apologies for making the big sell to California. On Tuesday, he rattled off a list of companies — Apple Inc. and EBay Inc. among them — that recently announced expansions in Texas.

"I'm not going to apologize when a major business or a small business says, 'We are going to relocate from California to Texas,'" he said. "I didn't hear anyone from the Giants apologizing for winning the World Series. And I don't think the 49ers would have apologized for winning the Super Bowl."

Perry sees it all as healthy competition. And it's a game Californians are welcome to try down south.

"Come to Texas and try to lure companies — you're welcome to do it," he said. "But you better come with a good story."

shan.li@latimes.com

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Dorner could face death penalty as criminal charges filed

As a massive manhunt for Christopher Jordan Dorner continued Monday afternoon, prosecutors with the Riverside County district attorney’s office filed murder and attempted murder charges against the ex-cop suspected of killing three people, including a Riverside police officer.

Dist. Atty. Paul Zellerbach said Dorner has been charged with one count of murder, with special circumstance allegations in the killing of a peace officer and the discharge of a firearm from a vehicle, in the death of Riverside police Officer Michael Crain, 34, a married father who served two tours in Kuwait as a rifleman in the U.S. Marines.

The special circumstances allegation makes Dorner eligible for the death penalty.

The former police officer also faces three additional counts of attempted murder of a peace officer for allegedly shooting and critically injuring Crain's partner and firing at two Los Angeles police officers who were in Corona to provide protection to one of Dorner's alleged targets. One of the LAPD officers was grazed on the head by a bullet.

The surviving officer, whose name has not been released, was "in a lot of pain" and will probably need several surgeries, Riverside Police Chief Sergio Diaz told reporters Monday. It was not yet known if he will be able to return to duty, Diaz said.

Shortly after the press conference, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa ordered all city flags to be flown at half-staff effective Monday afternoon to honor Crain, a spokesman said.

Funeral services for Crain are scheduled for 10:30 a.m. Wednesday at Grove Community Church in Riverside. The flags will remain at half-staff until  after the services.

Meanwhile, the full-court-press search continued, though beyond several false sightings there has been little success so far in the hunt.

Investigators have received at least 700 tips about the fugitive ex-officer, and police are continuing to dangle a $1-million reward in the hope that someone will step forward.

There have been no confirmed sightings of Dorner since the manhunt began last Wednesday, and the last known evidence pointing to his whereabouts was his burning pickup truck discovered Thursday on a forest road in Big Bear, officials said.

Hundreds of investigators are continuing to follow up on potential leads, Los Angeles Police Department Lt. Andy Neiman said at a media briefing in downtown Los Angeles. The tips are being prioritized based on the information they contain.

Neiman also stressed that the ongoing search at Big Bear, although scaled back, remains a "critical piece of the investigation," saying authorities would remain on the mountain "until we've looked in every nook and cranny."

Neiman said he does not know how much the multiagency manhunt has cost thus far but described it as a "substantial cost to the city and taxpayers."

Investigators have also been in contact with Dorner's family, Neiman said, and are hopeful that a huge reward announced Sunday would lead to Dorner's arrest. His mother and sister cooperated with Irvine police on Friday when they searched the La Palma residence believed to be his last known address.

Authorities also continued to keep an eye on border crossings and airfields.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents at the San Ysidro and Otay Mesa ports of entry said they are monitoring all southbound lanes into Mexico, creating hours-long delays during peak crossing times.  Agents were also stationed at all pedestrian crossings into Tijuana, said Angelica De Cima, a customs  spokeswoman.

Mexican authorities have also bolstered security at the ports of entry and notified local, state and federal police to be on the lookout for Dorner, though there's no evidence he has crossed the border.

The Transportation Security Administration is also urging pilots and aircraft operators to be alert and to watch for stolen planes or suspicious passengers. The TSA said Dorner received flight training in the military, but the level of his expertise was unclear.

An Arcadia church school connected to Dorner's LAPD training officer canceled classes Monday as a precaution, officials said, while Big Bear schools reopened after the search there was scaled back.

The shootings attributed to Dorner began Feb. 3 with the deaths of Monica Quan, a Cal State Fullerton assistant basketball coach, and her fiance, Keith Lawrence, a USC public safety officer.The two had recently become engaged and were sitting in a car in Irvine when they were shot numerous times in the head.

Quan was the daughter of a retired LAPD captain whom Dorner apparently accused online of not representing him fairly at a hearing that led to his firing. In what police said was his posting to Facebook, Dorner allegedly threatened the retired captain and others he blamed for his termination.

Members of the USC community have also set up a memorial in front of the public safety department on campus that will stay in place until Lawrence is buried. Those who knew Lawrence recall him as a young law enforcement officer with a bright future.

More that 50 LAPD families remained under police guard Monday.

"Our commitment is to finding Mr. Dorner and making this city safe again," LAPD’s Neiman said.

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'Identity Thief' grabs $34.6M to debut at No. 1

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Jason Bateman and Melissa McCarthy's "Identity Thief" has made off with the weekend box-office title with a $34.6 million debut.

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. "Identity Thief," Universal, $34,551,025, 3,141 locations, $11,000 average, $34,551,025, one week.

2. "Warm Bodies," Lionsgate, $11,356,090, 3,009 locations, $3,774 average, $36,481,172, two weeks.

3. "Side Effects," Open Road Films, $9,303,145, 2,605 locations, $3,571 average, $9,303,145, one week.

4. "Silver Linings Playbook," Weinstein Co., $6,425,271, 2,809 locations, $2,287 average, $89,519,510, 13 weeks.

5. "Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters," Paramount, $5,753,165, 3,285 locations, $1,751 average, $43,836,018, three weeks.

6. "Mama," Universal, $4,229,665, 2,677 locations, $1,580 average, $63,951,810, four weeks.

7. "Zero Dark Thirty," Sony, $4,006,860, 2,562 locations, $1,564 average, $83,567,450, eight weeks.

8. "Argo," Warner Bros., $2,375,344, 1,405 locations, $1,691 average, $123,608,957, 18 weeks.

9. "Django Unchained," Weinstein Co., $2,303,495, 1,502 locations, $1,534 average, $154,516,627, seven weeks.

10. "Bullet to the Head," Warner Bros., $2,078,192, 2,404 locations, $864 average, $8,269,214, two weeks.

11. "Top Gun" in 3-D, Paramount, $1,965,737, 300 locations, $6,552 average, $1,965,737, one week.

12. "Lincoln," Disney, $1,873,537, 1,517 locations, $1,235 average, $173,621,006, 14 weeks.

13. "Parker," FilmDistrict, $1,867,411, 2,004 locations, $932 average, $15,848,064, three weeks.

14. "Life of Pi," Fox, $1,745,744, 924 locations, $1,889 average, $108,530,249, 12 weeks.

15. "Les Miserables," Universal, $1,555,550, 1,447 locations, $1,075 average, $143,983,705, seven weeks.

16. "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey," Warner Bros., $1,468,374, 1,001 locations, $1,467 average, $298,333,426, nine weeks.

17. "Parental Guidance," Fox, $1,071,766, 1,219 locations, $879 average, $74,344,256, seven weeks.

18. "Wreck-It Ralph," Disney, $1,065,817, 757 locations, $1,408 average, $184,414,532, 15 weeks.

19. "The Impossible," Summit, $957,594, 739 locations, $1,296 average, $16,668,338, eight weeks.

20. "Quartet," Weinstein Co., $940,930, 244 locations, $3,856 average, $5,000,417, five weeks.

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Online:

http://www.hollywood.com

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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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