A good meal at LAX is no longer a flight of fancy

Airport food in L.A. has been so bad for so long it's no longer brought up in polite society. Only at LAX could the 2010 arrival of Pink's hot dogs — and God love 'em, I know I do — have been welcomed like Moses coming down off the mountain.

"It's like the smog: Why complain? Everybody knows," chef Mark Peel told me last week.

Since we began having to schlep wretched little bags of food on the plane or starve, the smell of rancid oil and Flamin' Hot Cheetos has made the LAX experience unpleasant in all five senses. But all that is about to change.

LAX is opening its doors starting this year to some of the city's signature restaurants, including Larder at Tavern, Cole's and Ford's Filling Station. A rotating cast of food-truck vendors including Kogi's is expected to operate out of a space with a mock truck decor. Peel, who closed Campanile on La Brea Avenue in the fall after 23 years, is opening an airport version of the high-class restaurant. The lucky terminals include Tom Bradley International and Terminal 4, home to American Airlines.

What makes this of interest outside foodie circles is that, unlike other gentrification schemes, it will not cost all the little people their jobs. The city, through the Unite Here Local 11 union, is spending $250,000 to retrain workers displaced from eateries like Burger King and Chili's to work in the new culinary palaces.

Last week, I took a turn through the clattering kitchen where the training has been underway since October. The kitchen, along with a cafeteria, is on the ground floor, beneath the struts that thrust the flying-saucer themed restaurant Encounter into the air above LAX.

Inside, 52 cooks from South Los Angeles, Carson, Inglewood and other airport-adjacent neighborhoods were practicing haute cuisine. Workers in white toques and chef jackets grated lemon zest, snipped herbs and squeezed potato croquettes out of pastry tubes. Plates of egg rolls with dipping sauce, salmon with field greens or carnitas with salsa fresca were passed around. Peel, who has appeared on "Top Chef" and "Top Chef Masters," dropped by to give an inspirational speech.

"This is where we're trying to give people a much better first impression of LA, and you're it," he said.

Leanna Billman told me the closest she got to cooking on the Burger King fry line was flipping frozen chicken strips on the grill. Now she's learning to braise meat, shuck oysters and slice vegetables in fancy cuts like paysanne and rondelle.

"I grew up kind of in poverty," said the South Los Angeles resident. "Now I'm in an actual kitchen instead of behind a sandwich grill. It's great."

Janette Perez, 21, a former Ruby's server, grew up in Inglewood on Mexican food, french fries and chicken, but learned to make Caesar salad dressing with anchovies for her family.

"I didn't know they were fish, " Perez said. "These talents I thought I didn't have are really coming out."

Former Ruby's cashier Eric Rendon rides the bus in from Inglewood, dressed in his chef's whites. His fellow riders treat him with new respect, he said.

"My family is really proud of me," said Rendon, 19.

Peel's speech to the cooks covered how once-fertile African land became the Sahara Desert because of unsustainable farming practices. It went over some of their heads.

"Sustainability, sustainability," Perez repeated afterward, stumped. But she is excited about cooking healthier. "We're not eating enough fresh food," she said. "Everything we eat is fattening."

Peel said a modern kitchen staff should understand the importance of sustainability along with more traditional culinary skills. Peel's first culinary job was fry cook at Cindy's, "where the 605 meets the Pomona Freeway," Peel said. "Everybody's got to start somewhere."

The LAX Campanile will have sit-down dining as well as takeout, Peel told a small group gathered around one of the prep tables, prompting a teaching chef from Los Angeles Trade Technical College to joke he'd have to find a way around security so he could eat there. But passengers on average have only 12 minutes to get in and out of the terminal.

Peel said he could still serve high-end dishes like ribeye with stewed beans through innovations like sous-vide, in which plastic-wrapped food cooks slowly in a water bath. As an example, Peel said he would marinate and brine a double-thick pork chop, put it in the bath, then when an order came in, throw it over a wood fire or grill to give it a char. The chop could be out in four minutes, he said.

This kind of food is not going to come cheap. The retrained workers will command better wages, and more staff will be needed in the kitchen; a spokeswoman said the union expects its membership to double.

Rest assured, LAX will always have its burgers with fries.

"There's always going to be a place for fast food," Peel said. "But we have an opportunity for much greater diversity.... The way we're going to do that is with a highly trained, motivated and intelligent work force."

Valencia Crain, 49, has run the gamut of food service jobs, starting out on the production line at a fish processing plant in Los Angeles. She cut fish and passed them through batter, monitoring the viscosity meter to make sure it wasn't too watery.

Later, she worked at the airport LA Roadhouse Route 66, where much of the cooking consisted of microwaving. Now, she's learned how to prepare a dashi base and clear broth for Japanese soup, and clam chowder from scratch, which she put to the ultimate test: her son, Samej. The 16-year-old is part of the fiercest fast-food fan demographic on earth: the L.A. teenager.

The soup more than passed.

"When he tasted mine he said, 'Mom, yours is the best in the world,'" Crain said.

gale.holland@latimes.com

Read More..

Typhoon Bopha Kills Hundreds in Philippines

Bullit Marquez/Associated Press

A resident hung clothing amid fallen trees and debris on Wednesday, a day after Typhoon Bopha made landfall in the village of Andap, in southern Philippines. More Photos »

MANILA — With many roads and bridges washed away, rescue teams struggled Wednesday to reach isolated villages in the southern Philippines after a powerful out-of-season typhoon tore through the region, leaving more than 270 people dead and hundreds more missing, officials said.

Typhoon Bopha packed winds of up to 100 miles per hour when it struck Tuesday, bringing torrential rains that washed away villages and left thousands homeless.

The deaths were concentrated in the province of Compostela Valley, a mountainous gold mining area, and the neighboring province of Davao Oriental, on the eastern coast of the southern Philippine island of Mindanao, Lt. Col. Lyndon Paniza, a military spokesman, said in a telephone interview late Wednesday afternoon.

A national disaster official, Benito Ramos, said at a news conference on Wednesday afternoon that 274 people had died, 339 were injured and 279 were missing. Those figures were likely to rise, he suggested, since rescue workers had not yet reached several villages in the hardest-hit areas and the casualties there were not known.

Most of the dead appeared to have drowned or been hit by falling trees or flying debris, officials said.

“There is debris in the road, so our soldiers are moving by foot,” Colonel Paniza said. “They are crossing rivers and landslides. I don’t want to speculate, but we don’t know what they will find when they reach those cut off areas.”

Three soldiers are known to have died, and eight are missing, he said. Some of the soldiers died when a landslide washed out their patrol base, and others disappeared while on search-and-rescue operations.

Local television crews broadcast grisly footage of mud-covered bodies being loaded into trucks in villages that appeared flattened by the storm. In some areas, not a single structure could be seen standing.

In areas where roads were washed out, the government sent seagoing vessels to take relief goods to remote coastal areas from the provincial capital of Davao Oriental, Mati.

“I have thus authorized the local government of Mati, its mayor and the provincial governor to use their calamity funds to hire all available large, local fishing boats for an immediate sea-lift transfer of goods to the affected areas,” Manuel Roxas, the interior secretary, said in a statement.

The eastern coast of Mindanao, which was the area hardest hit by the storm, is a remote, impoverished agricultural area. Mr. Roxas told reporters on Wednesday that during his visit to the area, he had seen tens of thousands of fallen coconut trees and many acres of destroyed banana plantations.

In New Bataan, the town hit hardest by the storm, Virgilia Babaag had been waiting nervously in her home before dawn on Tuesday as hard rain from the approaching typhoon pounded her small village.

“My neighbors started yelling, ‘The water is coming fast! Run! Run!’ ” she said Wednesday by telephone.

Ms. Babaag gathered up her three young nieces staying with her and ran through the night toward high ground. There she stayed with dozens of others as winds ripped through the town.

“When I came back, my roof was gone,” she said from her devastated home. “The houses around my place are destroyed. There are so many who have died here. The soldiers are still finding more.”

The Philippines is hit by as many as 20 powerful tropical storms each year, but this one struck remote communities south of the usual typhoon path.

“This is the first time that the people in this area have experienced a storm like this,” Colonel Paniza said. “They aren’t accustomed to big storms.”

Last December, Tropical Storm Washi — another out-of-season storm that hit south of the usual Philippine typhoon belt — killed more than 1,200 people and left hundreds of thousands homeless.

This year, officials put out strong warnings days in advance and carried out mandatory early evacuations of vulnerable communities.

President Benigno S. Aquino III, stung by criticism last year that the national government had not done enough to prepare for Tropical Storm Washi, went on television the day before the storm hit and pleaded with people to follow the instructions of local government officials.

“I am facing you now because the incoming storm is no laughing matter,” Mr. Aquino said, adding later, “We expect the cooperation of everyone so that nobody gets in harm’s way.”

Read More..

Microsoft #DroidRage Tweet Shows How Malware Has Moved Past Windows

“Do you have an Android malware horror story?” Microsoft asks through its @windowsphone Twitter account, in what may be one of the most ironic tweets of the year.

After all, it wasn’t that long ago that “virus” and “worm” stories made headlines on a regular basis, all of them about “computer viruses” which were really Windows viruses. Just a few years ago, Apple advertised the fact that a Mac “Doesn’t get PC viruses” as a reason to buy one.

But this year, 600,000 Macs were infected by the Flashback trojan, an epidemic which exceeded the scale of history’s single largest Windows infection. And now ​Microsoft​ is implying that its phones don’t get malware, as a way to advertise them. How did things get to be this way, and what will malware and virus authors do next?

​When virii attack

For years, Microsoft’s DOS and Windows operating systems were the biggest targets for virus and malware authors simply because they were the least secure. Today’s PC security best practices had yet to be built into them, and trying to bolt features on to ancient programming code was a half-baked solution at best. HugeWindows malware epidemics spread as the malware programs were able to install themselves without explicit permission and operate without user intervention.

​Network effects

One reason Microsoft Windows dominated the computing world for years and years was simply because it was dominant. More people using Windows meant more profits for Windows app developers, which meant more games and apps for Windows, which meant more people buying Windows PCs so they could use Windows games and apps.

Like with apps, malware is a business that makes money for the people who write it. And while it was theoretically possible to infect a computer running a more secure operating system, like OS X (used on Macs) or Ubuntu (powered by Linux), it was considered impossible to get it to spread far enough to be profitable. Whereas on Windows it was (and still is) possible to infect vast numbers of PCs, even chaining them into zombified “botnets” which act as supercomputers-for-hire.

​How the mighty have fallen?

OS X’s more secure design makes it extremely hard to infect with malware — normally. The Flashback trojan sneaked in this year using the Java web browser plugin, which is bundled with the Mac’s Safari web browser and was poorly maintained.

Plugins like Java and Flash open up new ways to infect a computer, which was one reason why Apple stopped including the Flash plugin (already absent on its iPhone and iPad) by default. Apple created a fix for the problem, but not before over half a million Macs were infected.

​What about on smartphones?

Unlike Apple and Microsoft’s app stores, the Google Play store allows anyone to submit anything with no review. It’s up to Android smartphone and tablet users to look at the “permissions” each game or app requests, as well as the reputation of their developers, and decide whether or not to install them.

While some consider this approach more “trustworthy” and respectful of users, it’s also helped lead to a comparatively enormous number of malware infections on Android, including “The Mother of All Android Malware,” which completely took over tens of thousands of phones last year.

​Are you #DroidRage-ing yet?

Microsoft’s tweet says “we may have a get-well present” for people who send it their best or worst stories of Android malware. Even if all the apps in the Windows Store are virus-free, however, there are still far fewer of them than there are for Android.

Jared Spurbeck is an open-source software enthusiast, who uses an Android phone and an Ubuntu laptop PC. He has been writing about technology and electronics since 2008.
Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

Kate Receives Hospital Visit from Pippa and James

12/05/2012 at 07:30 PM EST

James and Pippa Middleton

Alpha /Landov; Inset:Allpix/ plash News Online

The Duchess of Cambridge had more hospital visitors on Wednesday.

Just two days after husband Prince William, 30, was photographed leaving the King Edward VII Hospital in Central London where a pregnant Kate, 30, was admitted for hyperemesis gravidarum, her sister, Pippa Middleton, brother James and mom Carole (not pictured), also dropped by to keep the mom-to-be company.

Pippa was bundled up in a coat, sporting a tan-colored ensemble, while her brother was casually dressed in jeans and layered tops.

The Palace announced the Duchess's pregnancy Monday in a statement. "Their Royal Highnesses The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are very pleased to announce that The Duchess of Cambridge is expecting a baby," it said. "The Queen, The Duke of Edinburgh, The Prince of Wales, The Duchess of Cornwall and Prince Harry and members of both families are delighted with the news."

Read More..

Study could spur wider use of prenatal gene tests

A new study sets the stage for wider use of gene testing in early pregnancy. Scanning the genes of a fetus reveals far more about potential health risks than current prenatal testing does, say researchers who compared both methods in thousands of pregnancies nationwide.

A surprisingly high number — 6 percent — of certain fetuses declared normal by conventional testing were found to have genetic abnormalities by gene scans, the study found. The gene flaws can cause anything from minor defects such as a club foot to more serious ones such as mental retardation, heart problems and fatal diseases.

"This isn't done just so people can terminate pregnancies," because many choose to continue them even if a problem is found, said Dr. Ronald Wapner, reproductive genetics chief at Columbia University Medical Center in New York. "We're better able to give lots and lots of women more information about what's causing the problem and what the prognosis is and what special care their child might need."

He led the federally funded study, published in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine.

A second study in the journal found that gene testing could reveal the cause of most stillbirths, many of which remain a mystery now. That gives key information to couples agonizing over whether to try again.

The prenatal study of 4,400 women has long been awaited in the field, and could make gene testing a standard of care in cases where initial screening with an ultrasound exam suggests a structural defect in how the baby is developing, said Dr. Susan Klugman, director of reproductive genetics at New York's Montefiore Medical Center, which enrolled 300 women into the study.

"We can never guarantee the perfect baby but if they want everything done, this is a test that can tell a lot more," she said.

Many pregnant women are offered screening with an ultrasound exam or a blood test that can flag some common abnormalities such as Down syndrome, but these are not conclusive.

The next step is diagnostic testing on cells from the fetus obtained through amniocentesis, which is like a needle biopsy through the belly, or chorionic villus sampling, which snips a bit of the placenta. Doctors look at the sample under a microscope for breaks or extra copies of chromosomes that cause a dozen or so abnormalities.

The new study compared this eyeball method to scanning with gene chips that can spot hundreds of abnormalities and far smaller defects than what can be seen with a microscope. This costs $1,200 to $1,800 versus $600 to $1,000 for the visual exam.

In the study, both methods were used on fetal samples from 4,400 women around the country. Half of the moms were at higher risk because they were over 35. One-fifth had screening tests suggesting Down syndrome. One-fourth had ultrasounds suggesting structural abnormalities. Others sought screening for other reasons.

"Some did it for anxiety — they just wanted more information about their child," Wapner said.

Of women whose ultrasounds showed a possible structural defect but whose fetuses were called normal by the visual chromosome exam, gene testing found problems in 6 percent — one out of 17.

"That's a lot. That's huge," Klugman said.

Gene tests also found abnormalities in nearly 2 percent of cases where the mom was older or ultrasounds suggested a problem other than a structural defect.

Dr. Lorraine Dugoff, a University of Pennsylvania high-risk pregnancy specialist, wrote in an editorial in the journal that gene testing should become the standard of care when a structural problem is suggested by ultrasound. But its value may be incremental in other cases and offset by the 1.5 percent of cases where a gene abnormality of unknown significance is found.

In those cases, "a lot of couples might not be happy that they ordered that test" because it can't give a clear answer, she said.

Ana Zeletz, a former pediatric nurse from Hoboken, N.J., had one of those results during the study. An ultrasound suggested possible Down syndrome; gene testing ruled that out but showed an abnormality that could indicate kidney problems — or nothing.

"They give you this list of all the things that could possibly be wrong," Zeletz said. Her daughter, Jillian, now 2, had some urinary and kidney abnormalities that seem to have resolved, and has low muscle tone that caused her to start walking later than usual.

"I am very glad about it," she said of the testing, because she knows to watch her daughter for possible complications like gout. Without the testing, "we wouldn't know anything, we wouldn't know to watch for things that might come up," she said.

The other study involved 532 stillbirths — deaths of a fetus in the womb before delivery. Gene testing revealed the cause in 87 percent of cases versus 70 percent of cases analyzed by the visual chromosome inspection method. It also gave more information on specific genetic abnormalities that couples could use to estimate the odds that future pregnancies would bring those risks.

The study was led by Dr. Uma Reddy of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

___

Online:

Medical journal: http://www.nejm.org

___

Marilynn Marchione can be followed at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP

Read More..

Occupy protests' ironic legacy: more restrictions on protesters

Life was upended briefly in affluent San Marino last year when a hundred or so Occupy-style protesters staged a demonstration on the lawn of a resident Wells Fargo executive.

The police chief declared the city's 28-member force "overwhelmed." So city leaders passed an ordinance that required protesters to stay 75 feet from the curb of targeted residences. Then they tightened parade permit requirements and added a measure to allow police to move obstructing protesters off sidewalks.

By the time they were finished, the only place left in San Marino where protesters could demonstrate without a permit was the median of Huntington Drive, a 60-foot-wide grassy space that runs through the center of the city.

San Marino isn't alone. Across California and the nation, Occupy protests have prompted cities to tighten restrictions on protesters and behavior in public space in ways that opponents say threaten free speech and worsen conditions for homeless people.

Governments now regulate with new vigor where protesters may stand and walk and what they can carry. Protest permits are harder to get and penalties are steeper. Camping is banned from Los Angeles parks by a new, tougher ordinance. Philadelphia and Houston tightened restrictions on feeding people in public.

It's an ironic legacy for a movement conceived as a voice for the downtrodden.

When Occupy protests first fanned across the country last year, the movement enjoyed widespread popularity, and politicians responded with resolutions of support. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa even had ponchos delivered to Occupy Los Angeles when it rained.

But as demonstrations wore on and public sentiment shifted, cities got tougher with protesters.

As Occupy protests threatened to disrupt the May G-8 and NATO summits in Chicago, for example, lawmakers reduced park hours, installed more surveillance cameras, raised fees for protest permits and increased fines for violations. Large protest groups must now submit to a variety of conditions to get permission to demonstrate, including spelling out the dimensions of their placards and banners, and meeting insurance requirements.

About three weeks into Occupy Nashville's encampment in Legislative Plaza, Tennessee state authorities established a curfew, imposed new permit and insurance requirements, and promptly cleared the camp. In Sacramento, highly specific measures passed, making it illegal to wash dishes on the City Hall grounds and restricting use of tape and chalk.

In some cases, police "made up their own laws in the street," said Sarah Knuckey, a New York University Law Professor who worked with Occupy Wall Street.

After Occupy Wall Street was evicted from Zucotti Park, protesters were allowed to return only to face a long list of park rules that changed daily, Knuckey said. New York City police and park security refused entry to the park based on violations such as possessing food, musical instruments and yoga mats, Knuckey said.

In July, Los Angeles police arrested Occupy protesters drawing on the street with chalk during an Art Walk event on suspicion of vandalism — though the drawings were about as permanent as sand castles on a beach.

Free speech advocates say the trend is dismaying. "It reflects a hostility to protest," said Linda Lye, attorney for ACLU in Northern California. "What we've seen is a response not different from Bull Connor."

Mara Verheyden Hilliard, an attorney with the National Lawyer's Guild, said although city officials often deny any connection to Occupy in defending the new measures, she believes Occupy is their real target.

City officials defended the restrictions as legitimate attempts to protect public spaces, which they say were subjected to unprecedented new uses during the protests. Free speech, in Occupy's case, took the form of tent cities that required constant police attention and expensive cleanup. In Los Angeles, costs for police overtime and cleanup exceeded $4.7 million.

"The movement has a right to exercise speech, but the city has a right to regulate its public spaces," Los Angeles Deputy City Attorney William Carter said.

Homeless advocates say people living on the streets will suffer long after the last Occupy tent comes down.

"There are unhoused individuals that are the daily victims of these laws," said Neil Donovan, executive director for the National Coalition for the Homeless in Washington.

Though bans on camping in public spaces have existed for decades in many cities, dozens of new ordinances have come with "lightning speed," Donovan said. Since November 2011, camping bans have been adopted in Washington, D.C.; Charlotte, N.C., and Denver, and the states of Tennessee and Idaho, among many others, according the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty.

In Los Angeles, camping in parks was already banned. City leaders made an exception for Occupy Los Angeles, which lasted eight weeks. Citing health and safety concerns, the city evicted the protesters and passed a new, amended ordinance that specifically banned tents and sleeping bags after parks closed.

Western Regional Advocacy Project, a homeless outreach organization, has surveyed more than 800 homeless people in nine major cities across the nation in the last two years and found that 45% of those surveyed had been cited for sleeping.

Cheryl Aichele, an early member of Occupy Los Angeles, said it was never the movement's intention to prompt stiffer laws. "If Occupy made those things tougher, it was only because there was a pre-existing push against these things," Aichele said.

Not all the efforts have been successful: In Oakland, after repeated violent confrontations between police and Occupy Oakland, the city considered a protest ordinance that would have criminalized a long list of items, including sticks more than quarter of an inch thick. The measure never made it out of committee.

In Fresno County, police dismantled an Occupy camp by invoking seldom-used prohibitions on the distribution of literature and on gatherings without a permit. A federal judge found the codes unconstitutional.

But there are enough new restrictions to hobble the Occupy movement, said Todd Gitlin, a journalism professor at Columbia University and author of the book "Occupy Nation." Membership is declining and protests rarely make headlines now, Gitlin said.

When the San Marino City Council voted to confine protests to a city median in October, they made their arguments to an empty room. None of the groups who prompted the law could spare a member to speak against it.

frank.shyong@latimes.com

Read More..

32% of Young People Use Social Media in the Bathroom

Read More..

How Adriana Lima Got Her Body Back for the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show

Jennifer Graylock/JPI

With just eight weeks between the birth of daughter Sienna and the annual Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show, Adriana Lima wasted no time hitting the ring.

Taking three weeks off to recover from the delivery, Lima had the five remaining weeks to prepare — and she did, following an intense workout plan designed by her trainer of six years, Michael Olajide, Jr. of Aerospace NYC. According to the model’s fitness guru, Lima’s “working weight” varies depending on what project she’s working on but for the brand’s big event, “she wanted to be more defined and athletic.”

But before the bombshell could start Olajide’s cardio muscle aeroboxing endurance plan, “her doctor had [to give] her a clear pass to do everything we’d done together before,” he explains. ”Adriana’s metabolism had slowed down, and that’s what happens when you’re nesting, but we had to get her burning 24/7.”

He’s not kidding: “We were doing four to six hours every day, seven days a week,” Olajide shares.

Starting at 9 a.m., Lima’s twice-daily workouts included 20 to 30 minutes on an exercise bike, followed by 20 to 30 minutes of core work and a “quick-reflex” shadowboxing routine created by Olajide, a former middleweight boxing champion. Next, the mom-of two would don real boxing gloves and practice punching combinations to learn speed and power, followed by glute and leg sculpting exercises, and a rigorous jump-roping routine finished with stretching.

Sound exhausting? That’s just her morning workout. “She’d head home to be with the family and the babies and then, pow! She’d come back that night from 5 to 8 p.m.,” he marvels. “It was incredible to see that type of dedication and fortitude.”

Although Lima came under fire for her pre-show diet last year, Olajide ensures she’s responsible about her health.

“Adriana enjoys her food. She eats anything from chocolate mousse to steak and hamburgers,” he says. “But when it’s time to prepare for something, she has the discipline to prepare for it.”

This time around, that also meant working with a nutritionist to cut out salt and seasonings, and eating steamed dark greens and lean proteins. ”It was a roller coaster, but she’s a fighter. She just bit down on her mouthguard and got it done.”

The Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show airs Tuesday at 10 p.m. EST on CBS.

– Catherine Kast

Read More..

Study: Drug coverage to vary under health law

WASHINGTON (AP) — A new study says basic prescription drug coverage could vary dramatically from state to state under President Barack Obama's health care overhaul.

That's because states get to set benefits for private health plans that will be offered starting in 2014 through new insurance exchanges.

The study out Tuesday from the market analysis firm Avalere Health found that some states will require coverage of virtually all FDA-approved drugs, while others will only require coverage of about half of medications.

Consumers will still have access to essential medications, but some may not have as much choice.

Connecticut, Virginia and Arizona will be among the states with the most generous coverage, while California, Minnesota and North Carolina will be among states with the most limited.

___

Online:

Avalere Health: http://tinyurl.com/d3b3hfv

Read More..

L.A. police seek owners of 11,000 pieces of stolen jewelry

Gold earrings, diamond studs, wedding rings and designer watches sparkled like a jeweler's cabinet at a shopping mall — and there's more where that came from, police said.

On Tuesday, Los Angeles Police Department Sgt. Matt Plugge displayed more than 11,000 stolen items at the Valley Bureau headquarters, showing them off more like a high-end jeweler than a law enforcement official.

Plugge said he is now seeking to reunite some pieces with their rightful owners.

"They come from hundreds of homes," Plugge said. "It is not so much the value here but that sentimental value. We're talking wedding rings, pieces of family jewelry with all the emotions attached. These are special items to someone."

The valuables were stolen in hundreds of so-called knock-knock burglaries in which the brazen thieves would knock on the door and bust in when no one answered. They could ransack the home for valuables in a few minutes.

As the San Fernando Valley and L.A.'s Westside saw a surge in home burglaries early this year, authorities created a task force to help catch the crafty crooks.

Investigators have arrested more than 55 suspected burglars and more than a dozen alleged associates, including two suspected fences who knowingly bought the stolen merchandise, Police Det. Joe Esquivel said. Many of the suspects arrested are active gang members who also allegedly stole a variety of guns, police said.

In many cases, burglars turned the stolen booty into cash within hours, police said

"We'd catch them dividing up the cash in the parking lot of the fence," Plugge said. "The fences quickly split the jewels from the gold. We found multiple gold bars we suspect were once jewelry."

Informants and undercover surveillance led detectives to two suspected fences who owned several stores in downtown L.A. At Fine Silver Max's Jewelry and Guadalajara Jewelry on South Broadway, detectives in September recovered many items and arrested two store operators.

Burglary and armed robbery suspects were observed repeatedly engaging in hasty transactions that were so frequent that investigators said they saw one burglary crew finish up its business as another arrived.

Both stores ignored a city law requiring secondhand stores and pawnshops to obtain a fingerprint and record a form of identification when exchanging personal property for cash.

Fine Silver Max's operator, Ismael Monje, who owned two nearby electronic businesses, was also charged with nine counts, including identity theft and receiving of stolen property, said Sandi Gibbons, spokeswoman for the district attorney's office.

Farshad Yaghoobi, owner of Guadalajara Jewelry, was arrested on suspicion of receiving stolen goods at his Beverly Hills home but has not yet been charged.

About 50 people have come forward to identify their items since images were placed on the LAPD website.

"We are asking people to contact us and provide some proof it is their item," Plugge said.

That would include a police report, appraisal, a receipt or a picture of them wearing it.

Photos of the property can be found at http://www.lapdonline.org. Type "fence burglaries" into the search box and a link will appear to the hundreds of photos. If you see a piece that is yours, send an email to lapdvctf@lapd.lacity.org or call (818) 644-8091.

richard.winton@latimes.com

Read More..