Healthcare overhaul may threaten California's safety net

Millions of uninsured Californians will gain medical coverage under the national healthcare overhaul beginning in January, but Guadalupe Luna won't be one of them.

Luna, an illegal immigrant and tamale vendor in Los Angeles, doesn't qualify. So she will continue going to the clinic where she has received free care for more than 20 years: Los Angeles County's Hudson Comprehensive Health Center. There, publicly funded doctors will help manage her diabetes and high cholesterol.

An estimated 3 million to 4 million Californians — about 10% of the state's population — could remain uninsured even after the healthcare overhaul law takes full effect. The burden of their care will fall to public hospitals, county health centers and community clinics. And those institutions may be in jeopardy.

County health leaders and others say the national health law has had the unintended consequence of threatening the financial stability of the state's safety net.

Newly insured patients who no longer have to rely on public hospitals and clinics may seek care elsewhere, meaning a loss in revenue, they say. And under the federal law, some of the funding that goes to safety-net hospitals is also set to decrease.

Now, as the state scrambles to create the new healthcare infrastructure, Gov. Jerry Brown is proposing to take back another crucial pot of money that counties have depended on for more than two decades to care for the uninsured.

"Safety net providers are imperative ... and some of their funding streams are in serious danger," said Lucien Wilson, director of the Insure the Uninsured Project, a consumer organization.

Melissa Stafford Jones, president and chief executive of the California Assn. of Public Hospitals and Health Systems, said many of the patients who are uninsured now still won't have coverage next year. "Those communities are still going to need care, and we need to have a safety net to serve them," she said.

Under the healthcare overhaul, the state could enroll as many as 1.4 million additional residents in Medi-Cal, its program for the poor and disabled, and sign up 2.1 million others for subsidized private insurance through a marketplace known as Covered California, according to a recent UC Berkeley report.

About a quarter of those left uninsured will be undocumented immigrants, and nearly three-quarters will be U.S. citizens or green-card holders, according to the report. Some already qualify for Medi-Cal but don't receive it; others will be eligible to buy subsidized healthcare through Covered California but won't be able to afford it.

Martin Garcia, 39, a U.S. citizen with five children, said he doesn't know if he could get Medi-Cal now or what he might qualify for next year. Garcia lost his job and insurance in 2010 and recently started going to the Hudson clinic in Los Angeles because of stomach pains.

Garcia needs hernia surgery, which he said he will receive at L.A. County-USC Medical Center, a public hospital. He said he was relieved to learn that he could get free healthcare through the county. Without it, he said, "I really don't know what I would do. I would probably head to Mexico."

Even with massive outreach by the state, it will take time for eligible people to learn about and enroll in the new coverage. During the early years, the demand for public health services is expected to remain high, and counties will be responsible, said report author Ken Jacobs, chairman of the UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education.

To pay for care for the uninsured, counties have long relied on revenue from sales tax and vehicle license fees — a pot of money known as realignment funds. In fiscal year 2012, the funds amounted to an estimated $1.3 billion.

Brown argues that counties will no longer need all that money because so many of the uninsured will gain coverage under the federal law. At the same time, the governor's administration has said, the state will need the funds if it is going to run the expanded Medi-Cal program.

"There is going to be a fundamental shift in responsibility of healthcare to the state from the counties," said Toby Douglas, director of the state Department of Health Care Services. "There needs to be a realignment of county dollars."

The Legislative Analyst's Office released a report this month recommending that the state run the Medi-Cal expansion and that it take control of some of the realignment funding to help pay for that expansion.

But county health directors argue that the state is just trying to balance its budget on the backs of safety-net systems. They say the counties already struggle to meet demand and contend the state should not take the money before it's clear how many people will sign up for Medi-Cal and how much savings there will be for counties.

"The state needs money, and they see this as an opportunity to get it," said Mitch Katz, director of the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services. "I think it is completely unreasonable."

If the state does take back the realignment funding, counties such as Los Angeles that run their own hospitals and clinics could be seriously affected, he said.

Alex Briscoe, director of Alameda County's Health Care Services Agency, said the state proposal shows a "fundamental misunderstanding" of the pressures facing safety-net systems. About 100,000 people might remain uninsured in the county, he said. "If the state takes the money, who is going to pay that care?"

In addition, Briscoe said the state doesn't have any justification for taking the money because the Medi-Cal expansion is 100% covered by the federal government for the first three years.

Who ends up paying doesn't matter to Luna, the tamale vendor. But without the Hudson clinic, the 43-year-old said, her diabetes would spiral out of control.

"I don't have anywhere else to go," she said. "I have to come here."

Luna is one of about 42,000 patients who go to the clinic and urgent care center to manage their chronic diseases, get their children vaccinated, check their eyes and monitor their pregnancies.

Hudson's administrator, Michael Mills, said that even after the healthcare law takes full effect, the clinic will be vital to the community. Nearly half its patients now are uninsured, and many will remain without coverage next year.

"Those are our patients," Medical Director Rona Molodow said. "Those are the people the county has traditionally served."

anna.gorman@latimes.com

Read More..

Nazaré Journal: On Portugal Beach, Riding a Wave That Hits Like a Quake

Rafael Marchante/Reuters

Garett McNamara preparing to surf at Praia do Norte beach. “Praia do Norte is the best secret in the world,” Mr. McNamara said by telephone from Hawaii.

NAZARÉ, Portugal — The big ones typically come only once a year, in the winter. Whipped up by powerful storms in the North Atlantic, they roll for days toward Europe, rising to seemingly impossible heights before crashing on the shores of Praia do Norte, a beach along the Portuguese coast just north of this picturesque fishing town.

“It is like an earthquake,” said Pedro Pisco, a city hall administrator from this old fishing port, a few miles away from Praia do Norte. “When it breaks, you can feel the earth shaking under your feet.”

The area has a reputation as a dangerous spot for its turbulent gales, crushing surf and frequent accidents, though on a recent day the sea was flat as a reflecting pool. Normally, though, the waves crash on shore with a special power, and for years residents were not even sure they were safe to surf.

Despite its charm and a stunning 14th-century church, Nazaré has seen some bad times, with the decline of its once-prosperous fishing industry and an exodus of local youth. And that was before the euro crisis and the deep slump in the Portuguese economy.

But thanks to a photo that electrified the world last month — showing a big-wave surfer named Garett McNamara setting a world record by streaking down the face of an estimated 100-foot breaker — the city is now busily trying to cash in on its moment of fame to promote itself and its now famous beach, Praia do Norte, as a pre-eminent big wave surfing spot.

The waves here have long been compared to invincible enemies, killing fishermen, vacationers and frequently inundating streets and shops. There is even a spot called “the reef of widows,” where by legend the wives of fishermen would watch their husbands drowning after waves had destroyed their boats.

The town is still filled with widows wearing black dresses or the traditional seven layers of multicolored petticoats and long socks. A local legend says that women wore seven skirts because while waiting for their husbands to sail home, they would count seven waves until the sea would calm down.

Dino Casimiro, a 35-year-old body-boarder from Nazaré, is an ardent admirer of the waves and one of the major initiators of the city’s image makeover.

“For many years, we didn’t know if the waves were surfable or not,” said Mr. Casimiro, a physical education teacher in several local schools. “They were too big.”

In 2010, with the town’s big-wave fame spreading, several of the biggest names in surfing — including Mr. McNamara, who lives in Hawaii, and Kelly Slater, Shane Dorian and Tiago Pires, the Portuguese surf champion — came to Praia do Norte. “Praia do Norte is the best secret in the world,” Mr. McNamara said by telephone from Hawaii. “There is nowhere in the world where you can be so close to the giant waves.”

The project, called the “Zon North Canyon show” and developed with Mr. McNamara, was aimed at promoting him as well as the town. It was sponsored by Zon, Portugal’s main media holding company, after Mr. McNamara broke his first world record here by surfing a 78-foot wave.

Then last month Mr. McNamara spent about 30 seconds on the face of a giant wave still spoken of with awe by other surfers. “It was like riding a mountain, like snowboarding down a giant mountain,” he said.

There are big wave spots far from land, like Cortes Bank 100 miles west of San Diego, Calif. But there are very few in coastal areas, because the gently sloping continental shelf normally flattens out the giants, gradually sapping their strength before they can reach land. But this small part of the Portuguese coast sits at the end of a giant funnel called the “canyon of Nazaré,” 130 miles long and 16,000 feet deep (at its deepest), that points like an arrow toward the town.

The canyon, said Luis Quaresma, an oceanographer at the Lisbon-based Instituto Hidrografico, creates “a highway for the swell,” which arrives with a lot of energy, very close to the beach. “While the waves here are almost always imposing, local people say, occasionally — on average, once a year — a few swells of almost unimaginable height will roll in,” he said.

Read More..

Kristen Stewart Uses Crutches at Academy Awards

By Maggie Coughlan and Michelle Ward

02/24/2013 at 09:45 PM EST

That's an unexpected accessory!

Kristen Stewart attended the 85th Annual Academy Awards on Sunday sporting quite the fashion statement – crutches.

The On the Road actress was forced to use them to help her make her way onto the red carpet after she stepped on glass.

The star's makeup artist, Beau Nelson, tells PEOPLE she "cut the ball of her foot, quite severely, on glass two days ago." But a true pro, Stewart, 22, managed to pose for photographs without any crutches, showing off her cream-colored Reem Acra gown. Nelson adds that Stewart is in "a little bit of pain" and it was a scramble to find suitable flats!

While she isn't nominated for any Oscars, Stewart's film Breaking Dawn Part 2 did sweep the 33rd annual Golden Raspberry Awards – better known as the Razzies – with seven awards.

Read More..

FDA approves new targeted breast cancer drug

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Food and Drug Administration has approved a first-of-a-kind breast cancer medication that targets tumor cells while sparing healthy ones.

The drug Kadcyla from Roche combines the established drug Herceptin with a powerful chemotherapy drug and a third chemical linking the medicines together. The chemical keeps the cocktail intact until it binds to a cancer cell, delivering a potent dose of anti-tumor poison.

Cancer researchers say the drug is an important step forward because it delivers more medication while reducing the unpleasant side effects of chemotherapy.

"This antibody goes seeking out the tumor cells, gets internalized and then explodes them from within. So it's very kind and gentle on the patients — there's no hair loss, no nausea, no vomiting," said Dr. Melody Cobleigh of Rush University Medical Center. "It's a revolutionary way of treating cancer."

Cobleigh helped conduct the key studies of the drug at the Chicago facility.

The FDA approved the new treatment for about 20 percent of breast cancer patients with a form of the disease that is typically more aggressive and less responsive to hormone therapy. These patients have tumors that overproduce a protein known as HER-2. Breast cancer is the second most deadly form of cancer in U.S. women, and is expected to kill more than 39,000 Americans this year, according to the National Cancer Institute.

The approval will help Roche's Genentech unit build on the blockbuster success of Herceptin, which has long dominated the breast cancer marketplace. The drug had sales of roughly $6 billion last year.

Genentech said Friday that Kadcyla will cost $9,800 per month, compared to $4,500 per month for regular Herceptin. The company estimates a full course of Kadcyla, about nine months of medicine, will cost $94,000.

FDA scientists said they approved the drug based on company studies showing Kadcyla delayed the progression of breast cancer by several months. Researchers reported last year that patients treated with the drug lived 9.6 months before death or the spread of their disease, compared with a little more than six months for patients treated with two other standard drugs, Tykerb and Xeloda.

Overall, patients taking Kadcyla lived about 2.6 years, compared with 2 years for patients taking the other drugs.

FDA specifically approved the drug for patients with advanced breast cancer who have already been treated with Herceptin and taxane, a widely used chemotherapy drug. Doctors are not required to follow FDA prescribing guidelines, and cancer researchers say the drug could have great potential in patients with earlier forms of breast cancer

Kadcyla will carry a boxed warning, the most severe type, alerting doctors and patients that the drug can cause liver toxicity, heart problems and potentially death. The drug can also cause severe birth defects and should not be used by pregnant women.

Kadcyla was developed by South San Francisco-based Genentech using drug-binding technology licensed from Waltham, Mass.-based ImmunoGen. The company developed the chemical that keeps the drug cocktail together and is scheduled to receive a $10.5 million payment from Genentech on the FDA decision. The company will also receive additional royalties on the drug's sales.

Shares of ImmunoGen Inc. rose 2 cents to $14.32 in afternoon trading. The stock has ttraded in a 52-wek range of $10.85 to $18.10.

Read More..

For L.A. County's child protective services agency, change's slow

For years, the top director of Los Angeles County's child protective services agency sat in an office hidden behind an unmarked, locked door.

When current director Philip Browning arrived, he made an early decision to use a doorstop to prop it open. And he publicly posted his own name and picture as well as those of his managers, prompting protests by some who feared for their safety.

"The goal is to change the culture," Browning said, acknowledging the embarrassment that some feel at an agency shamed by repeated failures that have allowed at-risk children to die. "What I would like to see is for the worker to be so proud of what he's doing that he tells his next-door neighbor where he works, which is not the case right now."

Browning, 66, who rises at 4:15 a.m. to run five miles before work, is attempting to revive one of the most troubled public agencies in Southern California.

It's been a year since he agreed — somewhat reluctantly — to permanently lead Los Angeles County's long-troubled agency, and many people are still withholding judgment on his performance.

"I have never seen him take a criticism or disagreement personally," said Marqueece Harris-Dawson, chief executive of Community Coalition, an agency in South Los Angeles that advocates for more support for relative caregivers. "He's always been able to keep the conversation about the work and try to apply the energy to solve problems."

Browning is disappointed, however, in the slow progress to improve the agency's 6,800 employees who operate in a byzantine bureaucracy that investigates 160,000 annual child abuse complaints and oversees more than 19,000 foster children.

"I'd give myself a C, if not lower. I have not been able to perform the way I hoped," he said in his Alabama drawl following a fresh wave of miserable news.

In recent weeks, Browning has been forced to answer questions about two young children who were allegedly tortured by a Palmdale woman who adopted them from foster care and later bound their hands behind their backs with zip ties and beat them with electrical cords and a hammer, authorities said.

Browning acknowledged his social workers approved the adoption following shoddy casework.

Then came the leak to The Times of an internal county report that offered a top-to-bottom indictment of the department's stifling policies and inept workforce.

The situation, investigators said, was akin to "the blind leading the blind." In the overwhelming majority of child fatality cases reviewed, they said the department's failures significantly contributed to the deaths.

The poor casework involving the Palmdale children and the problems described in the internal report both occurred when the department was under the leadership of former director Trish Ploehn and the county's chief executive, William T Fujioka.

Ploehn had been a defender of the department and, with Fujioka, took a combative approach to press reports. Their tactics drew widespread complaints from the Board of Supervisors and members of the public that they were withholding information about problems.

Browning has seemed eager to show he's taking a different approach, answering questions about the agency's poor performance.

"There are no simple solutions. If there were, they would already be implemented, but you can't fix things if nobody knows about them," Browning said. "It's always easier to do things behind closed doors, but frankly that usually comes back to bite you. There are no secrets in this department."

For that approach, Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky has called Browning "the best turnaround artist in public administration."

Browning achieved success over a career that began in Alabama before leading to Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles.

Andy Hornsby, who led Alabama's public assistance and social services programs when Browning held key posts, said Browning's quiet demeanor masked his toughness.

"He did not have the luxury of trying to tolerate poor performers," Hornsby said. "I had a political appointee who I needed to run off. I put him under Philip and it worked pretty fast."

Read More..

2 Palestinians Shot in Clashes With Israeli Settlers

JERUSALEM (AP) — Clashes erupted Saturday in the West Bank, with Jewish settlers shooting two Palestinian demonstrators in the northern village of Kusra, an Israeli military official and Palestinian residents said.

The unrest reflected mounting friction in the West Bank, where Palestinians have faced off against Israeli troops in recent weeks in a series of large demonstrations protesting Israel’s control of the territory in general and in solidarity with four prisoners on hunger strikes in Israeli jails.

Also on Saturday, a Palestinian prisoner died in an Israeli jail, an event that is likely to intensify tensions in the area.

In the West Bank skirmish, Helmi Abdul-Aziz, 24, was shot in the stomach by Jewish settlers, Palestinian demonstrators said. They said settlers also shot Mustafa Hilal, 14, in the foot.

An Israeli military official confirmed that two Palestinians had been shot, apparently by settlers, since the Israeli military forces there were not using live ammunition.

Villagers said the clashes began when a group of Jewish settlers encroached on their village lands and fired guns. They said settlers chased a Palestinian farmer and his family off land, prompting the farmer to call on other villagers to confront the settlers, and men on both sides hurled rocks at one another.

In an Israeli jail on Saturday, Arafat Shalish Shahin Jaradat, a Palestinian prisoner, died apparently of a heart attack, according to an Israeli prison services spokeswoman, Sivan Weizman. She said that Mr. Jaradat had not been on a hunger strike.

Israel’s domestic intelligence agency, the Shin Bet, said that Mr. Jaradat, 30, was arrested last week after he was involved in a rock-throwing attack that injured an Israeli citizen. Mr. Jaradat admitted to the charge, as well to another West Bank rock-throwing episode last year, the Shin Bet said.

A Shin Bet spokesman said that Mr. Jaradat had not been beaten during an interrogation.

Read More..

Breaking Dawn - Part 2 Sweeps the Razzies

By Stephen M. Silverman

02/23/2013 at 10:00 PM EST

Taylor Lautner and Mackenzie Foy, in Breaking Dawn – Part 2

Andrew Cooper, SMPSP/Summit

Who's misérable now?

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2, Adam Sandler and Rihanna are among the "winners" of the 33rd annual Golden Raspberry Awards – the Razzies – which are not so much handed out as they are thrown at those who are voted as perpetrating Hollywood's worst achievements of the year.

Breaking Dawn – Part 2, the fifth and final installment in Stephenie Meyer's vampire saga, was recognized in seven categories, including worst picture.

The flick's Kristen Stewart was also cited as worst actress; Taylor Lautner, worst supporting actor; Lautner and 12-year-old Mackenzie Foy, worst screen couple; the entire cast, including Robert Pattinson, worst screen ensemble, and Bill Condon, worst director.

In addition, the film, which since opening last November has taken in more than $828 million at the box office, was named worst sequel.

Sandler, who last year monopolized the Razzies – and set a record by winning in 10 categories with the "comedy" Jack & Jill – this year got only two awards: for worst actor of the year and worst screenplay, both for That's My Boy.

Unlike the Oscars, which keep voting tallies a secret and will be handed out Sunday night during a very glamorous event, founder and Head RAZZberry John Wilson announced Razzie recipients Saturday night in the utilitarian Continental Breakfast Room of the Holiday Inn Express Hollywood Walk of Fame hotel, near (and yet so far from) the Dolby Theatre, home of the Academy Awards.

Wilson revealed to the press that although Rihanna, as worst supporting actress in the movie Battleship, won her Razzie by a landslide, worst screenwriter Sandler only beat the authors of Breaking Dawn by a single vote.

It's close shaves like that that really make or break the Razzies.

Adam Sandler, in That's My Boy, and Rihanna, in Battleship

Columbia; Universal

The 85th annual Academy Awards will air live on ABC starting at 7 p.m. ET/4 p.m. PT on Sunday, Feb. 24, from the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood.

Read More..

FDA approves new targeted breast cancer drug

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Food and Drug Administration has approved a first-of-a-kind breast cancer medication that targets tumor cells while sparing healthy ones.

The drug Kadcyla from Roche combines the established drug Herceptin with a powerful chemotherapy drug and a third chemical linking the medicines together. The chemical keeps the cocktail intact until it binds to a cancer cell, delivering a potent dose of anti-tumor poison.

Cancer researchers say the drug is an important step forward because it delivers more medication while reducing the unpleasant side effects of chemotherapy.

"This antibody goes seeking out the tumor cells, gets internalized and then explodes them from within. So it's very kind and gentle on the patients — there's no hair loss, no nausea, no vomiting," said Dr. Melody Cobleigh of Rush University Medical Center. "It's a revolutionary way of treating cancer."

Cobleigh helped conduct the key studies of the drug at the Chicago facility.

The FDA approved the new treatment for about 20 percent of breast cancer patients with a form of the disease that is typically more aggressive and less responsive to hormone therapy. These patients have tumors that overproduce a protein known as HER-2. Breast cancer is the second most deadly form of cancer in U.S. women, and is expected to kill more than 39,000 Americans this year, according to the National Cancer Institute.

The approval will help Roche's Genentech unit build on the blockbuster success of Herceptin, which has long dominated the breast cancer marketplace. The drug had sales of roughly $6 billion last year.

Genentech said Friday that Kadcyla will cost $9,800 per month, compared to $4,500 per month for regular Herceptin. The company estimates a full course of Kadcyla, about nine months of medicine, will cost $94,000.

FDA scientists said they approved the drug based on company studies showing Kadcyla delayed the progression of breast cancer by several months. Researchers reported last year that patients treated with the drug lived 9.6 months before death or the spread of their disease, compared with a little more than six months for patients treated with two other standard drugs, Tykerb and Xeloda.

Overall, patients taking Kadcyla lived about 2.6 years, compared with 2 years for patients taking the other drugs.

FDA specifically approved the drug for patients with advanced breast cancer who have already been treated with Herceptin and taxane, a widely used chemotherapy drug. Doctors are not required to follow FDA prescribing guidelines, and cancer researchers say the drug could have great potential in patients with earlier forms of breast cancer

Kadcyla will carry a boxed warning, the most severe type, alerting doctors and patients that the drug can cause liver toxicity, heart problems and potentially death. The drug can also cause severe birth defects and should not be used by pregnant women.

Kadcyla was developed by South San Francisco-based Genentech using drug-binding technology licensed from Waltham, Mass.-based ImmunoGen. The company developed the chemical that keeps the drug cocktail together and is scheduled to receive a $10.5 million payment from Genentech on the FDA decision. The company will also receive additional royalties on the drug's sales.

Shares of ImmunoGen Inc. rose 2 cents to $14.32 in afternoon trading. The stock has ttraded in a 52-wek range of $10.85 to $18.10.

Read More..

Digital billboard company issues $100-million threat against L.A.

An outdoor advertising company fighting to preserve dozens of digital billboards across Los Angeles warned this week that it would seek "substantially" more than $100 million from City Hall if it is ordered to remove any electronic signs targeted in a recent court ruling.

In an 11-page letter sent Friday, Clear Channel Outdoor told Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, City Atty. Carmen Trutanich and Council President Herb Wesson that its digital signs are "valuable assets that the city cannot attempt to take away without paying just compensation."

The letter comes two months after a three-judge panel struck down a 2006 legal settlement approved by the City Council allowing Clear Channel and CBS Outdoor to convert 840 existing billboards to digital formats. The company installed 79 digital signs before the settlement was blocked.

The 2nd District Court of Appeal ordered a lower court to invalidate all digital conversions permitted under the agreement. But Sara Lee Keller, Clear Channel's lawyer, warned that if the council instructs the company to turn off the signs, "it would be exposed to liability to Clear Channel for the fair market value of such signs, which substantially exceeds $100 million."

"While litigating these claims would be costly and time-consuming for all … we believe it is important to be clear about the consequences," wrote Keller, who contends that other factors make all of the company's signs legal.

The letter drew a sharp response from Summit Media, a competing sign company that successfully sued to block the 2006 agreement. Phil Recht, the company's attorney, said Clear Channel has "no regard for the rule of law."

"Clear Channel is trying to bully the city into submission so that they can continue to make hundreds of millions of dollars in illegal profits from these digital billboards two courts ruled to be illegal," he said.

Clear Channel sent its letter one day before neighborhood activists and outdoor-advertising lobbyists — including the company and its representatives — took part in a working group to discuss possible digital sign legislation. One proposal up for discussion would allow new digital billboards to be installed in exchange for removing a greater number of static billboards.

Summit promised to work with neighborhoods on digital sign issues, saying the technology diminishes quality of life. In recent years, it has described the original 2006 agreement as a "sweetheart deal" that gave CBS and Clear Channel hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue.

Since the ruling, Clear Channel has been waging a publicity campaign in favor of digital billboards, putting together an advocacy group to argue on its behalf and touting support for its signs from such groups as AIDS Project Los Angeles, Art Share L.A. and the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce. Those groups, among others, have asked the state Supreme Court to take another look at the ruling that invalidated the 2006 digital sign pact, according to Clear Channel's letter.

Clear Channel and a handful of other billboard companies also have been contributing tens of thousands of dollars in recent weeks to Proposition A, which is on the March 5 ballot and would raise the sales tax rate to 9.5% from 9%. That measure, if passed, is expected to generate more than $200 million annually for the city budget.

Meanwhile, Lamar Advertising, which has proposed its own plan for converting signs to digital formats, has been spending $5,000 per candidate on outdoor advertising promoting the City Council campaigns of Councilman Joe Buscaino, Assemblymen Bob Blumenfield (D-Woodland Hills) and Gil Cedillo (D-Los Angeles), and former Assemblyman Felipe Fuentes, as well as the city controller campaign of Councilman Dennis Zine.

Friday's letter from Clear Channel was accompanied by a legal claim, a document submitted before the filing of a lawsuit. Clear Channel spokesman Jim Cullinan said his company sent it because it must provide 90 days' notice before filing an action in court.

"This letter gives notice, but we hope it doesn't come to litigation," he said.

david.zahniser@latimes.com

Read More..

Russians Demand Return of Brother of Dead Adopted Boy in Texas

MOSCOW — Russian lawmakers on Friday demanded the return of a 2-year-old boy whose 3-year-old brother, adopted by the same family in Texas, died under murky circumstances in January, prompting allegations of abuse and an investigation.

The younger boy, Kristopher Shatto, who was born Kirill Kuzmin in Russia, remains in the custody of his adoptive parents, Alan and Laura Shatto, in Gardendale, Tex. His biological mother, Yulia V. Kuzmina, who lost custody of the boys because of alcohol addiction, has also demanded Kirill’s return.

But even as the State Duma, the lower house of Parliament, adopted a resolution calling for Kirill to be brought back to Russia, news outlets here reported that Ms. Kuzmina and her boyfriend had gotten into a drunken brawl and were removed from a train by the police while returning to Gdov, a town near the border with Estonia. They had been in Moscow for a television appearance.

Yevgeny Usovich, the owner of a resort on Lake Peipus where Ms. Kuzmina’s boyfriend, Vladimir Antipenko, worked as a bathhouse attendant, said he had seen the couple after their return but was unable to get details of their travel. “It was useless; they were drunk,” Mr. Usovich said in a telephone interview. “What could I find from them?”

In an interview with the Interfax news agency, Mr. Usovich said employees at the Ustye Beach Resort, where Mr. Antipenko worked, were shocked by the television appearance. “The staff here at the club were outraged as they were watching yesterday’s television program,” Mr. Usovich said. “And all of them said the child must not be handed back over to this couple.”

The older boy, Max Shatto, who was born Maksim Kuzmin, died on Jan. 21, and news of his death set off a huge outcry this week in Russia, which late last year banned adoptions by American citizens. Texas child welfare officials said they had received a report of abuse on the same day that Max died.

On Thursday, Shirley Standefer, chief investigator for the Ector County Medical Examiner’s Office in Texas, said bruises were found on Max’s lower abdomen. An autopsy was conducted on Jan. 23, and it normally takes 8 to 12 weeks to get results, she said. The chief medical examiner will then rule on the cause of death, she added, possibly early next week.

Russia’s child rights commissioner, Pavel A. Astakhov, who had said he would help Ms. Kuzmina regain custody of Kirill, posted a statement on his Web site on Friday seeming to backtrack after the reports of her drunkenness. He said that a decision on restoring parental rights could be made only by a court and that the bigger issue was the way American courts had mishandled abuse cases involving adopted Russian children.

“I repeat once again — the final decision is made by the court only,” Mr. Astakhov said in his statement. “Unfortunately, the debate around the death of little Maksim Kuzmin does not solve the main problem — to restore justice.”

Some Russian officials quickly accused the adoptive mother, Ms. Shatto, of beating the boy to death, but they have since pulled back and said she was guilty of negligence at a minimum.

President Valdimir V. Putin’s spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, on Friday urged the public to wait for the forensic results. “To qualify it is a murder or as an accident is not allowed while there is still no evidence,” Mr. Peskov said on Dozhd, a television station. “In this case, I would consider it necessary to temper emotions a bit.”

Earlier in the day, the American ambassador to Russia, Michael A. McFaul, posted a statement on his blog in English and Russian calling Max’s death a “tragedy” but urging that it not be exploited. In the post, Mr. McFaul said he was “troubled” by how some Russian news outlets were portraying the United States and Americans in the context of the Shatto case.

Ms. Shatto has told investigators that she had left the boys playing outside unattended and returned to find Max lying on the ground, unresponsive. He died later that day at a hospital.

In the resolution adopted on Friday, Russian lawmakers urged American officials to regard the issue of adopted Russian children in the United States as an “emergency situation requiring immediate reaction on the part of all government branches of our states.”

Such adoption cases are now covered by a bilateral agreement between the two countries — ratified last year — that sets forth a number of requirements for oversight and cooperation. Along with the adoption ban, which took effect on Jan. 1, the Russian government announced that it would terminate the existing agreement on adoptions on Jan. 1, 2014, following a required one-year notification period.

Mr. Putin called the adoption ban an appropriate retaliation for an American law that seeks to punish Russians accused of violating human rights.

The Russian law was named for Dima Yakovlev, a 21-month-old boy who was adopted from Russia and died of heatstroke in Virginia in July 2008, after being left in a parked car for nine hours by his father, Miles Harrison. Mr. Harrison was acquitted of manslaughter charges by a judge who called the death a tragic accident.

Dozens of American families are still hoping to complete adoptions that were in process when the ban took effect. The issue has become a major source of tension in an increasingly troubled diplomatic relationship. Officials have said that Secretary of State John Kerry and the Russian foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, will discuss the Shatto case among other issues at a meeting next week in Berlin.

Staci Semrad contributed reporting from Lubbock, Tex.

Read More..