Slim majority supports L.A. sales tax increase

A Los Angeles sales tax hike being promoted as vital to preserving public safety and helping end years of budget deficits is drawing support from a narrow majority of likely voters, according to a new USC Price/L.A. Times poll.

Fifty-three percent of surveyed voters said they definitely or probably would vote for Proposition A, which is on Tuesday's ballot and would raise $200 million a year by boosting the city's sales tax rate by half a cent to 9.5%, one of the highest in the state.

About 41% of respondents said they expected to vote against the measure, while 6% were undecided. The results offer hope to Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and other backers of Proposition A, which needs 50% plus one of the vote to pass.

GRAPHIC: Contributions to Yes on Prop. A

Because of the poll's 4.4-percentage-point margin of error, support could dip below 50% and passage can't be taken for granted, said Dan Schnur, director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at USC. "On one hand, [Proposition A] enjoys a fairly sizable lead in the polls," he said. "On the other hand, margins this close to 50% should always be cause for concern for an initiative's proponents."

The bipartisan USC Sol Price School of Public Policy/L.A. Times Los Angeles City Primary Poll canvassed 500 likely voters between Feb. 24 and 27. The poll was conducted jointly by the Benenson Strategy Group, a Democratic firm, and M4 Strategies, a Republican company.

Backers of Proposition A — using contributions from labor unions, billboard companies and real estate interests needing City Hall approvals — have been airing TV ads featuring images of accident victims being rushed to hospitals and a grim-faced Police Chief Charlie Beck warning that "public safety is now in danger."

Beck also has been warning at news conferences and in interviews that the Los Angeles Police Department will lose 500 officers if voters reject the tax increase.

Opponents, who lack the money to mount an advertising campaign, say voters are being asked to pay for bad City Hall spending decisions, including a deal that gives civilian city employees a 25% pay hike over seven years.

Some warn that city leaders will only give away the added sales tax collections by pursuing a proposed phase-out of the business receipts tax. The top five candidates for mayor have come out against Proposition A, and the poll results suggest that was politically wise. Close to half of respondents said they would be less likely to vote for a mayoral candidate who supports the sales tax increase.

The poll indicates that the Proposition A language that city officials put on voters' ballots could end up pushing it to victory, said Chris St. Hilaire, chief executive of M4 Strategies, which helped conduct the poll.

The ballot title calls it the "neighborhood public safety and vital city services funding and accountability measure" and says it would help maintain 911 emergency and other services.

Retired nurse Annette Koppel, 80, voted by mail for the sales tax increase, but only reluctantly. Although she is living on a fixed income, Koppel — a victim of a carjacking in the late 1980s — said she worries about a decrease in the number of police, firefighters and paramedics.

"Without them, what are we going to do?" she asked.

Some, including a former top budget advisor to Villaraigosa who is now running for City Council, have questioned whether the budget crisis is as severe as city officials say.

James Cotton, 84, of Winnetka told The Times that he voted against the sales tax increase even though his daughter is an employee in the Fire Department. Cotton said lawmakers should look for other ways of balancing the budget and making better choices about how to spend taxpayer funds.

"I'm of the opinion that a lot of the money could be better spent," said Cotton, adding that the measure would hurt businesses and residents on fixed incomes.

The push for a sales tax increase is being led by City Council President Herb Wesson, who has helped raise more than $1.2 million for the pro-Proposition A campaign. More than one out of every four dollars has come from labor unions, most of them representing city employees. Service Employees International Union, which represents civilian city employees, has given $100,000. Its members at City Hall received a 3.75% pay increase last summer and are in line for another 1.75% raise in July and a 5.5% pay hike on Jan. 1, 2014.

As of Friday afternoon, real estate interests and billboard companies had provided one-third of the money collected in support of Proposition A, according to Ethics Commission records. Several donors are waiting for the City Council to approve their projects or have already received permission to use tax revenue to finance their projects.

The single biggest donor has been NFL stadium developer Anschutz Entertainment Group, which has received a series of lucrative deals with City Hall over the last decade. The company was given the right to keep up to $270 million in tax revenue generated by its hotels at the LA Live entertainment complex over 25 years.

AEG is also seeking to run the city's Convention Center.

The company, its top executive and its lawyers have given a combined $126,000 to get the measure passed, according to campaign reports.

david.zahniser@latimes.com

kate.linthicum@latimes.com

Times researcher Maloy Moore contributed to this report.

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Cellar victim Kampusch raped, starved in film of ordeal

VIENNA (Reuters) – A new film based on the story of Austrian kidnap victim Natascha Kampusch shows her being repeatedly raped by the captor who beat and starved her during the eight-and-a-half years that he kept her in a cellar beneath his house.

Kampusch was snatched on her way to school at the age of 10 by Wolfgang Priklopil and held in a windowless cell under his garage near Vienna until she escaped in 2006, causing a sensation in Austria and abroad. Priklopil committed suicide.

Kampusch had always refused to respond to claims that she had had sex with Priklopil, but in a German television interview on her 25th birthday last week said she had decided to reveal the truth because it had leaked out from police files.

The film, “3,096 Days” – based on Kampusch’s autobiography of the same name – soberly portrays her captivity in a windowless cellar less than 6 square metres (65 square feet) in area, often deprived of food for days at a time.

The emaciated Kampusch – who weighed just 38 kg (84 pounds) at one point in 2004 – keeps a diary written on toilet paper concealed in a box.

One entry reads: “At least 60 blows in the face. Ten to 15 nausea-inducing fist blows to the head. One strike with the fist with full weight to my right ear.”

The movie shows occasional moments that approach tenderness, such as when Priklopil presents her with a cake for her 18th birthday or buys her a dress as a gift – but then immediately goes on to chide her for not knowing how to waltz with him.

GREY AREAS

Antonia Campbell-Hughes, who plays the teenaged Kampusch, said she had tried to portray “the strength of someone’s soul, the ability of people to survive… but also the grey areas within a relationship that people don’t necessarily understand.”

The British actress said she had not met Kampusch during the making of the film or since. “It was a very isolated time, it was a bubble of time, and I wanted to keep that very focused,” she told journalists as she arrived for the Vienna premiere.

Kampusch herself attended the premiere, looking composed as she posed for pictures but declining to give interviews.

In an interview with Germany’s Bild Zeitung last week, she said: “Yes, I did recognize myself, although the reality was even worse. But one can’t really show that in the cinema, since it wasn’t supposed to be a horror film.”

The movie, made at the Constantin Film studios in Bavaria, Germany, also stars Amy Pidgeon as the 10-year-old Kampusch and Danish actor Thure Lindhardt as Priklopil.

“I focused mainly on playing the human being because… we have to remember it was a human being. Monsters do not exist, they’re only in cartoons,” Lindhart said.

“It became clear to me that it’s a story about survival, and it’s a story about surviving eight years of hell. If that story can be told then I can also play the bad guy.”

The director was German-American Sherry Hormann, who made her English-language debut with the 2009 move “Desert Flower”, an adaptation of the autobiography of Somali-born model and anti-female circumcision activist Waris Dirie.

“I’m a mother and I wonder at the strength of this child, and it was important for me to tell this story from a different perspective, to tell how this child using her own strength could survive this atrocious martyrdom,” Hormann said.

The Kampusch case was followed two years later by that of Josef Fritzl, an Austrian who held his daughter captive in a cellar for 24 years and fathered seven children with her.

The crimes prompted soul-searching about the Austrian psyche, and questions as to how the authorities and neighbors could have let such crimes go undetected for so long.

The film goes on general release on Thursday.

(Reporting by Georgina Prodhan, Editing by Paul Casciato)

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Jane C. Wright, Pioneering Oncologist, Dies at 93

Dr. Jane C. Wright, a pioneering oncologist who helped elevate chemotherapy from a last resort for cancer patients to an often viable treatment option, died on Feb. 19 at her home in Guttenberg, N.J. She was 93.

Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College

Dr. Jane C. Wright was the only woman among seven physicians who founded the American Society of Clinical Oncologists.

Her death was confirmed by her daughter Jane Jones, who said her mother had dementia.

Dr. Wright descended from a distinguished medical family that defied racial barriers in a profession long dominated by white men. Her father, Dr. Louis T. Wright, was among the first black graduates of Harvard Medical School and was reported to be the first black doctor appointed to the staff of a New York City hospital. His father was an early graduate of what became the Meharry Medical College, the first medical school in the South for African-Americans, founded in Nashville in 1876.

Dr. Jane Wright began her career as a researcher working alongside her father at a cancer center he established at Harlem Hospital in New York.

Together, they and others studied the effects of a variety of drugs on tumors, experimented with chemotherapeutic agents on leukemia in mice and eventually treated patients, with some success, with new anticancer drugs, including triethylene melamine.

After her father died in 1952, Dr. Wright took over as director of the center, which was known as the Harlem Hospital Cancer Research Foundation. In 1955, she joined the faculty of the New York University Medical Center as director of cancer research, where her work focused on correlating the responses of tissue cultures to anticancer drugs with the responses of patients.

In 1964, working as part of a team at the N.Y.U. School of Medicine, Dr. Wright developed a nonsurgical method, using a catheter system, to deliver heavy doses of anticancer drugs to previously hard-to-reach tumor areas in the kidneys, spleen and elsewhere.

That same year, Dr. Wright was the only woman among seven physicians who, recognizing the unique needs of doctors caring for cancer patients, founded the American Society of Clinical Oncologists, known as ASCO. She was also appointed by President Lyndon B. Johnson to the President’s Commission on Heart Disease, Cancer and Stroke, led by the heart surgeon Dr. Michael E. DeBakey. Its recommendations emphasized better communication among doctors, hospitals and research institutions and resulted in a national network of treatment centers.

In 1967, Dr. Wright became head of the chemotherapy department and associate dean at New York Medical College. News reports at the time said it was the first time a black woman had held so high a post at an American medical school.

“Not only was her work scientific, but it was visionary for the whole science of oncology,” Dr. Sandra Swain, the current president of ASCO, said in a telephone interview. “She was part of the group that first realized we needed a separate organization to deal with the providers who care for cancer patients. But beyond that, it’s amazing to me that a black woman, in her day and age, was able to do what she did.”

Jane Cooke Wright was born in Manhattan on Nov. 30, 1919. Her mother, the former Corinne Cooke, was a substitute teacher in the New York City schools.

Ms. Wright attended the Ethical Culture school in Manhattan and the Fieldston School in the Bronx (now collectively known Ethical Culture Fieldston School) and graduated from Smith College, where she studied art before turning to medicine. She received a full scholarship to New York Medical College, earning her medical degree in 1945. Before beginning research with her father, she worked as a doctor in city schools.

Dr. Wright married David D. Jones, a lawyer, in 1947; he died in 1976. In addition to their daughter Jane, she is survived by another daughter, Alison Jones; and a sister, Dr. Barbara Wright Pierce.

As both a student and a doctor, Dr. Wright said in interviews, she was always aware that as a black woman she was an unusual presence in medical institutions. But she never felt she was a victim of racial prejudice, she said.

“I know I’m a member of two minority groups,” she said in an interview with The New York Post in 1967, “but I don’t think of myself that way. Sure, a woman has to try twice as hard. But — racial prejudice? I’ve met very little of it.”

She added, “It could be I met it — and wasn’t intelligent enough to recognize it.”

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Sequestration Takes Effect, but Impact Is Not Immediate

WASHINGTON — University officials, city managers, day care providers and others spent Saturday assessing how they would absorb their part of the across-the-board cuts in federal spending that began taking effect over the weekend.

But even as the institutions that depend on federal money nervously took stock, most Americans were largely unaffected by the cuts, at least for now. At Los Angeles International Airport, John Konopka, 45, suffered no delays as he arrived from Atlanta.

“This is just another travel day,” Mr. Konopka said. “I think all of it’s been talked up a bit, way too politically, to make it seem a lot worse than it is. I don’t think it’s going to be the gloom and doom that some people are saying it would be.”

Others were less sanguine. Joel Silver, 63, a retiree from the Bronx, said he feared the cuts would affect the most vulnerable. He said he was angry that President Obama and lawmakers had not prevented what he called “an invented crisis.”

“What’s the point of a Congress?” he asked. “Aren’t they supposed to sit down and talk about things and figure them out? The economy was just recovering and now it’s going to slide back.”

Across the country, the impact of sequestration, as the cuts are known, appeared to be as varied as the thousands of federal programs, big and small, that now have shrunken pots of money from which to draw.

In Baltimore, the mayor called for an emergency cabinet meeting to discuss the reductions in federal money and their impact on a city that already has a projected deficit of $750 million over the next decade.

At research universities, administrators sent e-mails to faculty members and students warning that changes were coming. Samuel L. Stanley Jr., the president of Stony Brook University, said the institution would lose $7.6 million in “vital federal funding” for research grants and other programs. The University of California, Berkeley, warned that “as sequestration translates into fewer federal grants, the campus will be forced to hire fewer researchers.”

The Air Force Thunderbirds, the elite team of F-16 pilots who perform flight maneuvers at air shows around the country, announced on their Web site that all of their shows had been canceled starting April 1.

Federal officials began sending letters to governors, informing them of smaller grants. Shaun Donovan, the secretary of housing and urban development, wrote to Gov. John R. Kasich of Ohio, “You can expect reductions totaling approximately $35 million.”

In a 70-page report to Congress accompanying the sequestration order and detailing the reductions — agency by agency and program by program — Jeffrey D. Zients, Mr. Obama’s budget director, called them “deeply destructive to national security, domestic investments and core government functions.”

Among the $85 billion in cuts for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30: $3 million less for Pacific coastal salmon recovery; $148 million less for the patent office; a $1 million cut in support by the Defense Department for international sporting competitions; $289 million less for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; a $1 million cut in the Interior Department’s helium fund; and $16 million less for the Sept. 11 victim compensation fund.

But even as the reductions became official, the result of a stalemate between Mr. Obama and Congressional Republicans over increasing taxes, some of the immediate impact was difficult to see.

The process of trimming government budgets is slow and cumbersome, involving notifications to unions about temporary furloughs, reductions in overtime pay and cuts in grant financing to state and local programs. Less federal money will, over time, mean fewer government contracts with private companies. Reduced overtime pay for airport security checkpoint officers will make lines longer, eventually.

And so as the first weekend began for the new, slimmer government, little of that was evident yet.

At Kennedy International Airport in New York, travelers who arrived extra early were greeted by short lines, not the drastic delays that federal transportation officials have said could emerge as security officers are furloughed to save money.

“The check-in was fine, at least for now. I’m surprised,” said Chris Achilefu, 45, who arrived at the airport four hours before his flight to Lagos, Nigeria. Normally Mr. Achilefu, an automotive exporter who lives in Upper Darby, Pa., would arrive two hours early, but he said he was concerned about lines.

“I was listening to what the president said yesterday, that it won’t kick in right away,” he said. “Hopefully the two parties will come together, hopefully they will resolve it before another month.”

At the main San Ysidro port of entry between Mexico and San Diego, traffic moved smoothly late Friday night, just hours after the sequestration began, and border lines had only a few dozen vehicles in each lane.

Vendors who line the street where cars sometimes idle for hours waiting to enter the United States perked up when they heard about the cuts.

“That’s good for business,” said Emilio Gomez, an employee at a stand selling rugs, china figurines and soda. “When people are waiting, they get bored and they buy more stuff.”

In his weekly address on Saturday, Mr. Obama acknowledged that not everyone would be affected equally. “While not everyone will feel the pain of these cuts right away, the pain will be real,” he said. “Many middle-class families will have their lives disrupted in a significant way.”

In the Republican response to Mr. Obama’s address, Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington also called the cuts “devastating,” but said that Republicans in the House would not yield on taxes. “Spending is the problem, which means cutting spending is the solution,” she said. “It’s that simple.”

Reporting was contributed by Robbie Brown from Atlanta; Will Carless from San Ysidro, Calif.; Ian Lovett from Los Angeles; and Marc Santora and Ravi Somaiya from New York.

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Bell jurors ordered to begin anew after panelist is dismissed

After nearly five days of deliberations, jurors in the Bell corruption trial were ordered Thursday to begin anew after a member of the panel was dismissed for misconduct and replaced by an alternate.

The original juror, a white-haired woman identified only as Juror No. 3, told Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Kathleen Kennedy she had gone onto a legal website to look up jury instructions and then asked her daughter to help find a definition for the word "coercion."

Although all but one defense attorney requested that the woman stay, Kennedy said the juror needed to be removed. "She has spoken about the deliberations with her daughter, she has conducted research on the Internet, and I've repeatedly, repeatedly throughout this trial — probably hundreds of times — cautioned the jury not to do that," the judge said.

The removal came after jurors notified the judge that they were deadlocked and that continued deliberations seemed fruitless.

It was unclear how to interpret the day's events, whether the dismissed juror had been a lone holdout or an indication of a fractured jury.

The juror started to tell the judge which way she was leaning in the case, saying she had gone online "looking to see at what point can I get the harassment to stop.... How long do I have to stay in there and deliberate with them when I have made my decision that I didn't think there was —"

Kennedy cut her off before she could finish.

The woman clasped her hands over her mouth and said, "I'm sorry."

Two defense attorneys thought she was leaning toward acquittal and wanted her to stay. "I would have preferred the deadlock to a guilty verdict," said Alex Kessel, the attorney for George Mirabal, one of six former council members charged with misappropriation of public funds.

The council members are charged with inflating their salaries in what prosecutors contend was a far-reaching web of corruption in which fat paychecks were placed ahead of the needs of the city's largely immigrant, working-poor constituents.

When attorneys and defendants were summoned to the courtroom Thursday morning, they were initially told that the jury appeared to be deadlocked.

"Your honor, we have reached a point where as a jury we have fundamental disagreements and cannot reach a unanimous verdict in this case," read a note signed by two jurors, including the foreman, that was given to Kennedy.

A note from another juror alerted the judge that Juror No. 3 had consulted an outside attorney. That did not appear to be the case, but her other actions were revealed under questioning from the judge.

The same juror made a tearful request Monday to be removed from the panel because she felt others were picking on her. Kennedy told the woman that although discussions can get heated, it was important to continue deliberating.

On Thursday, however, the juror again broke into tears and said she had spoken with her daughter about "the abuse I have suffered." She said her daughter told her, "Mom, they're trying to find the weak link."

The woman said she had turned to the Internet to better understand the rules about jury deliberations and came across the word "coercion." After her daughter helped her look up the word's definition, she wrote it down on a piece of paper and brought it with her to court. When the judge asked to see the paper she went into the jury room to retrieve it.

The woman later left the courtroom in tears.

With an alternate in place, Kennedy told the panel to act as if the earlier deliberations had not taken place. The alternate had sat in the jury box during the four-week trial but did not take part in deliberations.

Former council members Luis Artiga, Victor Bello, George Cole, Oscar Hernandez, Teresa Jacobo and Mirabal are accused of drawing annual salaries of as much as $100,000 a year by serving on boards that did little work and seldom met, part of a scandal that drew national attention to the small city in 2010.

Prosecutors said that Bell's charter follows state law regarding council members' compensation. In a city the size of Bell, council members should be paid no more than $8,076 a year.

The trial began in late January, and the case went to the jury last Friday.

As the jury resumed deliberations in downtown Los Angeles, the verdict was clearly in on the streets of Bell.

One resident unfurled old protest banners and signs from the days when the pay scandal was first exposed and then called former members of an activist group that had led the charge for reform in the city.

"We're holding our breaths and waiting," Denise Rodarte, a member of the grassroots group Bell Assn. to Stop the Abuse, said in regard to a verdict.

"It's cut and dry: Local elected officials were supposed to make a certain amount of money, and they made a lot more."

corina.knoll@latimes.com

jeff.gottlieb@latimes.com

Times staff writer Ruben Vives contributed to this report.

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Well: A Rainbow of Root Vegetables

This week’s Recipes for Health is as much a treat for the eyes as the palate. Colorful root vegetables from bright orange carrots and red scallions to purple and yellow potatoes and pale green leeks will add color and flavor to your table.

Since root vegetables and tubers keep well and can be cooked up into something delicious even after they have begun to go limp in the refrigerator, this week’s Recipes for Health should be useful. Root vegetables, tubers (potatoes and sweet potatoes, which are called yams by most vendors – I mean the ones with dark orange flesh), winter squash and cabbages are the only local vegetables available during the winter months in colder regions, so these recipes will be timely for many readers.

Roasting is a good place to begin with most root vegetables. They sweeten as they caramelize in a hot oven. I roasted baby carrots and thick red scallions (they may have been baby onions; I didn’t get the information from the farmer, I just bought them because they were lush and pretty) together and seasoned them with fresh thyme leaves, then sprinkled them with chopped toasted hazelnuts. I also roasted a medley of potatoes, including sweet potatoes, after tossing them with olive oil and sage, and got a wonderful range of colors, textures and tastes ranging from sweet to savory.

Sweet winter vegetables also pair well with spicy seasonings. I like to combine sweet potatoes and chipotle peppers, and this time in a hearty lentil stew that we enjoyed all week.

Here are five colorful and delicious dishes made with root vegetables.

Spicy Lentil and Sweet Potato Stew With Chipotles: The combination of sweet potatoes and spicy chipotles with savory lentils is a winner.

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Roasted Carrots and Scallions With Thyme and Hazelnuts: Toasted hazelnuts add a crunchy texture and nutty finish to this dish.

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Carrot Wraps: A vegetarian sandwich that satisfies like a full meal.

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Rainbow Potato Roast: A multicolored mix that can be vegan, or not.

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Leek Quiche: A lighter version of a Flemish classic.

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Hasbro Expands Transformers Brand Into New Media

Marcus Yam for The New York Times

Ryan Yzquierdo, who has been a Transformers fan since he was 7, is introducing his daughter to the franchise.

To Hasbro, no one is too young or too old to play with a Transformers robot, watch a Transformers television show or play a Transformers video game.

The toy maker started the Transformers franchise with a Japanese partner in 1984. The concept — robots disguised as everyday objects — was originally aimed at 5-year-old boys. But as those boys have grown up and had children and even grandchildren, Hasbro has expanded the brand into other media and added new toy lines to appeal to everyone from toddlers to adults.

Take Rescue Bots, for example.

The main Transformers brand contains mature themes, with big robots battling for control of the planet. To engage children ages 3 to 7, Hasbro introduced Rescue Bots in 2011, featuring toy robots as first responders.

“The goal there is to take what you have and bring an age-relevant message, which is to get away from the battle and the fighting and focus on the heroic nature of Transformers,” said Jay Duke, global vice president for the Transformers brand at Hasbro.

That was enough to convince Ryan Yzquierdo, who has been a Transformers fan since he was 7, that Rescue Bots were a good way to introduce Transformers to his 3-year-old daughter.

“Each toy focused on a different motor skill, which was a big selling point for me and my wife,” said Mr. Yzquierdo, who started a Web site, Seibertron.com, devoted to Transformers in 2000.

When buying toys and games for their children, parents often look to favorites from their own childhood. Their nostalgia for beloved toys from their past helps create a bonding experience with their little ones.

Toy makers have long tried to build enduring brands that can be passed down to the next generation. Those intellectual properties are cheaper to develop because the toy companies do not have to pay a licensing fee to an outside partner. They also bring in added revenue through licensing fees paid by other companies, like makers of apparel and school accessories.

In Transformers, Hasbro has one of the most valuable brands among toy makers. In 2011, the year the third Transformers movie was released, Hasbro recorded $960 million in sales from products related to Transformers and Beyblade, a spinning top game, according to the company’s latest annual earnings report.

When it was developed in 1984, Transformers consisted of a toy line and an animated television series.

But in 2007, Hasbro began a new strategy to build the brand into a worldwide franchise that now includes live-action movies, video games, publishing and even theme park rides.

“There are not a lot of brands like that in the world that have that strong emotional resonance across generations,” said John A. Frascotti, global chief marketing officer at Hasbro.

For older boys, Hasbro has extended the brand into mobile apps, video games and comic books. For adults, the company has licensed an annual Transformers convention called BotCon and organizes events at conventions like Comic-Con International in San Diego.

But the growth of the Transformers franchise has had its pitfalls, too. When there is not a Transformers movie rumbling through theaters, the toy line stumbles. Hasbro reported net income of $130.3 million for the fourth quarter of 2012, a 6.3 percent decline from the previous year. Sales in its boys business fell 23 percent in the quarter from the same period in 2011, the year the last Transformers movie came out.

Analysts say it is important for Hasbro to keep the Transformers brand fresh in non-movie years.

“Hasbro focuses on these big, home-run movies. When they don’t have one, they get punished for it,” said Jaime M. Katz, an analyst at Morningstar.

Investors expect sales in the boys category to decline this year as well, but to rebound in 2014 when the next Transformers movie is released, said Felicia R. Hendrix, a Barclays analyst. “The real problem around this is that their boys’ line seems to be very movie-driven,” Ms. Hendrix said, adding that Hasbro should try to make the brand more evergreen.

Toward that end, the company showed previews of two new Transformers toy lines, Beast Hunters and Construct-Bots, last month at the annual Toy Fair in New York. The Beast Hunters theme, which features robots that morph into predatory animals, will encompass several areas, including television, toys and licensing, while Construct-Bots will allow boys to build their own Transformers.

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Jury in Bell corruption trial may be deadlocked

A court spokeswoman said Thursday the jury in the Bell corruption case appears to be deadlocked.

“The jurors may be at an impasse,” said Patricia Kelly, a spokeswoman for L.A. County Superior Court.

Jurors sent a note to the judge Thursday morning, and all the attorneys in the case were called in.

Six former Bell City Council members are accused of stealing public money by paying themselves extraordinary salaries in one of Los Angeles County’s poorest cities.

Luis Artiga, Victor Bello, George Cole, Oscar Hernandez, Teresa Jacobo and George Mirabal are accused of misappropriation of public funds, felony counts that could bring prison terms.

They were arrested in September 2010 and have been free on bail.

The nearly $100,000 salaries drawn by most of the former elected officials are part of a much larger municipal corruption case in the southeast Los Angeles County city in which prosecutors allege that money from the city’s modest general fund flowed freely to top officials.

The three defendants who testified painted a picture of a city as a place led by a controlling, manipulative administrator who handed out enormous salaries, loaned city money and padded future pensions. Robert Rizzo, the former adminstrator, and ex-assistant city manager Angela Spaccia are also awaiting trial.

The four-week trial of the former council members turned on extremes.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Edward Miller said the council members were little more than common thieves who were consumed with fattening their paychecks at the expense of the city’s largely immigrant, working-poor residents.

Miller said the accused represented the “one-percenters" of Bell who had “apparently forgotten who they are and where they live."

Defense attorneys said the former city leaders -- one a pastor, another a mom-and-pop grocery store owner, another a funeral director -- were dedicated public servants who put in long hours and tirelessly responded to the needs of their constituents.

Jacobo testified that Rizzo informed her she could quit her job as a real estate agent and receive a full-time salary as a council member. She said she asked City Attorney Edward Lee if that was possible and he nodded his head.

"I thought I was doing a very good job to be able to earn that, yes," Jacobo said.

Cole said Rizzo was so intimidating that the former councilman voted for a 12% annual pay raise out of fear the city programs he established would be gutted by Rizzo in retaliation if he opposed the pay hikes.

The defense argued that the prosecution failed to prove criminal negligence -- that their clients knew what they were doing was wrong or that a reasonable person would know it was wrong.

The attorney for Hernandez, the city’s mayor at the time of the arrests, said his client had only a grade-school education, was known more for his heart than his intellect and was, perhaps, not overly “scholarly.”

Prosecutors argued that the council members pushed up their salaries by serving on city boards that rarely met and, in one case, existed only as a means for paying them even more money.

Jurors were also left to deal with the question of whether council members were protected by a City Charter that was approved in a special election that drew fewer than 400 voters.

Defense attorneys say the charter allowed council members to be paid for serving on the authorities.

But the prosecutor argued that the charter -- a quasi-constitution for a city -- set salaries at what councils in similar-sized cities were receiving under state law: $8,076 a year. Because council members automatically serve on boards and commissions, the district attorney said the total compensation for all of each council member's work was included in that figure.

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Cellar victim Kampusch raped, starved in film of ordeal

VIENNA (Reuters) – A new film based on the story of Austrian kidnap victim Natascha Kampusch shows her being repeatedly raped by the captor who beat and starved her during the eight-and-a-half years that he kept her in a cellar beneath his house.

Kampusch was snatched on her way to school at the age of 10 by Wolfgang Priklopil and held in a windowless cell under his garage near Vienna until she escaped in 2006, causing a sensation in Austria and abroad. Priklopil committed suicide.

Kampusch had always refused to respond to claims that she had had sex with Priklopil, but in a German television interview on her 25th birthday last week said she had decided to reveal the truth because it had leaked out from police files.

The film, “3,096 Days” – based on Kampusch’s autobiography of the same name – soberly portrays her captivity in a windowless cellar less than 6 square metres (65 square feet) in area, often deprived of food for days at a time.

The emaciated Kampusch – who weighed just 38 kg (84 pounds) at one point in 2004 – keeps a diary written on toilet paper concealed in a box.

One entry reads: “At least 60 blows in the face. Ten to 15 nausea-inducing fist blows to the head. One strike with the fist with full weight to my right ear.”

The movie shows occasional moments that approach tenderness, such as when Priklopil presents her with a cake for her 18th birthday or buys her a dress as a gift – but then immediately goes on to chide her for not knowing how to waltz with him.

GREY AREAS

Antonia Campbell-Hughes, who plays the teenaged Kampusch, said she had tried to portray “the strength of someone’s soul, the ability of people to survive… but also the grey areas within a relationship that people don’t necessarily understand.”

The British actress said she had not met Kampusch during the making of the film or since. “It was a very isolated time, it was a bubble of time, and I wanted to keep that very focused,” she told journalists as she arrived for the Vienna premiere.

Kampusch herself attended the premiere, looking composed as she posed for pictures but declining to give interviews.

In an interview with Germany’s Bild Zeitung last week, she said: “Yes, I did recognize myself, although the reality was even worse. But one can’t really show that in the cinema, since it wasn’t supposed to be a horror film.”

The movie, made at the Constantin Film studios in Bavaria, Germany, also stars Amy Pidgeon as the 10-year-old Kampusch and Danish actor Thure Lindhardt as Priklopil.

“I focused mainly on playing the human being because… we have to remember it was a human being. Monsters do not exist, they’re only in cartoons,” Lindhart said.

“It became clear to me that it’s a story about survival, and it’s a story about surviving eight years of hell. If that story can be told then I can also play the bad guy.”

The director was German-American Sherry Hormann, who made her English-language debut with the 2009 move “Desert Flower”, an adaptation of the autobiography of Somali-born model and anti-female circumcision activist Waris Dirie.

“I’m a mother and I wonder at the strength of this child, and it was important for me to tell this story from a different perspective, to tell how this child using her own strength could survive this atrocious martyrdom,” Hormann said.

The Kampusch case was followed two years later by that of Josef Fritzl, an Austrian who held his daughter captive in a cellar for 24 years and fathered seven children with her.

The crimes prompted soul-searching about the Austrian psyche, and questions as to how the authorities and neighbors could have let such crimes go undetected for so long.

The film goes on general release on Thursday.

(Reporting by Georgina Prodhan, Editing by Paul Casciato)

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Global Health: After Measles Success, Rwanda to Get Rubella Vaccine

Rwanda has been so successful at fighting measles that next month it will be the first country to get donor support to move to the next stage — fighting rubella too.

On March 11, it will hold a nationwide three-day vaccination campaign with a combined measles-rubella vaccine, hoping to reach nearly five million children up to age 14. It will then integrate the dual vaccine into its national health service.

Rwanda can do so “because they’ve done such a good job on measles,” said Christine McNab, a spokeswoman for the Measles and Rubella Initiative. M.R.I. helped pay for previous vaccination campaigns in the country and the GAVI Alliance is helping to finance the upcoming one.

Rubella, also called German measles, causes a rash that is very similar to the measles rash, making it hard for health workers to tell the difference.

Rubella is generally mild, even in children, but in pregnant women, it can kill the fetus or cause serious birth defects, including blindness, deafness, mental retardation and chronic heart damage.

Ms. McNab said that Rwanda had proved that it can suppress measles and identify rubella, and it would benefit from the newer, more expensive vaccine.

The dual vaccine costs twice as much — 52 cents a dose at Unicef prices, compared with 24 cents for measles alone. (The MMR vaccine that American children get, which also contains a vaccine against mumps, costs Unicef $1.)

More than 90 percent of Rwandan children now are vaccinated twice against measles, and cases have been near zero since 2007.

The tiny country, which was convulsed by Hutu-Tutsi genocide in 1994, is now leading the way in Africa in delivering medical care to its citizens, Ms. McNab said. Three years ago, it was the first African country to introduce shots against human papilloma virus, or HPV, which causes cervical cancer.

In wealthy countries, measles kills a small number of children — usually those whose parents decline vaccination. But in poor countries, measles is a major killer of malnourished infants. Around the world, the initiative estimates, about 158,000 children die of it each year, or about 430 a day.

Every year, an estimated 112,000 children, mostly in Africa, South Asia and the Pacific islands, are born with handicaps caused by their mothers’ rubella infection.

Thanks in part to the initiative — which until last year was known just as the Measles Initiative — measles deaths among children have declined 71 percent since 2000. The initiative is a partnership of many health agencies, vaccine companies, donors and others, but is led by the American Red Cross, the United Nations Foundation, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Unicef and the World Health Organization.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: March 1, 2013

An article on Tuesday about a coming measles-rubella vaccination campaign in Rwanda misstated the source of the vaccine and some financing for the campaign. The vaccine and financing are being provided by the GAVI Alliance, not by the Measles and Rubella Initiative.

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DealBook: Breuer Reflects on Prosecutions That Were, and Weren’t

After spending four years under the microscope as he led investigations of some of the world’s biggest banks, Lanny A. Breuer hasn’t lost his swagger.

The 54-year-old prosecutor, with a Rolodex as thick as his Queens dialect, will leave the Justice Department on Friday, emboldened after mounting recent cases against banking giants. But Mr. Breuer, the department’s criminal division chief, also leaves somewhat bruised, having taken criticism for not throwing Wall Street executives behind bars after the financial crisis.

In short, it has been grueling.

“I think he’s handled the pressure very well,” said former Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey, who is now a defense lawyer at Debevoise & Plimpton and has gone up against Mr. Breuer in corporate bribery cases.

For his part, Mr. Breuer highlights his unit’s crackdown on money laundering; the prosecution of Allen Stanford, who was sentenced to 110 years in prison for a Ponzi scheme; and the criminal cases against BP for the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

Mr. Breuer won perhaps his biggest victory when a Japanese subsidiary of UBS pleaded guilty to manipulating the London interbank offered rate, or Libor. It was the first unit of a big global bank to plead guilty in two decades.

But the Occupy Wall Street crowd, among others, has been critical. When the Justice Department stopped short of indicting HSBC on money laundering charges, choosing instead to press a record fine against the bank, it prompted a tirade in Rolling Stone magazine. A recent “Frontline” documentary featuring Mr. Breuer took aim at his decision not to charge banks that sold toxic mortgage securities before the crisis.

In a recent interview, Mr. Breuer reflected on his crisis cases, his days defending President Bill Clinton from impeachment and his upbringing as the son of Holocaust survivors who settled in Elmhurst, Queens.

The following are edited excerpts from the interview:

When you joined the Justice Department, the nation was reeling and people wanted Wall Street to pay. Back then, didn’t you expect to mount charges against bank executives?

I understand and share the public’s outrage about the financial crisis. Of course we want to make these cases. I can tell you that I assigned the top, most talented lawyers to investigate them, and I know that U.S. attorneys’ offices across the country assigned aggressive prosecutors to these cases as well. I assigned people from my fraud section and my own front office to look at them. And I approached these cases exactly the same way I approached BP, the same way I approached Libor, the same way I approach every case. If there had been a case to make, we would have brought it. I would have wanted nothing more, but it doesn’t work that way.

You agreed to go on “60 Minutes” and “Frontline” to discuss the lack of crisis cases. Why open yourself to such scrutiny?

People have been asking legitimate questions about what happened in the wake of the financial crisis, and they deserve answers. Someone had to go on television to explain the Justice Department’s point of view, and it was appropriate that, as head of the criminal division, I would do it.

But federal prosecutors in New York and elsewhere also played big roles in the crisis cases. Why you?

As you point out, the U.S. attorneys don’t report to me, but someone had to tell the public how hard prosecutors across the department have been investigating these cases. I was willing to talk about these issues, to continue to talk about them in the face of criticism, and I’m still willing to talk about them.

Given that you’ve taken a beating on crisis cases, what is your legacy here?

The criminal division is now at the center of criminal law enforcement, both in prosecutions and policy. I don’t think that was ever the case before.

And now you’re leaving. You must feel relieved.

I have very mixed emotions. I’ve loved this job so very much, and I’m incredibly proud of what we’ve accomplished over the last four years. But I’m a big believer in change, and I think the timing is about right to move on.

What’s next?

I’m probably going to take a few months off. I’m also going to start talking to law firms and the like and make a decision about where I’m going to go.

The interviews are just a formality, right? The legal world assumes you’re heading back to Covington & Burling.

I love Covington. But I’m going to look at Covington; I’ll look at other firms. It’s certainly not a formality.

For years, you’ve moved in and out of government service, like many prosecutors. Does the revolving door compromise objectivity?

For me, it’s been a pretty effortless transition. I think it’s made me a better public servant, but I think it’s also made me a better private lawyer.

You’ve had no shortage of interesting clients: Roger Clemens, President Clinton, Sandy Berger. What was the most fascinating assignment?

There’s nothing like representing the president of the United States. Representing people like that in general can be gratifying, because you’re getting people often who are incredibly proud of their careers, and you’re dealing with them at their most vulnerable time.

What gear did you assemble from your ex-Yankee client?

Balls, posters — we’ve got a lot of Clemens memorabilia. You need to recognize, I was a lifelong Mets fan.

You were raised in Queens.

My dad was an intellectual. He had been a writer in Vienna before the Anschluss. During my childhood, he was one of the editors of Aufbau, which was a German-Jewish newspaper in New York. In our house there was opera always blaring. It was a very sort of ethnically rich, warm home.

So why did you pursue the law?

I was the mediator in a lot of family issues, even at a young age.

How did your family react to your decision to become a junior district attorney in Manhattan after a pricey education at Columbia?

My parents just never made any money at all. I called up my mother to break the news that her son was not going to a law firm: “Mom, you’ve just got to remember that Cy Vance Jr. — who, of course, is now the D.A. — he’s in the D.A.’s office. And Dan Rather Jr., he’s in the D.A.’s office. And Andrew Cuomo, the son of the governor, he’s in the D.A.’s office.” There was a long pause. And my mother said: “Them? They should go to the D.A.’s office. You? You should go to a firm.”

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Santa Cruz hit hard by officers' deaths

SANTA CRUZ — Flags throughout this sparkling beach town flew at half-staff Wednesday. The entire Police Department was meeting with grief counselors. Handmade signs cropped up, sympathy cards to a stunned city.

"Thank you for your service Santa Cruz Police Department. RIP Detective Baker. RIP Detective Butler." That's what Mary Gregg wrote in neat black letters on yellow construction paper, hanging her message in the window of the downtown check-cashing store where she works.

"Something," she felt, "had to be said today."

Best known for its surfing museum and a roller coaster that Bay Area newspaper columnist Herb Caen described as "one long shriek," Santa Cruz is not used to the kind of pain that rippled through town the day after a gunfight left two veteran officers — and the man they were investigating — dead.

The city's Police Department, which has less than 100 sworn officers, had operated for 150 years without losing a single one in the line of duty. Until Tuesday afternoon, when two veteran detectives in plainclothes walked up to Jeremy Goulet's house as part of a misdemeanor sexual assault investigation.

Sgt. Loran "Butch" Baker, 51, and Det. Elizabeth Butler, 38, were killed on Goulet's doorstep, Santa Cruz County Sheriff Phil Wowak said during a news conference near an impromptu memorial at police headquarters.

"We don't know all that happened when they came into contact with Goulet," said Wowak, whose department is leading the investigation so Santa Cruz police can mourn. "We do know what was left in the aftermath."

The 35-year-old Goulet, who had a long history of run-ins with the law, killed and disarmed the detectives before fleeing in Baker's car, Wowak said. Law enforcement officers from throughout the region began a sweep of the Santa Cruz neighborhood where Baker and Butler were slain. A short time later, Goulet ditched the car and tried to flee on foot.

In the ensuing gun battle, Wowak said, Goulet shot up a firetruck, sending firefighters, medical personnel and passersby scrambling. After killing the suspect, authorities discovered Goulet had been wearing body armor and had three guns.

"It is our belief that two of the three weapons belonged to the Santa Cruz Police Department, but we haven't confirmed it," said Wowak, adding that it was still unclear whether Goulet had taken the body armor from Baker's car or had it on before the shooting broke out.

"We know now that he was distraught," the sheriff said. "We know now that he had the intention of harming himself and possibly the police.… There's no doubt in anyone's mind that the officers who engaged Goulet stopped an imminent threat to the community."

Goulet had been arrested Friday on suspicion of disorderly conduct. Local news accounts said he had broken into the home of a co-worker and been fired from his job at The Kind Grind coffeehouse Saturday. A manager at the beachfront shop declined to comment Wednesday.

According to Goulet's father, the barista — who recently had moved from Berkeley to Santa Cruz — was a ticking time bomb who held police and the justice system in deep contempt. Ronald Goulet, 64, told the Associated Press that his son had had numerous run-ins with the law and had sworn he would never go back to jail.

But the elder Goulet said he never thought his troubled son would turn to such violence.

Goulet said his son undermined any success in the military (he reportedly was a member of the Marine Corps Reserves and later the Army) or college because of an insatiable desire to peep in the windows of women as they showered or dressed.

"He's got one problem, peeping in windows," his father said. "I asked him, 'Why don't you just go to a strip club?' He said he wants a good girl that doesn't know she's being spied on, and said he couldn't stop doing it."

In 2008, a Portland, Ore., jury convicted Jeremy Goulet on misdemeanor counts of unlawful possession of a firearm and invasion of personal privacy after he peeked into a woman's bathroom as she showered, said Don Rees, a chief deputy district attorney in Multnomah County.

Goulet faced additional charges, including attempted murder, after he allegedly fired a gun at the woman's boyfriend. The two had fought after Goulet was spotted outside the woman's condo, but a jury acquitted him of those charges, Rees said.

During the trial, Goulet admitted that he liked to use his cellphone to record unsuspecting women undressing, according to the Oregonian newspaper. Prosecutors alleged he had peeped at women "hundreds of times" without getting caught.

Goulet was given three years' probation, Rees said, but spent time in jail after his probation was revoked.

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Global Health: After Measles Success, Rwanda to Get Rubella Vaccine

Rwanda has been so successful at fighting measles that next month it will be the first country to get donor support to move to the next stage — fighting rubella too.

On March 11, it will hold a nationwide three-day vaccination campaign with a combined measles-rubella vaccine, hoping to reach nearly five million children up to age 14. It will then integrate the dual vaccine into its national health service.

Rwanda can do so “because they’ve done such a good job on measles,” said Christine McNab, a spokeswoman for the Measles and Rubella Initiative. M.R.I. helped pay for previous vaccination campaigns in the country and the GAVI Alliance is helping to finance the upcoming one.

Rubella, also called German measles, causes a rash that is very similar to the measles rash, making it hard for health workers to tell the difference.

Rubella is generally mild, even in children, but in pregnant women, it can kill the fetus or cause serious birth defects, including blindness, deafness, mental retardation and chronic heart damage.

Ms. McNab said that Rwanda had proved that it can suppress measles and identify rubella, and it would benefit from the newer, more expensive vaccine.

The dual vaccine costs twice as much — 52 cents a dose at Unicef prices, compared with 24 cents for measles alone. (The MMR vaccine that American children get, which also contains a vaccine against mumps, costs Unicef $1.)

More than 90 percent of Rwandan children now are vaccinated twice against measles, and cases have been near zero since 2007.

The tiny country, which was convulsed by Hutu-Tutsi genocide in 1994, is now leading the way in Africa in delivering medical care to its citizens, Ms. McNab said. Three years ago, it was the first African country to introduce shots against human papilloma virus, or HPV, which causes cervical cancer.

In wealthy countries, measles kills a small number of children — usually those whose parents decline vaccination. But in poor countries, measles is a major killer of malnourished infants. Around the world, the initiative estimates, about 158,000 children die of it each year, or about 430 a day.

Every year, an estimated 112,000 children, mostly in Africa, South Asia and the Pacific islands, are born with handicaps caused by their mothers’ rubella infection.

Thanks in part to the initiative — which until last year was known just as the Measles Initiative — measles deaths among children have declined 71 percent since 2000. The initiative is a partnership of many health agencies, vaccine companies, donors and others, but is led by the American Red Cross, the United Nations Foundation, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Unicef and the World Health Organization.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 27, 2013

An earlier version of this article misstated the source of the vaccine and some financing for the campaign. The vaccine and financing is being provided by the GAVI Alliance, not the Measles and Rubella Initiative.

Read More..

Advertising: Paper Finds a Fit in a Wi-Fi Society

AN effort by a giant paper maker to promote the value of using paper is turning to everyday situations after spending more than two years at the office.

The switch in subject matter began last week, when the Domtar Corporation and its agency, the Charlotte, N.C., office of Eric Mower & Associates, added four video clips-cum-commercials to a campaign that carries the theme “Paper because.” The humorous videos are billed as entries in a series of “Really, Really Short Films” that started with the introduction of the campaign, aimed at so-called thought leaders in fields like business and education, in September 2010.

The first batch of videos, as well as the second, released in December 2011, offered wacky vignettes in a workplace where a crusade to go “paperless” was carried to extremes. For instance, in one video, titled “Black Market,” an office worker begs her colleague for “more of that stuff you got me last week,” which turns out to be 20 sheets of paper. The new videos, by contrast, take place in locations like homes and restaurants.

The videos are in addition to other elements of the “Paper because” campaign, which include, of course, print advertisements. Those ads make “Paper because” points like “A lot of places worth going to don’t get a signal, and hopefully never will.”

Estimates are that Domtar has spent more than $10 million on the campaign.

The new videos are indicative of how marketers and agencies approach long-running campaigns. How long should ads continue as they are? When ought changes come? Ads may run past the point they are effective, but they may be replaced before consumers have absorbed the pitch because those who were involved in making them have had their fill.

“When you work on a project, sometimes you’re tired of it before it goes out,” said Kathy Wholley, director for advertising and communications at the Domtar operations center in Fort Mill, S.C.

It is important to remember that “this campaign is still reaching people for the first time,” she added, noting messages on Twitter that say something like this: “ ‘Look what I just found. This video is hilarious.’ ”

Still, taking a fresh look at a continuing campaign makes sense, Ms. Wholley said, as in this instance, when a thought emerged about how “there are times and places” outside the office world “where paper is appropriate and useful.”

In one new video, “Anniversary,” a couple is seated in a restaurant. The wife gives a card to her husband, who, it turns out, sent her an e-card she did not receive. At the end, the scene fades to black and the husband’s plaintive voice is heard as the wife leaves: “Honey? Where are you going? Did you check your spam filter? Did you?”

Another commercial, “Waiter,” takes place at a restaurant table being waited on by a waiter without pad, pen or pencil. “I got it,” he insists, referring to the customers’ orders, which he recites back twice — wrong each time.

A third commercial, “Bridal Shower,” takes place in the home of a bride-to-be who receives an ugly vase as a gift. She is glum until she learns the gift-giver included the receipt. The video ends with these words: “Paper can make any gift, the perfect gift.”

A fourth commercial, “Tech Support,” brings to life a Catch-22 for the 21st century. A man is at home, talking to a woman in a call center about a router he bought.

“I’m having trouble connecting to the Internet,” says the man, who is upset there is no manual. The woman replies, somewhat bored, “You have to download the PDF from the Web site.”

The man is incredulous. “So you want me to get on the Internet to download a PDF from your Web site so I can get on the Internet?” he asks.

The first two video series were “focused on office situations,” said Patrick Short, partner and creative director at Mower in Charlotte, because “a lot of sales” for Domtar are made “with office paper.” For the next iteration, “we thought to open it up and take it out of that environment,” he added, using “ideas and concepts coming from personal experiences.”

“I’ve been in restaurants where the waiter” who refused to write down the orders “comes back three times,” Mr. Short said, and he was once frustrated when “I bought something from Apple and there was no manual with it.”

Mr. Short, an art director, works on the campaign with Ruben Lopez, an associate creative director at Mower who is a copywriter. Whereas the first videos were “a little bit over the top,” Mr. Short said, the new videos are “more like ‘Seinfeld’ moments,” making them more “relatable” to viewers.

At the coming South by Southwest Music and Media Conference in Austin, Tex., Mr. Short said, Domtar and Mower will offer attendees “a ‘paper hot spot’ instead of a Wi-Fi hot spot.”

The new videos appear as ads on the Web sites of publications like National Geographic and The New York Times. The new videos, and their predecessors, can also be watched on the Web site of the campaign, paperbecause.com; the Domtar corporate Web site, Domtar.com; the Domtar fan page on Facebook; and the campaign’s channel on YouTube, youtube.com/paperbecause.

As for gibes about a campaign that uses video to promote the merits of paper, Ms. Wholley said: “We actually think it gives us a little more credibility. It shows we don’t have our heads in the sand.”

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Tribune Co. hires advisors to explore sale of newspaper unit

Tribune Co. has hired investment bankers to advise the media company on the potential sale of its newspaper publishing unit.

The company announced that it has retained JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Evercore Partners to assess whether to sell the division that includes the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune and six other daily newspapers.

The bankers will analyze bids from suitors, but their hiring does not necessarily mean that the assets would be sold.

"There is a lot of interest in our newspapers, which we haven't solicited," Gary Weitman, a Tribune spokesman, said in a statement. "Hiring outside financial advisors will help us determine whether that interest is credible, allow us to consider all of our options, and fulfill our fiduciary responsibility to our shareholders and employees."

Tribune hopes to sell the newspaper group intact instead of selling each paper individually, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The Chicago company has a healthy balance sheet and doesn't feel financial pressure to sell the properties, according to the person. It's unclear how long the process could take.

There has been widespread speculation that Tribune would attempt to unload the newspaper business to focus on its more promising television operations. Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. is among the possible bidders for the newspaper assets.

Tribune emerged from its four-year bankruptcy at the end of 2012 and appointed broadcasting veteran Peter Liguori as chief executive in January.

JPMorgan Chase holds an ownership stake in Tribune.

Evercore Partners, a boutique investment bank, also is working for the parent company of the New York Times on its planned divestiture of the Boston Globe.

walter.hamilton@latimes.com

andrew.tangel@latimes.com

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Advanced Breast Cancer May Be Rising Among Young Women, Study Finds

The incidence of advanced breast cancer among younger women, ages 25 to 39, may have increased slightly over the last three decades, according to a study released Tuesday.

But more research is needed to verify the finding, which was based on an analysis of statistics, the study’s authors said. They do not know what may have caused the apparent increase.

Some outside experts questioned whether the increase was real, and expressed concerns that the report would frighten women needlessly.

The study, published in The Journal of the American Medical Association, found that advanced cases climbed to 2.9 per 100,000 younger women in 2009, from 1.53 per 100,000 women in 1976 — an increase of 1.37 cases per 100,000 women in 34 years. The totals were about 250 such cases per year in the mid-1970s, and more than 800 per year in 2009.

Though small, the increase was statistically significant, and the researchers said it was worrisome because it involved cancer that had already spread to organs like the liver or lungs by the time it was diagnosed, which greatly diminishes the odds of survival.

For now, the only advice the researchers can offer to young women is to see a doctor quickly if they notice lumps, pain or other changes in the breast, and not to assume that they cannot have breast cancer because they are young and healthy, or have no family history of the disease.

“Breast cancer can and does occur in younger women,” said Dr. Rebecca H. Johnson, the first author of the study and medical director of the adolescent and young adult oncology program at Seattle Children’s Hospital.

But Dr. Johnson noted that there is no evidence that screening helps younger women who have an average risk for the disease and no symptoms. “We’re certainly not advocating that young women get mammography at an earlier age than is generally specified,” she said.

Expert groups differ about when screening should begin; some say at age 40, others 50.

Breast cancer is not common in younger women; only 1.8 percent of all cases are diagnosed in women from 20 to 34, and 10 percent in women from 35 to 44. However, when it does occur, the disease tends to be more deadly in younger women than in older ones. Researchers are not sure why.

The researchers analyzed data from SEER, a program run by the National Cancer Institute to collect cancer statistics on 28 percent of the population of the United States. The study also used data from the past when SEER was smaller.

The study is based on information from 936,497 women who had breast cancer from 1976 to 2009. Of those, 53,502 were 25 to 39 years old, including 3,438 who had advanced breast cancer, also called metastatic or distant disease.

Younger women were the only ones in whom metastatic disease seemed to have increased, the researchers found.

Dr. Archie Bleyer, a clinical research professor in radiation medicine at the Knight Cancer Institute at the Oregon Health and Science University in Portland who helped write the study, said scientists needed to verify the increase in advanced breast cancer in young women in the United States and find out whether it is occurring in other developed Western countries. “This is the first report of this kind,” he said, adding that researchers had already asked colleagues in Canada to analyze data there.

“We need this to be sure ourselves about this potentially concerning, almost alarming trend,” Dr. Bleyer said. “Then and only then are we really worried about what is the cause, because we’ve got to be sure it’s real.”

Dr. Johnson said her own experience led her to look into the statistics on the disease in young women. She had breast cancer when she was 27; she is now 44. Over the years, friends and colleagues often referred young women with the disease to her for advice.

“It just struck me how many of those people there were,” she said.

Dr. Donald A. Berry, an expert on breast cancer data and a professor of biostatistics at the University of Texas’ M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, said he was dubious about the finding, even though it was statistically significant, because the size of the apparent increase was so small — 1.37 cases per 100,000 women, over the course of 30 years.

More screening and more precise tests to identify the stage of cancer at the time of diagnosis might account for the increase, he said.

“Not many women aged 25 to 39 get screened, but some do, but it only takes a few to account for a notable increase from one in 100,000,” Dr. Berry said.

Dr. Silvia C. Formenti, a breast cancer expert and the chairwoman of radiation oncology at New York University Langone Medical Center, questioned the study in part because although it found an increased incidence of advanced disease, it did not find the accompanying increase in deaths that would be expected.

A spokeswoman for an advocacy group for young women with breast cancer, Young Survival Coalition, said the organization also wondered whether improved diagnostic and staging tests might explain all or part of the increase.

“We’re looking at this data with caution,” said the spokeswoman, Michelle Esser. “We don’t want to invite panic or alarm.”

She said it was important to note that the findings applied only to women who had metastatic disease at the time of diagnosis, and did not imply that women who already had early-stage cancer faced an increased risk of advanced disease.

Dr. J. Leonard Lichtenfeld
, deputy chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society, said he and an epidemiologist for the society thought the increase was real.

“We want to make sure this is not oversold or that people suddenly get very frightened that we have a huge problem,” Dr. Lichtenfeld said. “We don’t. But we are concerned that over time, we might have a more serious problem than we have today.”

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DealBook: Nominee for S.E.C. Tries to Allay Skepticism

Mary Jo White’s path to the Securities and Exchange Commission has reached a crucial juncture: the Congressional charm campaign.

Lawmakers are scrutinizing Ms. White ahead of her Senate confirmation hearing, raising questions about the former prosecutor’s lack of regulatory experience and the challenge of policing Wall Street firms she recently defended in private practice. But Ms. White is seeking to quell concerns about potential conflicts of interest.

She recently scheduled meetings with Senate Banking Committee members, who must clear her nomination, and answered a 20-page boilerplate questionnaire detailing her qualifications, according to a copy provided to The New York Times. The document sheds new light on her list of Wall Street clients, including little-known work performed for HSBC’s former chief executive. It also describes her ties to New York Democratic causes and laurels she earned both as a defense lawyer and federal prosecutor.

The questionnaire, created by the banking committee, focused significant attention on her movement through the revolving door between government service and private practice, a concern that has loomed since President Obama nominated Ms. White in January.

“As a government official, I believe I have an established track record and the reputation of being tough, but fair,” she said in the document.

Ms. White also offered a previously undisclosed concession, vowing “as far as can be foreseen,” never to return to Debevoise & Plimpton, where she had built a lucrative legal practice. To avert potential conflicts stemming from her work on behalf of Wall Street giants, Ms. White had already agreed to recuse herself for one year from most matters that involve former clients.

While Ms. White’s nomination is expected to sail through the committee before receiving full Senate approval, four Congressional officials who spoke anonymously warned that some Democrats have lingering reservations.

The Democrats note that her husband, John W. White, is co-chairman of the corporate governance practice at Cravath, Swaine & Moore, where he represents many of the companies that the S.E.C. regulates. They also question whether Ms. White’s recusals, even if well-intentioned, could cripple her ability to run the agency.

In a meeting on Tuesday with Senator Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio, Ms. White did little to alleviate the fears.

“Senator Brown respects Ms. White’s credentials and experience, but is concerned with Washington’s long-held bias toward Wall Street,” his spokeswoman, Meghan Dubyak, said in a statement. “He pushed Ms. White,” to explain “whether her previous employment or her spouse’s current employment could cause her to recuse herself from key business facing the S.E.C.” The agency has already fallen behind in writing dozens of new rules for Wall Street.

Ms. White’s supporters counter that, before the White House announced the appointment, the Office of Government Ethics vetted her disclosures. The nonpartisan officials concluded that, even with her recusals, Ms. White could effectively run the agency.

Her supporters also trumpet her long tenure as a tenacious prosecutor. During stints as a federal prosecutor in Brooklyn and as the first woman United States attorney in Manhattan, she helped oversee the prosecution of the crime figure John Gotti and directed the case against those responsible for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. The cases won her praise from several lawmakers.

Ms. White still has time to win over remaining skeptics. Her confirmation hearing is not expected until the week of March 11, Congressional officials briefed on the matter said.

Until then, Ms. White is blitzing through the halls of Congress, a routine practice for nominees. She began her charm offensive at the top of the banking committee’s roster, visiting this month with the Democratic chairman, Senator Tim Johnson, of South Dakota. A Congressional official briefed on the matter said Ms. White performed well at the gathering, and no major issues arose.

In the next round of meetings, she will face off with a more liberal arm of the committee known to scrutinize nominees. After meeting Mr. Brown, Ms. White is scheduled to see Senator Jeff Merkley, Democrat of Oregon. She also will meet Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts Democrat who is an outspoken critic of Wall Street, Ms. Warren’s office confirmed on Tuesday.

Even if Ms. White fails to satisfy lawmakers’ concerns, the meetings are an important step in clearing the way for her appointment.

“Senators will have a chance to size Mary Jo up, and I believe will come away with a great sense of comfort that she’s a candidate of true quality,” said Harvey Pitt, who passed through the confirmation process in 2001 to lead the S.E.C.

He noted that additional disclosures could bolster her candidacy. “I do think she will need to provide a level of comfort to the committee that she is aware of the issue, has a definitive plan for navigating through the potential conflict issues, and will be completely open about when she has a potential recusal issue, and how she has handled it,” he said.

Ms. White, a political independent, assured lawmakers in her questionnaire that she was “completely independent of political or personal influences.” She did disclose, however, $13,000 in campaign donations to Democratic candidates. She also served on the campaign committee of a Democrat who had run for New York attorney general.

Her ties to Debevoise — and its clients — are more significant; she represented JPMorgan Chase, UBS and Michael Geoghegan, the former head of HSBC.

Ms. White, 65, said this month said that she would retire from Debevoise after taking over the S.E.C. and would forgo the firm’s typical retirement perks: office space and a free BlackBerry. She also will sever financial ties to the firm during her term at the S.E.C., taking an upfront lump-sum retirement payment rather than collecting a monthly installment of $42,500.

Her husband has also offered concessions. He agreed to convert his partnership at Cravath, Swaine & Moore from equity to nonequity status and promised not to “communicate directly” with the S.E.C. about rule-making. Ms. White will not participate in a matter with a direct effect on his compensation.

In line with a standard move for federal appointees, Ms. White further agreed to recuse herself for one year from voting on enforcement cases involving Debevoise clients. There are limitations to the policy, though, in case it is “in the public interest” and a “reasonable” person would not object.

Some lawmakers dismiss questions about her potential conflicts, but still question her mastery of regulatory minutiae. While Ms. White is a skilled litigator, she lacks experience in financial rule-writing, unlike a predecessor, Mary Schapiro, a lifelong regulator who ran the S.E.C. for nearly four years.

In her questionnaire, Ms. White highlighted her role as a director of the Nasdaq exchange and other experiences that she said gave her “a firm grounding” in securities laws.

She also, inadvertently, drew a connection to Ms. Schapiro. Like Ms. Schapiro, Ms. White is an animal lover, currently serving as a board member of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

She agreed to step down from the board once she is sworn in at the S.E.C.

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Mike Piazza softens stance on Dodgers' Vin Scully

PHOENIX — Calling Vin Scully "a class act" and saying he had "the utmost respect" for him, Mike Piazza on Monday defended what he wrote in his recently released autobiography about the Hall of Fame broadcaster.

In his book, "Long Shot," Piazza described Scully as instrumental in turning the fans of Los Angeles against him during the contract stalemate that led to his trade to the Florida Marlins in 1998. Piazza wrote that Scully "was crushing me" on the air, a charge Scully vehemently denied.

"I can't say that I have regrets," Piazza said. "I was just trying to explain the situation."

The former All-Star catcher was at the Dodgers' spring-training facility with Italy's World Baseball Classic team, for which he is a coach. Scully was also at the complex, to call the Dodgers' 7-6 victory over the Chicago Cubs.

"I'd love to see him," Piazza said.

The two didn't meet.

"I always liked him," Scully said. "I admired him. I think either he made a mistake or got some bad advice. I still think of him as a great player and I hope he gets into the Hall of Fame. I really do. Whatever disappointment I feel, I'll put aside."

Scully declined to comment further on Piazza or his book.

Piazza complimented Scully as he tried to defend what he wrote.

"Vin is a class act; he's an icon," Piazza said. "To this day, I have the utmost respect for him. But the problem is, you have to go back in time and understand that at that point in time in my career with the Dodgers was a very tumultuous time. I was more or less telling my version of the story, at least what I was experiencing. And I said at the end of the book, it's not coming from a place of malice or anger. I think anybody who remembers that time knows it was a very tumultuous time."

Piazza said his intent wasn't to blame Scully.

"I don't think anybody who read the passage from start to finish felt that way," Piazza said. "Anybody who reads it knows it wasn't me blaming. That was definitely not the only factor. There were other factors. The team made the mistake, I made the mistake, of speaking publicly."

Piazza acknowledged that he never heard Scully's broadcasts and that his impressions of them were based on what he heard from others.

"My perception was that he was given the Dodgers' versions of the negotiations, which, I feel, wasn't 100% accurate," Piazza said.

In his book, Piazza also took issue with how Scully asked him about his contract demands during a spring-training interview. Piazza said Monday that he was "taken aback" by the line of questioning because he previously hadn't talked publicly about the negotiations.

To reach the practice fields at Camelback Ranch on Monday, Piazza had to pass through a gauntlet of Dodgers fans. Piazza said he wasn't nervous.

"I did a book signing a couple of weeks ago in Pasadena and the fans were really nice," he said.

Piazza denied that he hadn't returned to Dodger Stadium in recent years out of fear of being booed, as Tom Lasorda told The Times last month.

Piazza said he always associated the Dodgers with the O'Malley family, which sold the team to News Corp. in 1998.

"Since then, obviously, they've taken on a different identity," Piazza said.

Piazza was non-committal about visiting the ballpark in the future. "We'll see," he said. "I'll never say never."

Wouldn't it be harder to return now that his portrayal of Scully has upset fans?

"I don't know," he said. "I can't answer that."

Piazza also spoke about falling short of being elected to the Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility.

"I definitely couldn't lie and say I wasn't a little disappointed," he said.

He is hopeful he would one day be inducted. "I trust the process," he said.

Piazza wouldn't say whether he thought Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens deserved to be in the Hall of Fame. Both players, who have been linked to performance-enhancing drugs, also were denied election.

Piazza has denied using performance-enhancing drugs and has never faced detailed allegations that he did. Asked if he was upset that the indiscretions of others might have altered others' perceptions of him, he replied, "Unfortunately, that's the way life is sometimes. I can't control and worry about what people think."

dylan.hernandez@latimes.com

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