Murder case against tennis umpire is dropped









From the beginning, the death of professional tennis umpire Lois Goodman's husband was beset by contradictions.


When Alan Goodman, 80, was found dead in April at the couple's Woodland Hills condominium, paramedics noticed a suspicious cut to the side of his head. But Los Angeles police initially agreed with Lois Goodman's account that her ailing husband had fallen down a flight of stairs.


Days later, a coroner's investigator found that the injuries were consistent with being struck by a sharp object. That ultimately led to Goodman's dramatic arrest at a luxury Manhattan hotel as she prepared for the U.S. Open tennis tournament, with authorities claiming she bludgeoned her husband with a coffee mug.





On Friday, prosecutors abruptly dropped a murder charge against her. Officials would say only that prosecutors received "additional information," declining to elaborate.


But law enforcement sources told The Times that medical experts consulted by the Los Angeles County district attorney's office concluded that the death could be the result of an accident, contradicting the coroner's determination that it was a homicide.


The finding added to a long list of problems with the case, the sources said, that included a lack of a clear motive as well as other physical evidence that could help the defense. Moreover, genetic tests found none of Goodman's DNA on the piece of the coffee mug that prosecutors had alleged she used to kill her husband.


After she left the courtroom Friday a free woman, Goodman, 70, insisted she was innocent and said she wanted to get back on the professional tennis tour, where she has been a fixture for decades.


"I feel wonderful," she said, standing in the rain outside the Van Nuys courthouse, flanked by her attorneys. "I just feel I have been treated fairly now and it was just a tragic accident."


The dismissal raised questions about how the case was investigated and whether both detectives and prosecutors rushed to charge Goodman. Last year, the LAPD acknowledged detectives had wrongly arrested a man in the high-profile beating of a San Francisco Giants baseball fan outside Dodger Stadium.


One of Goodman's attorneys, Robert Sheahen, criticized the LAPD's investigation, saying crime scene evidence undercut the theory that Alan Goodman's death was a homicide.


A prominent medical expert, he said, told the defense team that Goodman was more likely to have died from heart failure, noting that his heart was four times the size of a normal heart. Blood evidence showed that an injured Goodman was downstairs at some point but was upstairs in bed by the time paramedics arrived, Sheahen said. Lois Goodman — who suffered from bad knees, a torn rotator cuff, rheumatoid arthritis and severe back pain — was in no physical condition to move her 160-pound husband, the attorney said.


"She would have needed a forklift to take the body up the stairs. It was ridiculous," Sheahen said.


The LAPD declined to comment on details of the case, but LAPD Chief Charlie Beck released a brief statement.


"I am aware that the district attorney today declared that they are not ready proceed in the Alan Goodman homicide trial and asked the court to dismiss the case without prejudice," Beck said. "This is still considered an open case, and our Topanga-area homicide detectives will continue their investigation."


Sources told The Times that prosecutors would review any new compelling evidence in the case and determine whether to refile charges but believed that would be unlikely. The sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the case was ongoing, said there were obvious problems from the outset, noting that the coroner was never called to the crime scene. Some inside the district attorney's office, they said, had questioned the public way in which Goodman was arrested. New York police took Goodman into custody after she had finished breakfast at a Midtown Sheraton and then walked her past photographers.


Steve Meister, a defense attorney and former Los Angeles County prosecutor, said district attorney's officials deserve credit for dismissing the case when they realized they did not have enough evidence to proceed. Nevertheless, he said, the office should examine whether prosecutors could have anticipated the problems before they decided to file criminal charges.


"There needs to be a ... thoughtful, honest internal review process to figure out what went wrong here, because something clearly did," Meister said.


From the outset, Lois Goodman told police she came home and found her husband dead in bed. She said she believed he crawled there after falling down the stairs and onto a coffee cup he was carrying.


At an earlier court hearing, a prosecutor accused her of plotting to kill her husband by wielding the broken coffee mug like an "improvised knife." Shards from the mug were found embedded in his skull. Prosecutors alleged that she left him to die and went off to "tennis and to get her nails done."


A search warrant executed four days after the death turned up blood throughout the home "inconsistent with accidental death," an LAPD detective wrote in the warrant affidavit. Stains on carpets, the refrigerator door, inside a linen closet and on the wall leading to the garage suggested "a mobile victim" who, police theorized, would have called for help.


They also found that Lois Goodman, married to her husband for nearly 50 years, was communicating on the Internet with another man, according to the warrant. One email described in the warrant included cryptic remarks about her "terminating a relationship" and having "alternative sleeping arrangements," though exactly what she meant remains unclear.


But Lois Goodman's supporters described her as a loving wife who cared for her aging husband. And her lawyers said she passed a lie-detector test administered by a former FBI examiner in which she denied killing her husband.


Hours after the court hearing, a bail bonds official cut off the electronic ankle bracelet that Lois Goodman was required to wear while she was out on bail.


"I didn't do anything. I would never hurt my husband," Goodman said, her eyes filling with tears. "I loved him and I was his caretaker, and he came first and I came second."


andrew.blankstein@latimes.com


andrew.khouri@latimes.com


jack.leonard@latimes.com





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Palestinians and Israel Seek Next Step After Vote





JERUSALEM — Saeb Erekat, a senior Palestinian official, recently said that the day after Palestine gained recognition as a nonmember state at the United Nations, “Life will not be the same.”




True, there would still be the occupation, he said; Israeli settlement and closing policies would continue. But no Israeli official could argue that the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem were disputed territories, he said, adding, “Palestine will become a country under occupation. The terms of reference for any negotiations become withdrawal.”


Now that the United Nations has voted to grant the Palestinian territories status as a nonmember state, one question is whether the Palestinians will use their enhanced status for renewed negotiations in the spirit of peace and reconciliation or for confronting Israel in new ways through the United Nations system, and possibly the International Criminal Court.


The answer may be both. But for now, at least, as Israel heads into January elections after a resounding diplomatic defeat at the General Assembly, the sides seemed, at best, stuck in the same stalemate as before, analysts said.


Mr. Erekat, speaking by telephone from New York a day before Thursday’s Assembly vote, said that the Palestinians would be willing to “sit with the Israelis and define a road map,” and to talk about how to return to talks. For example, he asked, would negotiations pick up where they left off at the end of 2008, when Ehud Olmert was prime minister of Israel, or would they go back to the start?


Negotiations for a two-state solution have been stalled with the Palestinians, who insist on a halt to settlement building. The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, says he is ready for negotiations without preconditions and has refused to renew a temporary freeze that expired in 2010.


With the new emphasis on the territory as occupied, Palestinian officials said, the demand for a settlement freeze was unlikely to be dropped.


Israel has long argued that a Palestinian state can only come through negotiations, but that the new resolution would make negotiations more difficult. Israeli critics say that the resolution enshrines the principle of a state based on the pre-1967 borders, a position rejected by the Israeli government, while upholding the Palestinian refugee claim for a right of return to the Israeli side of the lines.


“They got a state without end of conflict,” a top Israeli official said. “This sets new terms of reference that will never allow negotiations to start.”


The absence of negotiations may then open the way for a more confrontational approach.


Mustafa Barghouti, a Palestinian politician and a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s “Day After” committee, said that as an occupied state, if the Israelis failed to apply the Fourth Geneva Convention, Palestine as an occupied state could “at some time in the future” seek prosecution in the International Criminal Court or work through the United Nations system to push for sanctions.


“There is a very long list of actions by Israel that violate international law,” Mr. Barghouti said, citing the settlements, economic projects in the West Bank and Israel’s treatment of Palestinian prisoners. While Israel considers settlements it has established with government approval to be legal, most of the world disagrees. The convention prohibits an occupying power from deporting or transferring parts of its own civilian population into territory it occupies.


In an effort to garner the widest support possible for their United Nations bid, Palestinian officials had in recent months toned down threats of prosecuting Israel for settlement building or suspected war crimes, instead emphasizing that the move was intended to jump-start a more meaningful, nonviolent political process toward a two-state solution.


“We say it is in no way a substitute to negotiations,” Nabil Shaath, a senior Palestinian official, said in a recent interview. “It is in no way meant to delegitimize Israel.”


But in the days before the vote, officials refused to make any public commitment that the Palestinians would not seek to prosecute Israel, saying they would not accept any limits on their statehood.


“Those who worry about the International Criminal Court should not commit acts that will take them there,” Mr. Erekat said.


Some experts suggested that the Israeli fears were overblown.


“Most countries have been saying for the last 40 years that this is an occupation,” said Robbie Sabel, a professor of international law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a former legal adviser of Israel’s Foreign Ministry.


Mr. Sabel said that Palestinian refugees living in the West Bank and Gaza could now “cease to be refugees and become Palestinian nationals in their own country.”


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Halle Berry and Gabriel Aubry Reach Truce in Custody War















11/29/2012 at 07:40 PM EST







Halle Berry and Gabriel Aubry


Jason Merritt/Getty; Chris Weeks/WireImage


After a long court battle and an ugly fistfight outside her house, Halle Berry and her ex Gabriel Aubry appear to have settled their key differences over custody of 4 ½-year-old daughter Nahla – for now.

"The parties have reached an amicable agreement," read a written statement held up by attorney Blair Berk, who represents Berry, after a hearing Thursday in Los Angeles. "There will be no further statements regarding this matter."

Aubry, wearing a black sport coat with dark sunglasses to mask his bruised
face, was present, but Berry and her fiancé Olivier Martinez did not
attend.

Just exactly what they agreed to – earlier issues ranged from residency to restraining orders – wasn't known.

But the deal was worked out on the same day an emergency protective order issued against Aubry was to expire. That order barred him from seeing his daughter or going anywhere near Berry and Martinez.

It's also unclear whether Aubry's restraining order against Martinez, filed Monday, remains in effect or if it had been, or will be, withdrawn.

Meanwhile, LAPD Commander Andrew Smith tells PEOPLE the Thanksgiving Day altercation between Aubry and Martinez is still under investigation. "Our officers have initially concluded that Aubry was the primary instigator," he says, but adds it's too early
to say whether the case will be referred to prosecutors.

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Clinton releases road map for AIDS-free generation

WASHINGTON (AP) — In an ambitious road map for slashing the global spread of AIDS, the Obama administration says treating people sooner and more rapid expansion of other proven tools could help even the hardest-hit countries begin turning the tide of the epidemic over the next three to five years.

"An AIDS-free generation is not just a rallying cry — it is a goal that is within our reach," Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who ordered the blueprint, said in the report.

"Make no mistake about it, HIV may well be with us into the future but the disease that it causes need not be," she said at the State Department Thursday.

President Barack Obama echoed that promise.

"We stand at a tipping point in the fight against HIV/AIDS, and working together, we can realize our historic opportunity to bring that fight to an end," Obama said in a proclamation to mark World AIDS Day on Saturday.

Some 34 million people worldwide are living with HIV, and despite a decline in new infections over the last decade, 2.5 million people were infected last year.

Given those staggering figures, what does an AIDS-free generation mean? That virtually no babies are born infected, young people have a much lower risk than today of becoming infected, and that people who already have HIV would receive life-saving treatment.

That last step is key: Treating people early in their infection, before they get sick, not only helps them survive but also dramatically cuts the chances that they'll infect others. Yet only about 8 million HIV patients in developing countries are getting treatment. The United Nations aims to have 15 million treated by 2015.

Other important steps include: Treating more pregnant women, and keeping them on treatment after their babies are born; increasing male circumcision to lower men's risk of heterosexual infection; increasing access to both male and female condoms; and more HIV testing.

The world spent $16.8 billion fighting AIDS in poor countries last year. The U.S. government is the leading donor, spending about $5.6 billion.

Thursday's report from PEPFAR, the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, outlines how progress could continue at current spending levels — something far from certain as Congress and Obama struggle to avert looming budget cuts at year's end — or how faster progress is possible with stepped-up commitments from hard-hit countries themselves.

Clinton warned Thursday that the U.S. must continue doing its share: "In the fight against HIV/AIDS, failure to live up to our commitments isn't just disappointing, it's deadly."

The report highlighted Zambia, which already is seeing some declines in new cases of HIV. It will have to treat only about 145,000 more patients over the next four years to meet its share of the U.N. goal, a move that could prevent more than 126,000 new infections in that same time period. But if Zambia could go further and treat nearly 198,000 more people, the benefit would be even greater — 179,000 new infections prevented, the report estimates.

In contrast, if Zambia had to stick with 2011 levels of HIV prevention, new infections could level off or even rise again over the next four years, the report found.

Advocacy groups said the blueprint offers a much-needed set of practical steps to achieve an AIDS-free generation — and makes clear that maintaining momentum is crucial despite economic difficulties here and abroad.

"The blueprint lays out the stark choices we have: To stick with the baseline and see an epidemic flatline or grow, or ramp up" to continue progress, said Chris Collins of amFAR, the Foundation for AIDS Research.

His group has estimated that more than 276,000 people would miss out on HIV treatment if U.S. dollars for the global AIDS fight are part of across-the-board spending cuts set to begin in January.

Thursday's report also urges targeting the populations at highest risk, including gay men, injecting drug users and sex workers, especially in countries where stigma and discrimination has denied them access to HIV prevention services.

"We have to go where the virus is," Clinton said.

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The lure of fishing endures even when they're not biting








Jordan and Stephanie Martinez planned to celebrate their one-month wedding anniversary with a night out at their favorite Thai restaurant. But what's a date without fishing? So first, they drove in from Alhambra for a little pole time at Belmont Veterans Memorial Pier in Long Beach.

Carrying folding camp chairs and tackle boxes, the Martinezes joined a handful of lone fishermen and families staking out spots along the pier's metal railing and dropping their lines. From Vietnamese, Filipino, Mexican and African American backgrounds, they shared bait, admired each other's catches flopping around in plastic buckets of ice, and traded fish stories.

What they didn't do is complain about the fish not biting. They didn't care. They came out, even with rain in the forecast, to break away, enjoy the peace and camaraderie.






"We don't even need to fish," Jordan Martinez, 23, a FedEx driver, said. "We're just here for the fun."

Belmont is the homely stepsister to the Redondo Beach and Santa Monica piers, with their restaurants, honky-tonks and vintage arcade games like Zoltar the Fortune Teller. The T-shaped pier doesn't have much in the way of frills — just portable toilets and street lights with metal shades shaped like pith helmets. An American flag flaps over a bait shop at the end.

What the pier, a third of a mile long and as wide as a city street, does have is space. And, on a chilly autumn night this week, a bizarre but strangely enchanting view. Christmas lights hung from a metal frame form a Christmas tree in front of the bait shop. In the distance, the Queen Mary's stacks were also strung for the holidays. The moon rose, spilling ribbons of milky light across the waters.

Way offshore, a twinkling breakwater built by the Navy slashed through the bay. Closer in, several islands were alight. It took a minute to realize the islands weren't real: they were camouflage for oil and gas drilling equipment. With their pastel towers and unnaturally jaunty palms, they looked like where Gilligan pulled up after the S.S. Minnow shipwrecked, or the atoll where castaways slump in old New Yorker cartoons.

I was drawn to the pier by a half-baked desire to start fishing again. While the cool kids worked on their tans in Balboa, my family vacationed at the then-unfashionable Oxnard Beach, which seemed to be socked in solid in dense fog every day of the year. But at dawn, my father would take us fishing off the now-vanished Point Mugu Pier. He was a World War II veteran, but even so, it remains a mystery to me how he got us on the restricted naval base that once included the pier.

Although the ocean perch we caught and fried up remains my favorite breakfast, I had failed to interest my kids in fishing. And without equipment or somebody to tell me what to do, I hadn't fished for decades.

But the Belmont pier was my kind of place. Nobody seemed to know what they were doing. They paid no heed to the "do not eat" list of fish contaminated by DDT, PCBs and mercury posted on the pier in four languages — English, Spanish, Chinese and Khmer. If it's big enough to keep, it's big enough to eat.

"That's for kids," Benilda Badeo, a Long Beach caregiver for the elderly, said as she laughed off the do-not-eat warning and prepared to take home several forbidden smelt. "I'm already an adult."

Several fishermen and women admitted they didn't know one fish species from another. Icie Gibson, 29, of Compton, said she didn't "eat anything with eyes on the same side of the head."

"There was one here came up biting on the line of the pole," Gibson said. "That thing was vicious. I said, oh no, that's not an eater."

The fishing lore they passed around was contradictory. Martin Estrada blamed the near-full moon for his bad luck.

"The moon has to be gone to best catch fish," said the 42-year-old Long Beach gardener. "I just like to waste my time here."

John Colima, on the other hand, held that fish flee the darkness. He said he suspended a light bulb above the water line or threw in glow sticks to attract the little buggers.

Colima, his face obscured behind the light from his headlamp, arrived with a hoop net as well as his pole. The net was for catching lobsters, he said.

Lobstering in Southern California? Granted, they're spiny, strange and altogether different from Maine's finest. But Colima, 40, rhapsodized about their delectability, dipped in soy sauce or melted butter.

And, drawn by mussels bristling off the pier footings, lobsters were easy to catch, said Colima, 40, a phone installer. He assured me he'd caught lobsters a half-foot wide.

Unfolding his camp chair, he sat down and scored several little silver fish with his knife, slipped them into his net and dropped it over the side. Lobsters would be crawling into the net in 15 minutes, he predicted, half an hour tops.

An hour later, with the lobsters still stubbornly refusing to show, I asked another lobster fisherman, Tuan Lai of Anaheim, to report on the catch the next day.

Reached by phone, Lai, 19, a Golden West College student, said he plied his own net for two or three hours but came up with nothing but little blue crabs. And no one else did any better, he added.

"I don't know what happened," said Lai, who, Internet-trained in lobstering, insisted that earlier in the month he'd snagged a small one. Perhaps the gig was up with the lobsters, he theorized. "Maybe the lobsters are just kind of smart," he said.

gale.holland@latimes.com






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As Opposition Meets in Cairo, More Violence Mars Syria





The Syrian opposition pushed ahead on military and political fronts on Wednesday, as rebels shot down a government warplane in the north of Syria and a newly formed coalition started talks in Cairo on how to pick a transitional government to replace that of President Bashar al-Assad.




The coalition, whose official name is the National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, was formed at a meeting in Qatar earlier this month, and has already been anointed with official recognition from Britain, France, Turkey and the members of the Gulf Cooperation Council. But in order to encourage further recognition internationally, it must tackle the broader problem of uniting multiple groups in exile and rebels on the ground in Syria.


That challenge was apparent on the first day of what are expected to be two days of talks in Egypt. Disagreements emerged over the composition of the coalition when the Syrian National Council, one of its members, tried to increase the number of its representatives.


“Nothing will proceed until we work this out,” said one council member at the talks, who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity.


The talks took place against the backdrop of a 20-month civil war in which about 40,000 people have been killed so far in clashes between armed rebels and jihadist forces on one side and Mr. Assad’s military on the other. The conflict has flared at various times along Syria’s borders with Lebanon, Israel, Turkey and Jordan and in most of the country’s cities, including deadly car bombings on Wednesday near Damascus, the capital.


In Turkey, once an ally of the Assad government, a team of NATO inspectors visited sites on Wednesday where the alliance might install batteries of Patriot antiaircraft missiles that Turkey, a member, has requested to prevent any incursions by the Syrian air force, which has become the Assad government’s main weapon against the rebels. Patriot missiles have also been discussed as a way of enforcing a no-fly zone over rebel-held areas of Syria near the Turkish border if one is imposed.


Meanwhile, opposition politicians gathered in a Cairo hotel to shape an alternative government. Ahmad Ramadan, a member of the national council, said in an interview with Radio Sawa, an Arabic-language broadcaster sponsored by the United States government, that the talks were more likely to decide on the selection process than to choose actual candidates.


Khaled Khoja, a coalition member attending the talks, said: “I don’t think we’ll be discussing the election of a transitional government during the meeting today. We’re still discussing whether to have a government or to have committees instead.”


State media said on Wednesday that at least 34 people, and possibly many more, died in the two car bombings in Jaramana, a suburb of Damascus that is populated by minorities.


The official SANA news agency said the explosions struck at about 7 a.m. and were the work of “terrorists,” the word used by the authorities to denote rebel forces seeking the overthrow of President Assad.


The agency said the bombings were in the main square of Jaramana, which news reports said is largely populated by members of the Christian and Druse minorities. Residents said the neighborhood was home to many families who have fled other parts of Syria because of the conflict and to some Palestinian families. The blasts caused “huge material damage to the residential buildings and shops,” SANA said.


The death toll was not immediately confirmed. An activist group, the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, initially said that 29 people had died but revised the figure later to 47, of whom 38 had been identified. Of the 120 injured, the rebel group said, 23 people were in serious condition, meaning that the tally could climb higher.


There were also reports from witnesses in Turkey and antigovernment activists in Syria that for the second successive day insurgents had shot down a government aircraft in the north of the country, offering further evidence that the rebels are seeking a major shift by challenging the government’s dominance of the skies. It was not immediately clear how the aircraft, apparently a plane, had been brought down.


Video posted on the Internet by rebels showed wreckage with fires still burning around it. The aircraft appeared to show a tail assembly clearly visible jutting out of the debris. Such videos are difficult to verify, particularly in light of the restrictions facing reporters in Syria. However, the episode on Wednesday seemed to be confirmed by other witnesses.


“We watched a Syrian plane being shot down as it was flying low to drop bombs,” said Ugur Cuneydioglu, who said he observed the incident from a Turkish border village in southern Hatay Province. “It slowly went down in flames before it hit the ground. It was quite a scene,” Mr. Cuneydioglu said.


Video posted by insurgents on the Internet showed a man in aviator coveralls being carried away. It was not clear if the man was alive but the video said he had been treated in a makeshift hospital. A voice off-camera says, “This is the pilot who was shelling residents’ houses.”


The aircraft was said to have been brought down while it was attacking the town of Daret Azzeh, 20 miles west of Aleppo and close to the Turkish border. The town was the scene of a mass killing last June, when the government and the rebels blamed each other for the deaths and mutilation of 25 people. The video posted online said the plane had been brought down by “the free men of Daret Azzeh soldiers of God brigade.”


On Tuesday, Syrian rebels said they shot down a military helicopter with a surface-to-air missile outside Aleppo and they uploaded video that appeared to confirm that rebels have put their growing stock of heat-seeking missiles to effective use.


In recent months, rebels have used mainly machine guns to shoot down several Syrian Air Force helicopters and fixed-wing attack jets. In Tuesday’s case, the thick smoke trailing the projectile, combined with the elevation of the aircraft, strongly suggested that the helicopter was hit by a missile.


Rebels hailed the event as the culmination of their long pursuit of effective antiaircraft weapons, though it was not clear if the downing on Tuesday was an isolated tactical success or heralded a new phase in the war that would present a meaningful challenge to the Syrian government’s air supremacy.


Hala Droubi reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Alan Cowell contributed reporting from Paris; Sebnem Arsu contributed reporting from Istanbul, and Hania Mourtada from Beirut, Lebanon.



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Halle Berry's Unhappy Endings





Gabriel Aubry isn't the first – from David Justice to Wesley Snipes, the Oscar winner has had a history of bad breakups








Credit: Jon Kopaloff/Filmmagic



Updated: Wednesday Nov 28, 2012 | 01:00 PM EST
By: Aili Nahas




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Simple measures cut infections caught in hospitals

CHICAGO (AP) — Preventing surgery-linked infections is a major concern for hospitals and it turns out some simple measures can make a big difference.

A project at seven big hospitals reduced infections after colorectal surgeries by nearly one-third. It prevented an estimated 135 infections, saving almost $4 million, the Joint Commission hospital regulating group and the American College of Surgeons announced Wednesday. The two groups directed the 2 1/2-year project.

Solutions included having patients shower with special germ-fighting soap before surgery, and having surgery teams change gowns, gloves and instruments during operations to prevent spreading germs picked up during the procedures.

Some hospitals used special wound-protecting devices on surgery openings to keep intestine germs from reaching the skin.

The average rate of infections linked with colorectal operations at the seven hospitals dropped from about 16 percent of patients during a 10-month phase when hospitals started adopting changes to almost 11 percent once all the changes had been made.

Hospital stays for patients who got infections dropped from an average of 15 days to 13 days, which helped cut costs.

"The improvements translate into safer patient care," said Dr. Mark Chassin, president of the Joint Commission. "Now it's our job to spread these effective interventions to all hospitals."

Almost 2 million health care-related infections occur each year nationwide; more than 90,000 of these are fatal.

Besides wanting to keep patients healthy, hospitals have a monetary incentive to prevent these infections. Medicare cuts payments to hospitals that have lots of certain health care-related infections, and those cuts are expected to increase under the new health care law.

The project involved surgeries for cancer and other colorectal problems. Infections linked with colorectal surgery are particularly common because intestinal tract bacteria are so abundant.

To succeed at reducing infection rates requires hospitals to commit to changing habits, "to really look in the mirror and identify these things," said Dr. Clifford Ko of the American College of Surgeons.

The hospitals involved were Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles; Cleveland Clinic in Ohio; Mayo Clinic-Rochester Methodist Hospital in Rochester, Minn.; North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System in Great Neck, NY; Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago; OSF Saint Francis Medical Center in Peoria, Ill.; and Stanford Hospital & Clinics in Palo Alto, Calif.

___

Online:

Joint Commission: http://www.jointcommission.org

American College of Surgeons: http://www.facs.org

___

AP Medical Writer Lindsey Tanner can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/LindseyTanner

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California school districts face huge debt on risky bonds









Two hundred school districts across California have borrowed billions of dollars using a costly and risky form of financing that has saddled them with staggering debt, according to a Times analysis.


Schools and community colleges have turned increasingly to so-called capital appreciation bonds in the economic downturn, which depressed property values and made it harder for districts to raise money for new classrooms, auditoriums and sports facilities.


Unlike conventional shorter-term bonds that require payments to begin immediately, this type of borrowing lets districts postpone the start of payments for decades. Some districts are gambling the economic picture will improve in the decades ahead, with local tax collections increasingly enough to repay the notes.








CABs, as the bonds are known, allow schools to borrow large sums without violating state or locally imposed caps on property taxes, at least in the short term. But the lengthy delays in repayment significantly increase interest expenses, in some cases to as much as 10 or 20 times the amount borrowed.


The practice is controversial and has been banned in at least one state. In California, prominent government officials charged with watching the public purse are warning school districts to steer away from the transactions.


One sounding the alarm is California Treasurer Bill Lockyer, who compares CABs to the sort of creative Wall Street financing that contributed to the housing bubble, the subsequent debt crisis and the nation's lingering economic malaise.


"They are terrible deals," Lockyer said. "The school boards and staffs that approved of these bonds should be voted out of office and fired."


Most school bonds, like home mortgages, require roughly $2 to $3 to be paid back for every $1 borrowed. But CABs compound interest for much longer periods, meaning repayment costs are often many times that of traditional school bonds.


And property owners — not the school system — are likely to be on the hook for bigger tax bills if the agency's revenues can't cover future bond payments, Lockyer and other critics contend.


Several financial consultants who advise school districts on CABs declined to comment, as did the chairman of their trade group. Education officials acknowledge some drawbacks with CABs, but argue the bonds are funding vital educational projects.


The Newport Mesa Unified School District in Orange County issued $83 million in long-term notes in May 2011. Principal and interest will total about $547 million, but officials say they are confident they can pay off the debt.


The bonds "have allowed us to provide for facilities that are needed now," said the district's business manager, Paul Reed. "We could not afford to wait another 10 years."


Overall, 200 school systems, roughly a fifth of the districts statewide, have borrowed more than $2.8 billion since 2007 using CABs with maturities longer than 25 years. They will have to pay back about $16.3 billion in principal and interest or an average of 5.8 times the amount they borrowed.


Nearly 70% of the money borrowed involves extended 30- to 40-year notes, which will cost district taxpayers $13.1 billion or about 6.6 times the amount borrowed on average.


State and county treasurers say debt payments of no more than four times principal are considered reasonable, though some recommend a more conservative limit of three times.


"This is part of the 'new' Wall Street," Lockyer said. "It has done this kind of thing on the private investor side for years, then the housing market and now its public entities."


The Poway Unified School District, which serves middle-class communities in north San Diego County, is one of the school systems faced with massive CAB debt payments. In 2011, it issued $105 million in capital appreciation bonds to complete a school rebuilding program.


Because the recession had depressed property values and tax revenue, Poway district officials realized that using conventional bonds might jeopardize a promise to district voters to limit the tax rate.


So on the advice of an Irvine-based financial consulting firm, they turned to the long-term notes. Under the deal, the school board could keep construction moving, avoid reneging on its pledge to voters and stay within the legal limits. And it would not have to repay the bonds for decades.


By the maturity date of 2051, however, the $105 million in Poway notes will cost district taxpayers almost $1 billion in principal and interest — about $10 for every $1 borrowed.





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Protesters Gather Again in Cairo Streets to Denounce Morsi





CAIRO — Thousands of people flowed into the streets of Cairo, the Egyptian capital, Tuesday afternoon for a day of protest against President Mohamed Morsi’s attempt to assert broad new powers for the duration of the country’s political transition, dismissing his efforts just the night before to reaffirm his deference to Egyptian law and courts.




By early Tuesday afternoon in Cairo, a dense crowd of hundreds had gathered outside the headquarters of a trade group for lawyers, and thousands more had filed in around a small tent city in Tahrir Square. In an echo of the chants against Hosni Mubarak, Egyptian’s ousted president, almost two years ago, they shouted, “Leave, leave!” and “Bring down the regime!” They also denounced the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist group allied with Mr. Morsi.


A few blocks away, in a square near the American Embassy and the Interior Ministry headquarters, groups of young men resumed a running battle that began nine days ago, throwing rocks and tear gas canisters at riot police officers. Although those clashes grew out of anger over the deaths of dozens of protesters in similar clashes one year ago, many of the combatants have happily adopted the banner of protest against Mr. Morsi as well.


Egyptian television had captured the growing polarization of the country on Monday in split-screen coverage of two simultaneous funerals, each for a teenage boy killed in clashes set off by disputes over the new president’s powers. Thousands of supporters of Mr. Morsi and his allies in the Muslim Brotherhood marched through the streets of the Nile Delta city of Damanhour to bury a 15-year-old killed outside a Brotherhood office during an attack by protesters. And in Tahrir Square here in Cairo, thousands gathered to bury a 16-year-old killed in clashes with riot police officers and to chant slogans blaming Mr. Morsi for his death. “Morsi killed him,” the boy’s father said in a video statement circulated over the Internet.


“Now blood has been spilled by political factions, so this is not going to go away,” said Rabab el-Mahdi, a professor at the American University in Cairo and a left-leaning activist, adding that these were the first deaths rival factions had blamed on each other and not on the security forces of the Mubarak government since the uprising began last year. Still larger crowds were expected in the evening, as marchers from around the city headed for the square. Many schools and other businesses had closed in anticipation of bedlam, and on Monday, the Brotherhood called off a rival demonstration in support of the president, saying it wanted to avoid violence.


Egypt’s Supreme Judicial Council met again on Tuesday to consider its response to the president, and the leader of Al Azhar, a center of Sunni Muslim learning that is regarded as the pre-eminent moral authority here, met with groups of political leaders in an effort to resolve the battle over the president’s decree and the deadlock in the constitutional assembly, which is trying to draw up a new constitution.


But even as Mr. Morsi met with top judges Monday night in an effort to resolve the crisis, a coalition of opposition leaders held a news conference to declare that preserving the role of the courts was only the first step in a broader campaign against what Abdel Haleem Qandeil, a liberal intellectual, called “the miserable failure of the rule of the Muslim Brothers.” Mr. Morsi “unilaterally broke the contract with the people,” he declared. “We have to be ready to stand up to this group, protest to protest, square to square, and to confront the bullying.”


Mr. Morsi’s effort to remove the last check on his power over the political transition had brought the country’s fractious opposition groups together for the first time in a united front against the Brotherhood. But the show of unity papered over deep divisions between groups and even within them, said Ms. Mahdi of the American University.


“This is not a united front, and I am inside it,” she said. “Every single political group in the country is now divided over this — is this decree revolutionary justice or building a new dictatorship? Should we align ourselves with folool” — the colloquial term for the remnants of the old political elite — “or should we be revolutionary purists? Is it a conflict between the Muslim Brotherhood and the pro-Mubarak judiciary, or is this the beginning of a fascist regime in the making?”


Mayy El Sheikh contributed reporting.



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