School Yoga Class Draws Religious Protest From Christians

T. Lynne Pixley for The New York Times

Miriam Ruiz during a yoga class last week at Paul Ecke Central Elementary School in Encinitas, Calif. A few dozen parents are protesting that the program amounts to religious indoctrination. More Photos »

ENCINITAS, Calif. — By 9:30 a.m. at Paul Ecke Central Elementary School, tiny feet were shifting from downward dog pose to chair pose to warrior pose in surprisingly swift, accurate movements. A circle of 6- and 7-year-olds contorted their frames, making monkey noises and repeating confidence-boosting mantras.

Jackie Bergeron’s first-grade yoga class was in full swing.

“Inhale. Exhale. Peekaboo!” Ms. Bergeron said from the front of the class. “Now, warrior pose. I am strong! I am brave!”

Though the yoga class had a notably calming effect on the children, things were far from placid outside the gymnasium.

A small but vocal group of parents, spurred on by the head of a local conservative advocacy group, has likened these 30-minute yoga classes to religious indoctrination. They say the classes — part of a comprehensive program offered to all public school students in this affluent suburb north of San Diego — represent a violation of the First Amendment.

After the classes prompted discussion in local evangelical churches, parents said they were concerned that the exercises might nudge their children closer to ancient Hindu beliefs.

Mary Eady, the parent of a first grader, said the classes were rooted in the deeply religious practice of Ashtanga yoga, in which physical actions are inextricable from the spiritual beliefs underlying them.

“They’re not just teaching physical poses, they’re teaching children how to think and how to make decisions,” Ms. Eady said. “They’re teaching children how to meditate and how to look within for peace and for comfort. They’re using this as a tool for many things beyond just stretching.”

Ms. Eady and a few dozen other parents say a public school system should not be leading students down any particular religious path. Teaching children how to engage in spiritual exercises like meditation familiarizes young minds with certain religious viewpoints and practices, they say, and a public classroom is no place for that.

Underlying the controversy is the source of the program’s financing. The pilot project is supported by the Jois Foundation, a nonprofit organization founded in memory of Krishna Pattabhi Jois, who is considered the father of Ashtanga yoga.

Dean Broyles, the president and chief counsel of the National Center for Law and Policy, a nonprofit law firm that champions religious freedom and traditional marriage, according to its Web site, has dug up quotes from Jois Foundation leaders, who talk about the inseparability of the physical act of yoga from a broader spiritual quest. Mr. Broyles argued that such quotes betrayed the group’s broader evangelistic purpose.

“There is a transparent promotion of Hindu religious beliefs and practices in the public schools through this Ashtanga yoga program,” he said.

“The analog would be if we substituted for this program a charismatic Christian praise and worship physical education program,” he said.

The battle over yoga in schools has been raging for years across the country but has typically focused on charter schools, which receive public financing but set their own curriculums.

The move by the Encinitas Union School District to mandate yoga classes for all students who do not opt out has elevated the discussion. And it has split an already divided community.

The district serves the liberal beach neighborhoods of Encinitas, including Leucadia, where Paul Ecke Central Elementary is, as well as more conservative inland communities. On the coast, bumper stickers reading “Keep Leucadia Funky” are borne proudly. Farther inland, cars are more likely to feature the Christian fish symbol, and large evangelical congregations play an important role in shaping local philosophy.

Opponents of the yoga classes have started an online petition to remove the course from the district’s curriculum. They have shown up at school board meetings to denounce the program, and Mr. Broyles has threatened to sue if the board does not address their concerns.

The district has stood firm. Tim Baird, the schools superintendent, has defended the yoga classes as merely another element of a broader program designed to promote children’s physical and mental well-being. The notion that yoga teachers have designs on converting tender young minds to Hinduism is incorrect, he said.

“That’s why we have an opt-out clause,” Mr. Baird said. “If your faith is such that you believe that simply by doing the gorilla pose, you’re invoking the Hindu gods, then by all means your child can be doing something else.”

Ms. Eady is not convinced.

“Yoga poses are representative of Hindu deities and Hindu stories about the actions and interactions of those deities with humans,” she said. “There’s content even in the movement, just as with baptism there’s content in the movement.”

Russell Case, a representative of the Jois Foundation, said the parents’ fears were misguided.

“They’re concerned that we’re putting our God before their God,” Mr. Case said. “They’re worried about competition. But we’re much closer to them than they think. We’re good Christians that just like to do yoga because it helps us to be better people.”

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United Airlines pilots ratify new labor contract

CHICAGO — After years of divisive negotiations between United Airlines and its pilots, union members on Saturday ratified a new labor agreement, shedding a bankruptcy-era contract for pilots and marking an important step toward fully integrating United and Continental airlines, which officially merged in 2010.

The Air Line Pilots Assn., which over the last couple of years has staged pickets about its lack of a contract and had taken a preliminary strike vote, said 67% of its 10,000 members voted over the last several weeks to ratify the deal, with nearly 98% casting votes. Voting closed Saturday morning.

The four-year contract will go into effect immediately. It provides gains in pay, job protections, retirement and benefits compensation and work rules.

"The era of bankruptcy and concessionary contracts is now over," union leaders said in a statement. "For too long, the pilots of United and Continental have had to shoulder more than their share of the burden as our respective airlines struggled through the difficult economic times of the past decade. We now stand ready to embark on a fresh start for the pilots and the airline."

With help from federal mediators, the two sides agreed in principle to a deal in August, then took until mid-November to work out language for a contract and send the proposal to the union membership for a vote.

"The ratification of this agreement is an important step forward for our pilots and the company," said Fred Abbott, United senior vice president of flight operations, in a statement.

The finished contract is a bit of good news in what has otherwise been a rocky merger for Chicago-based United Continental Holdings.

Most notable to passengers were rampant flight delays and cancellations after a conversion to a combined passenger reservation system in March. Those operational woes were severe over the summer, and customers started to flee to other airlines. But the problems have subsided in recent months, with United hitting its goal of an 80% on-time rate.

United is still in joint negotiations with other major unions, including those for flight attendants, passenger service agents, dispatchers and ramp and fleet workers. Pilot contracts are traditionally done first and tend to be the most contentious.

gkarp@tribune.com

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Helping children cope with tragedy

For retired school psychologist Cathy Paine, the shooting in Newtown, Conn., evoked painful memories of that day nearly 15 years ago when her school district suffered a similar tragedy.

Paine, 63, was one of the first counselors to arrive at Thurston High School in Springfield, Ore., after a student opened fire in the cafeteria, killing two and wounding 25.

Today, she belongs to the National Assn. of School Psychologists and leads a team that provides assistance to schools, families and communities dealing with crisis.

Understanding Friday's tragedy might not be possible, she said, but parents can help their children with the fear and insecurity that shootings evoke, whether they experienced the incident firsthand or through media accounts.

According to a guide published by the Lucy Daniels Center, a mental health agency based in North Carolina, if children learn of a disturbing event, parents should assume that their children will be shaken, even if there are no obvious signs.

"The best approach is to let the child be your guide," Paine said. "Listen and ask them how are they feeling. Are they afraid? It's all about safety and security. This first thing that the kids will wonder is if this will happen to them when they go to school Monday morning."

Paine suggested that parents console and comfort their children. Extra hugs help — for both the child and the parent. In addition, parents should maintain a normal routine. Weekend plans should stay in place. Holiday shopping or decorating provide opportunities for parents to reassure their children.

Parents should emphasize the rarity of the event and limit television viewing. Images seen over and over give the impression that these events happen everywhere.

The key is to tailor information to suit the age and maturity of the child. "When talking to very young children," she said, "you need to be very simple and not provide lot of details."

Drawing pictures together can provide clues for how to talk to a child.

For older children, it might mean stating the obvious — "A terrible thing happened. It is rare, but it did happen here. We want to do what we can to help us feel better about it." — and then following the child's lead.

It is also important to watch for symptoms of grief in the weeks ahead. Younger children might experience stomachaches or headaches. They might stage tantrums or want to sleep with their parents.

Older children might have trouble concentrating or watch more television than usual. These are normal reactions, Paine said, but if they persist, or seem unusually intense, parents should speak to a school counselor or their physician.

The Lucy Daniels guide also reminds parents to moderate their reaction to the shooting because children often mirror the emotions of others.

In the aftermath of the Springfield shooting, Paine watched as other communities reached out to hers. Staging fundraisers is one way to help people feel that they can gain a little control in their lives. Students in one fifth-grade class wrote a "peace pledge," reminding students to be kind to one another. The pledge has been read every morning since.

Speaking about the terrible events in Newtown, Paine reflected on the difficulty of trying to understand why such tragedies happen, forcing people to live with the incomprehensible.

"We're rational and this is irrational, and you just can't make sense of this," Paine said. "Kids will be asking, 'Why did this happen?' And the best we can say is that we might not ever know."

thomas.curwen@latimes.com

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Owner of Rivera plane being investigated by DEA

PHOENIX (AP) — The company that owns a luxury jet that crashed and killed Latin music star Jenni Rivera is under investigation by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, and the agency seized two of its planes earlier this year as part of the ongoing probe.

DEA spokeswoman Lisa Webb Johnson confirmed Thursday the planes owned by Las Vegas-based Starwood Management were seized in Texas and Arizona, but she declined to discuss details of the case. The agency also has subpoenaed all the company's records, including any correspondence it has had with a former Tijuana mayor who U.S. law enforcement officials have long suspected has ties to organized crime.

The man widely believed to be behind the aviation company is an ex-convict named Christian Esquino, 50, who has a long and checkered legal past. Corporate records list his sister-in-law as the company's only officer, but insurance companies that cover some of the firm's planes say in court documents that the woman is merely a front and that Esquino is the one in charge.

Esquino's legal woes date back decades. He pleaded guilty to a fraud charge that stemmed from a major drug investigation in Florida in the early 1990s and most recently was sentenced to two years in federal prison in a California aviation fraud case. Esquino, a Mexican citizen, was deported upon his release. Esquino and various other companies he has either been involved with or owns have also been sued for failing to pay millions of dollars in loans, according to court records.

The 43-year-old California-born Rivera died at the peak of her career when the plane she was traveling in nose-dived into the ground while flying from the northern Mexican city of Monterrey to the central city of Toluca early Sunday morning. She was perhaps the most successful female singer in grupero, a male-dominated Mexico regional style, and had branched out into acting and reality television.

It remained unclear Thursday exactly what caused the crash and why Rivera was on Esquino's plane. The 78-year-old pilot and five other people were also killed. Esquino was not on the plane.

The late singer's brother, Pedro Rivera Jr., said that he didn't know anything about the owner or why or how she ended up in his plane.

Esquino told the Los Angeles Times in a telephone interview from Mexico City earlier this week that the singer was considering buying the aircraft from Starwood for $250,000 and the flight was offered as a test ride. He disputed reports that he owns Starwood, maintaining that he is merely the company's operations manager "with the expertise."

In response to an email from The Associated Press, Esquino said he did not want to comment. Calls to various phone numbers associated with him rang unanswered.

Esquino is no stranger to tangles with the law. He was indicted in the early 1990s along with 12 other defendants in a major federal drug investigation that claimed the suspects planned to sell more than 480 kilograms of cocaine, according to court records. He eventually pleaded guilty to conspiring to conceal money from the IRS and was sentenced to five years in prison, but much of the term was suspended for reasons that weren't immediately clear.

He served about five months in prison before being released.

Cynthia Hawkins, a former assistant U.S. attorney who handled the case and is now in private practice in Orlando, remembered the investigation well.

"It was huge," Hawkins said Thursday. "This was an international smuggling group."

She said the case began with the arrest of Robert Castoro, who was at the time considered one of the most prolific smugglers of marijuana and cocaine into Florida from direct ties to Colombian drug cartels in the 1980s. Castoro was convicted in 1988 and sentenced to life in prison, but he then began cooperating with authorities, leading to his sentence being reduced to just 10 years, Hawkins said.

"Castoro cooperated for years," she said. "We put hundreds of people in jail."

He eventually gave up another smuggler, Damian Tedone, who was indicted in the early 1990s along with Esquino and 11 others in a conspiracy involving drug smuggling in Florida in the 1980s at a time when the state was the epicenter of the nation's cocaine trade.

Tedone also cooperated with authorities and has since been released from prison. Telephone messages left Thursday for both Tedone and Castoro were not returned.

Esquino eventually pleaded guilty to the lesser offense of concealing money from the IRS.

Joseph Milchen, Esquino's attorney at the time, said Thursday the case eventually revolved around his client "bringing money into the United States without declaring it."

However, Milchen acknowledged that a plane purchased by Esquino was "used to smuggle drugs."

He denied his former client has ever had anything to do with illegal narcotics.

"The only thing he has ever done is with airplanes," Milchen said.

Court filings also indicate Esquino was sentenced to two years in federal prison after pleading guilty in 2004 to committing fraud involving aircraft he purchased in Mexico, then falsified the planes' log books and re-sold them in the United States.

Also in 2004, a federal judge ordered him and one of his companies to pay a creditor $6.2 million after being accused of failing to pay debts to a bank.

As the years passed, Esquino's troubles only grew.

In February this year, a Gulfstream G-1159A plane the government valued at $500,000 was seized by the U.S. Marshals Service on behalf of the DEA after landing in Tucson on a flight that originated in Mexico

Four months later, the DEA subpoenaed all of Starwood's records dating to Dec. 13, 2007, including federal and state income tax documents, bank deposit information, records on all company assets and sales, and the entity's relationship with Esquino and more than a dozen companies and individuals, including former Tijuana Mayor Jorge Hank-Rhon, a gambling mogul and a member of one of Mexico's most powerful families. U.S. law enforcement officials have long suspected Hank-Rhon is tied to organized crime but no allegations have been proven. He has consistently denied any criminal involvement.

He was arrested in Mexico last year on weapons charges and on suspicion of ordering the murder of his son's former girlfriend. He was later freed for lack of evidence.

The subpoena was obtained by the U-T San Diego newspaper.

A Starwood attorney listed on the subpoena, Jeremy Schuster, declined Thursday to provide details.

"We don't comment on matters involving clients," he said.

In September, the DEA seized another Starwood plane — a 1977 Hawker 700 with an insured value of $1 million — after it landed in McAllen, Texas, from a flight from Mexico.

Insurers of both aircraft have since filed complaints in federal court in Nevada seeking to have the Starwood policies nullified, in part, because they say Esquino lied in the application process when he noted he had never been indicted on drug-related criminal charges. Both companies said they would not have issued the policies had he been truthful.

Another attorney for Starwood has not responded to phone and email messages seeking comment, and no one was at the address listed at its Las Vegas headquarters. The address is a post office box in a shipping and mailing store located between a tuxedo rental shop and a supermarket in a shopping center several miles west of the Las Vegas Strip.

___

Associated Press writers Elliot Spagat in San Diego and Ken Ritter in Las Vegas contributed to this report.

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PUC plan would put trust funds at risk

Even the most inattentive 401(k) owner surely understands today that the markets can bite you where it hurts, that promises of long-term investment gains can evaporate in the blink of a short-term crash and that the less understandable an investment scheme is, the more dangerous it is.

Why, then, is California Public Utilities Commissioner Timothy A. Simon pressing so hard to subject billions of dollars of public trust fund money earmarked for the decommissioning of the state's two major nuclear plants to the same sorts of risks?

Simon's initiative is on the PUC agenda for Thursday — the commission's last meeting of the year and, as it happens, Simon's last as commissioner. He returns to the private sector at the end of the year.

If this is to be his legacy, it's a curious one. The trust funds he wants to monkey with contain about $6 billion raised from ratepayers' bills and conservative investments in stocks and bonds. Simon's proposal laments that the money is invested in an "ultra-conservative" way, as though that's a bad thing in an era when non-conservative investing has produced non-trivial losses.

Simon's alternative is to broaden the permissible investments to include derivatives, real estate, hedge funds and other wild and crazy categories. He favors allowing the utilities to turn over more of the funds to investment managers whose performance, as a group, is none too impressive — and to double or even quadruple the maximum fees those managers can be paid.

His idea is for the trust funds to harvest the higher investment yields that more aggressive investing can produce over the long term.

But it's not certain that Diablo Canyon and San Onofre, the state's two big nuclear plants, will be with us for the long term. Originally it was assumed that they would both operate until their federal licenses expire in the early 2020s, when they would obtain routine 20-year extensions.

But Pacific Gas & Electric recently suspended its application for a license extension for Diablo Canyon, pending a seismic study inspired by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami that wrecked Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant. And San Onofre has been offline almost all year, thanks to a botched generator upgrade that has raised doubts whether it will ever operate again.

The trust funds are calculated to be 90% on their way to covering their needs, assuming average investment earnings in the future. That puts a lot at stake in changing the investment rules, which is why ratepayer advocates are unnerved at the prospect.

"With a great deal of uncertainty about the continuing life of Diablo Canyon and San Onofre, this is not the time to decide we're going to take on additional risk to pump up our returns," Truman Burns, a program supervisor at the PUC's Division of Ratepayer Advocates, told me.

Here's the background:

Under PUC rules dating back to the 1980s, the state's three major utilities must accumulate trust funds out of customer rates to pay for the eventual dismantling and cleanup of Diablo Canyon and San Onofre.

These are big jobs. They involve disassembling the plants, excavating and decontaminating the soil and finding some way to dispose of radioactive equipment and spent fuel — especially since federal plans to store spent fuel in a central depository have come to nought.

The whole process, including hanging on to spent fuel until it cools down, can take 30 years. As a result, estimates of the cost range widely, depending on forecasts of investment returns, inflation and the time and complexity of the job. Estimates on San Onofre from Southern California Edison, its majority owner (San Diego Gas & Electric owns a small piece), have run from a little less than $4 billion to nearly $9 billion.

Since the plants went into operation, the utilities have placed a decommissioning charge on every bill and paid the money into the trust funds, which are kept separate from their general corporate coffers. Edison customers currently pay about $24 million a year.

That brings us to what to do with the trust-fund money until it's needed. The rules have been conservative — though not conservative enough to avoid a hit in 2008. No more than 60% can be in stocks and no more than 20% in foreign stocks. At least 50% of the stock portfolio must invested in low-cost index funds.

Bonds have to be investment grade, not junk. No "alternative" investments like derivatives and real estate, which really cratered go-go portfolios in the crash, are permitted. And overall fees to investment managers can't be more than 0.3% of the portfolio value.

Under the changes favored by Simon, the cap on stocks would be raised to 80%, the minimum portion required to be passively managed would drop from 50% to 25%; and riskier alternatives such as junk bonds, real estate, commodities and hedge funds would be permitted to varying extent. These options would become available when the plants get their license extensions, but the federal Nuclear Regulatory Agency has never turned down an application.

What perplexes consumer advocates is that Simon's interest in alternative investments came out of the blue. The utilities never asked for such latitude. And since the trust funds aren't their money, but their customers', it's unclear why they would care. For the record, they've said they'd be OK with the changes.

Simon's background does includes work in the investment field. A family friend of former Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, he was associated with several investment firms until Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger named him his appointments secretary in 2006. The next year Schwarzenegger named Simon, a novice in utility regulation with a recent bankruptcy on his record, to the PUC.

In 2008, Simon raised eyebrows by soliciting donations from Edison, PG&E and SDG&E for a conference hosted by the nonprofit Willie L. Brown Jr. Institute on Politics and Public Service — while the firms were seeking an important ruling from the PUC. Two weeks after the conference, they got it.

When I called Simon's office to ask about the genesis of the investment plan and about his career plans for the future, his office replied by email that he couldn't speak about the proposal because it's "pending before the commission." The email said Simon's goal is "to maximize ratepayer returns while minimizing risk." As any responsible investment manager knows, however, you can't do both. You can only maximize returns by increasing risk.

One provision of the Simon plan — increasing the ratio of actively managed investments — is particularly perplexing.

The performance of active managers has been so grisly it makes "Reservoir Dogs" look like an episode of "Teletubbies." To get technical, in the 12 months through mid-2012, S&P stock indexes beat 89.84% of corresponding actively managed funds. Yet for the privilege of watching an investment hotshot send your money down the drain, you pay a much higher management fee. On Wall Street, this must be what they mean by "twofer."

Conceivably, any broader investment alternative can pay off over a suitably long time span. But when the commission meets this week to ponder the future of the investment markets, the question will be whether they understand the risks involved, especially if there's a shortfall and the money is needed sooner, not later.

Then, in the words of Matthew Freedman, a lawyer at the Utility Reform Network, a ratepayer advocacy group: "The utilities will say it's not their responsibility to make up the shortfall, and the ratepayers will be left holding the bag."

Michael Hiltzik's column appears Sundays and Wednesdays. Reach him at mhiltzik@latimes.com, read past columns at latimes.com/hiltzik, check out facebook.com/hiltzik and follow @latimeshiltzik on Twitter.

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Ray Briem dies at 82; all-night radio host in L.A.

Ray Briem, the longtime KABC-AM talk show host who ruled all-night radio for nearly three decades with his phone calls to the famous and the quirky and his opinionated banter slamming liberals, championing conservative causes and extolling the big-band music he loved, died Wednesday at his Malibu home. He was 82.

The cause was cancer, said his son Bryan.

Briem spent most of his life on the radio, reaching his largest audience as the host of a popular midnight-to-5 a.m. talk show on KABC from 1967 to 1994. During those 27 years he helped set the mold for what has become a major radio genre.

"We consider him one of the most important radio talk-show hosts of all time," said Michael Harrison, publisher of Talkers magazine, the main trade publication for the talk radio industry. "There were only a handful of stations in the entire country doing talk then. It hadn't been formulated, researched, standardized and consulted. It was all based on these creative characters … and Ray Briem was one of the originals."

One of the first conservatives to establish a beachhead in radio, Briem dominated the post-midnight hours, consistently attracting the largest ratings of any overnight talk show. The year he left KABC he was drawing 15.7% of the available audience, a remarkable share in any era. He was also one of the station's most effective pitchmen, whose show "brought in more than a million dollars a year in revenue," said former KABC General Manager George Green.

His political crusades also turned tides.

Briem gave Proposition 13 author Howard Jarvis a regular platform during the 1970s and was credited by Jarvis for helping build the public groundswell that led to the anti-tax measure's resounding victory in 1978. Its passage proved that conservative radio did not play "only to the fringe," Briem said, but had mainstream appeal. "We spoke to the people, and the people responded," he told The Times in 1996.

The veteran broadcaster later bolstered the campaign for Proposition 187 led by Harold Ezell, who credited Briem with helping to get the controversial initiative cutting state services for illegal immigrants on the 1994 state ballot.

Briem also defended President Nixon during the Watergate scandal, which so endeared him to one loyal listener that when she died at 100 she left Briem her house.

An avid pilot, Briem sold the house to buy an airplane.

"He was of a different era," said Michael Jackson, another talk-radio icon who was a daily presence on KABC but attracted a more liberal base than Briem. "Politically we disagreed on almost everything, but I liked him — you couldn't help it. He had no affectation. He cared about the caller. He was always fair.... And his audience trusted him."

Briem was born Jan. 19, 1930, in Ogden, Utah, where his mother was a teacher and his father was a railroad engineer. He briefly attended the University of Utah, where he studied chemistry but abandoned his plans for a science career after "he blew up his chemistry set in the house," his son said.

By then Briem already had the radio bug. When he was 15, he and his buddies conceived a 15-minute radio drama called "The Adventures of Vivacious Vicky" that Ogden's tiny radio station agreed to air. When a staffer at the station went on a drunken binge on V-E Day in 1945, Briem was asked to fill in. Later that year, he was hired full time.

He worked with Armed Forces Radio during the Korean War, hosting live shows with big-name bands, including those led by Harry James, Guy Lombardo, Count Basie and Duke Ellington.

In 1953, after completing his military service, Briem moved to Los Angeles to spin records at KGIL-AM. He remained a deejay through the early 1960s, including a stint in Seattle where he worked for King Broadcasting on both its radio and TV outlets. He hosted a popular teen dance show that led fans to call him "the Dick Clark of Seattle."

In 1958, he married Elsie Child. The marriage ended in divorce in 1964. He is survived by their two children, Bryan, of Malibu, and Kevin, of San Diego; and five grandchildren.

In 1960 Briem came to Los Angeles to deejay at KLAC-AM. He was mentored there by Joe Pyne, the abrasive forerunner of confrontational talk show hosts such as Wally George, Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. When the station asked Briem to switch to nighttime talk, "I went into it kicking and screaming," and endured a steep learning curve, he told The Times. "I realized what a dumb head I was. I knew very little about politics or the workings of government, and the first year I was an embarrassment."

But he built up a following during his seven-year stint, engaging listeners with straightforward topics, "like cats, frogs and even submarines," he said in a 1966 Times interview, noting that the submarine show elicited a call from a Nazi U-boat commander who had settled in L.A.

Briem also made "Kooky Calls," the most celebrated of which featured a Hogansville, Ga., police chief who regaled L.A. night owls with stories about confiscating and testing Georgia moonshine. When Briem brought the chief to Hollywood for a week of V.I.P. treatment, he was met by a welcoming party of 300 KLAC listeners.

When Briem was hired at KABC in 1967, he continued to fill the hours with unusual phone calls. One of his most memorable long-term phone pals was Vladimir Pozner, the Radio Moscow commentator who went on to become a Western media celebrity.

After thousands of nights helping the lonely and insomniac pass the hours, Briem "pulled the plug" in 1994. KABC threw him a retirement party at the Century Plaza, which drew more than 1,000 Briem listeners who paid $50 apiece to see their idol and listen to some of his favorite musical artists, including Frankie Laine and the Mills Brothers.

"I'm 65 and my body says staying up all night ain't the right thing to do," he told The Times shortly before he retired. "You never get used to it. Your biological clock, your circadian rhythms are always upset. There will be times when I will miss it, but being able to sleep at night — oh, how wonderful! That will more than compensate for the pangs of not having a forum."

His retirement was brief. Less than a year later he was back on the air, anchoring an afternoon drive show for KIEV-AM. He retired for good in 1997.

A memorial service will be held at 11 a.m. Dec. 22 at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, 575 Los Liones Drive, Pacific Palisades.

elaine.woo@latimes.com

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L.A. Reid not returning to 'X Factor' next season

NEW YORK (AP) — L.A. Reid will soon be an ex-judge on "The X Factor."

The veteran music executive is not returning to the Fox singing competition series next season, a representative for Epic Records said Thursday. Reid is currently the chairman and CEO of Epic, a division of Sony Entertainment.

Reid joined the American version of the show last year along with creator Simon Cowell. This season also boasts Britney Spears and Demi Lovato as judges. Its finale is next week.

Last year Reid left his job as chairman and CEO of Island Def Jam Music Group, where he helped launch careers for acts like Rihanna and Justin Bieber. At Epic, his roster includes Sade, Fiona Apple, Karmin, Ciara and "X Factor" season one winner Melanie Amaro.

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Life Expectancy Rises Around World, Study Finds

A sharp decline in deaths from malnutrition and infectious diseases like measles and tuberculosis has caused a shift in global mortality patterns over the past 20 years, according to a report published on Thursday, with far more of the world’s population now living into old age and dying from diseases mostly associated with rich countries, like cancer and heart disease.

Tony Karumba/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Children in Nairobi, Kenya. Sub-Saharan Africa lagged in mortality gains, compared with Latin America, Asia and North Africa.

The shift reflects improvements in sanitation, medical services and access to food throughout the developing world, as well as the success of broad public health efforts like vaccine programs. The results are striking: infant mortality declined by more than half from 1990 to 2010, and malnutrition, the No. 1 risk factor for death and years of life lost in 1990, has fallen to No. 8.

At the same time, chronic diseases like cancer now account for about two out of every three deaths worldwide, up from just over half in 1990. Eight million people died of cancer in 2010, 38 percent more than in 1990. Diabetes claimed 1.3 million lives in 2010, double the number in 1990.

“The growth of these rich-country diseases, like heart disease, stroke, cancer and diabetes, is in a strange way good news,” said Ezekiel Emanuel, chairman of the department of medical ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania. “It shows that many parts of the globe have largely overcome infectious and communicable diseases as a pervasive threat, and that people on average are living longer.”

In 2010, 43 percent of deaths in the world occurred at age 70 and older, compared with 33 percent of deaths in 1990, the report said. And fewer child deaths have brought up the mean age of death, which in Brazil and Paraguay jumped to 63 in 2010, up from 30 in 1970, the report said. The measure, an average of all deaths in a given year, is different from life expectancy, and is lower when large numbers of children die.

But while developing countries made big strides the United States stagnated. American women registered the smallest gains in life expectancy of all high-income countries’ female populations between 1990 and 2010. American women gained just under two years of life, compared with women in Cyprus, who lived 2.3 years longer and Canadian women who gained 2.4 years. The slow increase caused American women to fall to 36th place in the report’s global ranking of life expectancy, down from 22nd in 1990. Life expectancy for American women was 80.5 in 2010, up from 78.6 in 1990.

“It’s alarming just how little progress there has been for women in the United States,” said Christopher Murray, director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, a health research organization financed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation at the University of Washington that coordinated the report. Rising rates of obesity among American women and the legacy of smoking, a habit women formed later than men, are among the factors contributing to the stagnation, he said. American men gained in life expectancy, to 75.9 years from 71.7 in 1990.

Health experts from more than 300 institutions contributed to the report, which provided estimates of disease and mortality for populations in more than 180 countries. It was published in The Lancet, a British medical journal.

The World Health Organization issued a statement on Thursday saying that some of the estimates in the report differed substantially from those done by United Nations agencies, though others were similar. All comprehensive estimates of global mortality rely heavily on statistical modeling because only 34 countries — representing about 15 percent of the world’s population — produce quality cause-of-death data.

Sub-Saharan Africa was an exception to the trend. Infectious diseases, childhood illnesses and maternity-related causes of death still account for about 70 percent of the region’s disease burden, a measure of years of life lost due to premature death and to time lived in less than full health. In contrast, they account for just one-third in South Asia, and less than a fifth in all other regions. Sub-Saharan Africa also lagged in mortality gains, with the average age of death rising by fewer than 10 years from 1970 to 2010, compared with a more than 25-year increase in Latin America, Asia and North Africa.

Globally, AIDS was an exception to the shift of deaths from infectious to noncommunicable diseases. The epidemic is believed to have peaked, but still results in 1.5 million deaths each year.

Over all, the change means people are living longer, but it also raises troubling questions. Behavior affects people’s risks of developing cancer, heart disease and diabetes, and public health experts say it is far harder to get people to change their ways than to administer a vaccine that protects children from an infectious disease like measles.

“Adult mortality is a much harder task for the public health systems in the world,” said Colin Mathers, a senior scientist at the World Health Organization.

Tobacco use is a rising threat, especially in developing countries, and is responsible for almost six million deaths a year globally. Illnesses like diabetes are also spreading fast.

Donald G. McNeil Jr. contributed reporting.

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Retailers scramble to woo shoppers in final days before Christmas

The holiday crunch is on at the mall, and Toys R Us is opening all its stores for 88 straight hours until Christmas Eve. And, for the first time, Macy's is staying open at most stores for 48 hours nonstop the final weekend before Christmas.

In the rush to woo shoppers, merchants this year are upping the ante. Banana Republic is giving away six Fiat cars. Kohl's is picking up the tab for a shopper in each of its stores every day until Christmas Eve. And Sport Chalet will have a scuba-diving Santa at some of its stores Saturday.

Across the nation, retailers are scrambling to draw customers into stores and online in the last days leading up to Christmas, in the hope that shoppers will deliver a last-minute cash infusion at a crucial time for merchants. After a successful Black Friday weekend that netted a record $59.1 billion in sales, stores have seen an unwelcome drop-off in business.

What happens in the next two weeks may be vital not only for merchants but also for the nation's fragile economic recovery, because consumer spending of all kinds makes up about 70% of the U.S. economy.

This weekend and next hold the key to boom or bust. "This holiday, the highs have been higher and the lows lower for retailers," industry analyst Marshal Cohen said. "That means we need a good, strong finish to come out even."

The National Retail Federation is sticking to its prediction of $586.1 billion this year, up 4.1% from last year.

With an extra weekend this year between Thanksgiving and Christmas, many stores say that traffic has plummeted in the last few weeks as shoppers gave their credit cards a rest after splurging on Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Independent boutiques and national retailers alike are anxiously waiting for a surge of shoppers at the very end.

Liz Williamson and last-minute shoppers like her may dictate the outcome. With a dozen family members and friends on her holiday list, "I have to get started now or I'm going to end up running through the malls on Christmas Eve," said the Los Angeles accountant, who was hunting at the Americana at Brand shopping center. "It's get-it-done time."

Shopper Colleen Chang, 26, hasn't started shopping either. "I've started feeling a little crazy," said the Los Angeles leasing agent, who has budgeted $400. "You have to know exactly what you want because pretty soon there's just nothing left and you have to take what you can get."

"Procrastinators will be the secret weapon for either a ho-ho holiday or a ho-hum one," Cohen said.

With 11 days to go, shipping deadlines loom for online orders. Christmas parties are in full swing. Advertising blares. Last-minute sales scream for attention. Holiday music won't let you alone. Time is running out.

Retailers have plenty of shoppers to win over. Nearly a fifth of consumers have yet to start holiday shopping, while 21% plan to drop into stores again after taking a break from post-Thanksgiving splurging, the research firm NPD Group estimated Thursday.

"Every day feels like a sprint. Across the board we see a lot of traffic right now both online and in store," said Brian Hanover, a spokesman at Sears, which is rolling out another round of door-busters Friday and Saturday.

Despite the looming fiscal cliff in Washington and the prospect of higher taxes next year, retailers expect that people will open their wallets for last-minute gifts.

Kevin Jewelers in the Glendale Galleria is hoping for the traditional surge of procrastinators after a disappointing two weeks, diamond consultant Grace Figues said.

"We're still waiting for the rush," she said. "Lately it's been high-low, high-low just like a normal month. We would welcome the craziness."

At the Best Buy store in Westfield Culver City, general manager Margie Kenney said this weekend is "tremendously important" and will be "one of our busiest weekends after Black Friday."

Both bricks-and-mortar and Web merchants will probably enjoy a boost during the next two Saturdays, which typically hold the No. 3 and No. 2 spots for top shopping days of the year after Black Friday, said Bill Martin of retail technology firm ShopperTrak.

"There's still plenty of shopping left," he said. "Some people are just willing to outlast the retailer and wait for the next wave of serious discounts."

At the Americana at Brand, Stella Yu of Glendale had just begun searching for gifts for her family and close friends. But the 25-year-old graduate student, a veteran last-minute shopper, is already mentally preparing herself for the thick crowds, jammed parking lots and general mall madness as the clock ticks down to Christmas.

"I hate humans during holiday shopping," Yu sighed, "especially the ones with kids."

shan.li@latimes.com

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