Pasadena clears way for talks on NFL team

Pasadena officials have cleared the way to begin negotiations with the NFL for bringing a professional football team to the Rose Bowl for up to five years while a new stadium is built in downtown Los Angeles.

More than 100 people packed a Pasadena City Hall meeting that stretched into early Tuesday morning, many of them residents of wealthy neighborhoods surrounding the iconic 90-year-old stadium.

They complained that traffic jams, trash and rowdy fan behavior would disrupt enjoyment of the Arroyo Seco by homeowners and recreational users.

More than 25,000 vehicles would use the stadium grounds on game days, according to a city study, shutting down the Rose Bowl Aquatics Center, Kidspace Museum and Brookside Golf Course.

But allowing a football team to use the Rose Bowl up to 13 Sundays a year while an NFL stadium is built in Los Angeles could also be a financial boon for the city-owned stadium.

The price tag for ongoing renovations to the Rose Bowl, once budgeted at $152 million, has grown to nearly $195 million. Barrett Sports Group, a Manhattan Beach consulting firm hired by the city, projects that an NFL lease could raise $5 million to $10 million for the venue each year.

City Council members ultimately voted to increase the number of events at the Rose Bowl from 12 to 25 a year if a deal is struck with an NFL team. UCLA plays its home football games at the stadium, which also hosts the annual Rose Bowl game.

"I'm not excited about the NFL, and clearly [the Rose Bowl's neighbors] are not excited, but it's the responsible thing to do," Councilwoman Margaret McAustin said.

Councilman Terry Tornek cast the lone vote against the increase, saying that he's not convinced the city should burden neighborhoods near the stadium with shoring up finances for the renovation.

"I think this city has a moral contract with the residents of these neighborhoods," Tornek said.

Leaders of neighborhood groups opposed to professional football at the Rose Bowl threatened to take legal action to reverse the council's decision. Others said they supported the move as a way to boost the local economy, as well as city coffers.

"You're just trying to shove this down people's throats," Paula Shatsky, a resident of the Linda Vista neighborhood, said.

Another Linda Vista resident, Anita Fromholz, broke from her neighbors' views.

"The Rose Bowl is part of Pasadena's heritage. Keeping the NFL option open until we know what comes up is one way to preserve it," Fromholz said.

joe.piasecki@latimes.com

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Truce in Gaza Is Close, Egyptian Officials Say

JERUSALEM — Diplomatic efforts accelerated on Tuesday to end the deadly confrontation between Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza, as the United States sent Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to the Middle East and Egypt’s president and his senior aides expressed confidence that a cease-fire was close.

The diplomatic moves to end the nearly week-old crisis came on a day of some of the most intense violence yet, in what appeared to be moves by the antagonists to get their last attacks done before a cease-fire went into effect.

Israeli aerial forces assaulted several Gaza targets, including a suspected rocket-launching site near Al Shifa hospital, which killed at least nine people, and Israeli naval vessels launched an intensive barrage at the Gaza coastline. A delegation visiting from the Arab League canceled a news conference at the hospital because of the Israeli aerial assault, as wailing ambulances brought victims in, some of them decapitated.

Militants in Gaza fired a barrage of rockets into southern Israel, killing an Israeli soldier — the first military casualty on the Israeli side since the hostilities broke out last week. The Israel Defense Forces said the soldier, identified as Yosef Fartuk, 18, died from a rocket strike that hit an area near Gaza.

Other Palestinian rockets hit the southern Israeli cities of Beersheba and Ashdod, and longer-range rockets toward Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, but neither main city was struck and no casualties were reported. One Gaza rocket hit a building in the Israeli city of Rishon Lezion, just south of Tel Aviv, injuring one person.

Senior Egyptian officials in Cairo said Israel and Hamas were “very close” to a cease-fire agreement that could be announced within hours. “We have not received final approval but I hope to receive it any moment,” said Essam el-Haddad, President Mohamed Morsi’s top foreign affairs adviser.

Foreign diplomats who were briefed on the outlines of a tentative agreement said it had been structured in stages — first, an announcement at approximately 10 p.m. local time (3 p.m. E.S.T.) of a cease-fire, followed by its implementation at midnight, for 48 hours. That would allow time for Mrs. Clinton to arrive, and to create a window for negotiators to agree on conditions for a longer-term cessation of hostilities.

Whether Hamas can enforce control over all of the militant Palestinian factions in Gaza to hold their fire during that period remained unclear.

The announcement of Mrs. Clinton’s active role in efforts to defuse the crisis added a strong new dimension to the multinational push to avert a new Middle East war. Israel has amassed thousands of soldiers on the border with Gaza and has threatened to invade the crowded Palestinian enclave for the second time in four years to stop the persistent rockets that have been lobbed at Israel.

Mrs. Clinton, who accompanied President Obama on his three-country Asia trip, left Cambodia on her own plane immediately for the Middle East. She was en route to Jerusalem to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, then head to the West Bank to meet with Palestinian leaders and finally to Cairo to consult with Egyptian officials.

The decision to dispatch Mrs. Clinton significantly deepens the American involvement in the crisis. Mr. Obama made a number of late-night phone calls from his Asian tour to the Middle East on Monday night that contributed to his conclusion that he had to become more engaged and that Mrs. Clinton might be able to accomplish something.

With Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary general, also in Israel on Tuesday, a senior official in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said Israel had decided to give more time to diplomacy before starting a ground invasion into Gaza. But Israel has not withdrawn other options.

“I prefer a diplomatic solution,” Mr. Netanyahu said in a statement at the start of a meeting in Jerusalem with the German foreign minister, Guido Westerwelle. “I hope that we can get one, but if not, we have every right to defend ourselves with other means and we shall use them.

“As you know, we seek a diplomatic unwinding to this, through the discussions of cease-fire,” Mr. Netanyahu added. “But if the firing continues, we will have to take broader action and we won’t hesitate to do so.”

Intensifying the pressure on Hamas after a day of heavy rocket fire out of Gaza against southern Israel, the Israeli military said on Tuesday afternoon that it had distributed leaflets over Gaza instructing the Palestinian residents in several areas to evacuate their homes immediately, “for your safety,” and to move toward defined zones in central Gaza City. That seemed intended to signal that plans for a ground operation were imminent should the cease-fire talks fail. About three hours before Mr. Ban was scheduled to meet Mr. Netanyahu in Jerusalem, sirens sounded across the city in the early afternoon announcing an incoming rocket from Gaza. The military wing of Hamas said it had fired at the city. The rocket fell short, landing harmlessly in the West Bank just south of Jerusalem, and the military said it landed on open ground near a Palestinian village.

The rocket attack on the city, which is holy to Jews, Muslims and Christians, was the second in less than a week. On Friday, a rocket landed in a similar location, the police said.

Isabel Kershner reported from Jerusalem, Peter Baker from Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and Rick Gladstone from New York. Reporting was contributed by Jodi Rudoren from Gaza City, David D. Kirkpatrick from Cairo, Ethan Bronner from Jerusalem, and David E. Sanger from Washington.

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Giuliana and Bill Rancic Share Baby Edward's First Feeding

TV Watch

TV News

By Aaron Parsley

11/20/2012 at 01:15 PM EST

"He eats like a horse."

That's proud dad Bill Rancic describing his baby boy's appetite on the Today show Tuesday morning.

But it wasn't long ago that Rancic and his wife Giuliana had no idea how their son Edward Duke, who was born via gestational surrogate on Aug. 29, would take to the bottle.

In footage from Tuesday's season 5 premiere of their Style reality show, Giuliana & Bill, the brand new parents find out.

"First feeding ever. He's taking it okay. I think he likes it," Giuliana says as she gives her baby his first bottle.

"This kid is like super chill, man," observes dad, who's holding the camera in the hospital room. "How does it feel?"

"It feels good. I feel like I'm not nervous at all," Giuliana says. "I feel like I can take care of him. I expected to be more nervous and more flustered like I had no idea what to do but I feel like totally at ease. It's kind of amazing. I just feel like I know what he needs."

The couple shot the entire episode because they wanted to share their family's most special and intimate moment with viewers and fans.

But even though their show has documented their happiest moments – as well as their struggles with infertility and Giuliana's miscarriage and her fight against breast cancer – they say have not decided whether Edward will grow on up on reality TV.

"Whether he lives his life with the cameras on or not is yet to be determined," Bill told Today's Savannah Guthrie. But for now, "We felt we owed it to all the people who have been on this journey with us to show them that hey, one in six couples struggle with infertility, and if you stick with it and never quit, it can pay off."

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New push for most in US to get at least 1 HIV test

WASHINGTON (AP) — There's a new push to make testing for the AIDS virus as common as cholesterol checks.

Americans ages 15 to 64 should get an HIV test at least once — not just people considered at high risk for the virus, an independent panel that sets screening guidelines proposed Monday.

The draft guidelines from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force are the latest recommendations that aim to make HIV screening simply a routine part of a check-up, something a doctor can order with as little fuss as a cholesterol test or a mammogram. Since 2006, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also has pushed for widespread, routine HIV screening.

Yet not nearly enough people have heeded that call: Of the more than 1.1 million Americans living with HIV, nearly 1 in 5 — almost 240,000 people — don't know it. Not only is their own health at risk without treatment, they could unwittingly be spreading the virus to others.

The updated guidelines will bring this long-simmering issue before doctors and their patients again — emphasizing that public health experts agree on how important it is to test even people who don't think they're at risk, because they could be.

"It allows you to say, 'This is a recommended test that we believe everybody should have. We're not singling you out in any way,'" said task force member Dr. Douglas Owens of Stanford University and the Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System.

And if finalized, the task force guidelines could extend the number of people eligible for an HIV screening without a copay in their doctor's office, as part of free preventive care under the Obama administration's health care law. Under the task force's previous guidelines, only people at increased risk for HIV — which includes gay and bisexual men and injecting drug users — were eligible for that no-copay screening.

There are a number of ways to get tested. If you're having blood drawn for other exams, the doctor can merely add HIV to the list, no extra pokes or swabs needed. Today's rapid tests can cost less than $20 and require just rubbing a swab over the gums, with results ready in as little as 20 minutes. Last summer, the government approved a do-it-yourself at-home version that's selling for about $40.

Free testing is available through various community programs around the country, including a CDC pilot program in drugstores in 24 cities and rural sites.

Monday's proposal also recommends:

—Testing people older and younger than 15-64 if they are at increased risk of HIV infection,

—People at very high risk for HIV infection should be tested at least annually.

—It's not clear how often to retest people at somewhat increased risk, but perhaps every three to five years.

—Women should be tested during each pregnancy, something the task force has long recommended.

The draft guidelines are open for public comment through Dec. 17.

Most of the 50,000 new HIV infections in the U.S. every year are among gay and bisexual men, followed by heterosexual black women.

"We are not doing as well in America with HIV testing as we would like," Dr. Jonathan Mermin, CDC's HIV prevention chief, said Monday.

The CDC recommends at least one routine test for everyone ages 13 to 64, starting two years younger than the task force recommended. That small difference aside, CDC data suggests fewer than half of adults under 65 have been tested.

"It can sometimes be awkward to ask your doctor for an HIV test," Mermin said — the reason that making it routine during any health care encounter could help.

But even though nearly three-fourths of gay and bisexual men with undiagnosed HIV had visited some sort of health provider in the previous year, 48 percent weren't tested for HIV, a recent CDC survey found. Emergency rooms are considered a good spot to catch the undiagnosed, after their illnesses and injuries have been treated, but Mermin said only about 2 percent of ER patients known to be at increased risk were tested while there.

Mermin calls that "a tragedy. It's a missed opportunity."

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Man's elaborate plot to kill girlfriend in dark alley revealed by prosecutors

An Orange County man was charged Monday with stabbing his former girlfriend to death in a Santa Ana alleyway, prosecutors said.

Luis Antonio Garcia Morales, 24, faces one felony count of special circumstances murder by lying in wait, according to a statement from the Orange County district attorney's office.

If convicted, Morales could be sentenced to life in state prison without the possibility of parole, prosecutors said.

Morales, a Santa Ana resident, is being held without bail.

Prosecutors allege that Morales arranged to meet his former girlfriend, Maria Isabel Cerrillo, on Nov. 13 in an alleyway and stabbed her repeatedly before fleeing. Cerrillo died as a result of the stab wounds, officials said.

Morales was arrested two days later by Santa Ana police.

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Photos: Prosecutors allege that Maria Isabel Cerrillo, left, was fatally stabbed by her former boyfriend, Luis Antonio Garcia Morales. Credit: KTLA-TV Channel 5

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Hamas Leader Dares Israel to Invade Amid Gaza Airstrikes

GAZA CITY — The top leader of Hamas dared Israel on Monday to launch a ground invasion of Gaza and dismissed diplomatic efforts to broker a cease-fire in the six-day-old conflict, as the Israeli military conducted a new wave of deadly airstrikes on the besieged Palestinian enclave, including a second hit on a 15-story building that houses media outlets. A volley of rockets fired from Gaza into southern Israel included one that hit a vacant school.

Speaking at a news conference in Cairo, where the diplomatic efforts were under way, the Hamas leader, Khaled Meshal, suggested that the Israeli infantry mobilization on the border with Gaza was a bluff on the part of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel.

“If you wanted to launch it, you would have done it,” Mr. Meshal told reporters. He accused Israel of using the invasion threat as an attempt to “dictate its own terms and force us into silence.”

Rejecting Israel’s contention that Hamas had precipitated the conflict, Mr. Meshal said the burden was on the Israelis. “The demand of the people of Gaza is meeting their legimitate demands — for Israel to be restrained from its aggression, assassinations and invasions, and for the siege over Gaza to be ended,” he said.

The Hamas Health Ministry said Monday evening that a total of 102 people had been killed since Wednesday morning, when Israeli airstrikes began, following months of Palestinian rocket fire into Israel. A spokeswoman for the Israeli military said she believed that a majority of these were militants, though it is difficult to know because Hamas’s own fighting brigade and the other factional groups are secretive.

The Hamas ministry said that the dead included 24 children, 10 women and 12 men over 50, who were presumably not involved in combat. Of the remaining 56, at least 36 are known militants. Hamas officials said 850 have been wounded, 260 of them children, 140 of them women and 55 men over 50.

Three people have been killed so far in Israel, all civilians, in a rocket strike that hit an apartment house in the southern Israeli town of Kiryat Malachi on Thursday morning. The Israelis have said that at least 79 Israelis have been wounded and that Gaza rockets have reached as far north as Tel Aviv.

The latest Gaza casualties — 19 people reported killed since midnight local time — included Palestinians killed in strikes by warplanes and a drone attack on two men on a motorcycle, the Health Ministry said. Another Israeli drone attack killed the driver of a taxi hired by journalists and displaying “Press” signs, although it was not clear which journalists hired it, Palestinian officials said.

On Sunday, Israeli forces attacked two buildings housing local broadcasters and production companies used by foreign outlets. Israeli officials denied targeting journalists, but on Monday Israeli forces again blasted the Al Sharouk block, a multiuse building where many local broadcasters, as well as Sky News of Britain and the channel Al Arabiya, had offices.

That attack, which struck a computer shop on the third floor, sparked a blaze that sent plumes of dark smoke creeping up the sides of the building. Video footage showed clouds of smoke billowing.

An Israeli bomb pummeled a home deep into the ground here on Sunday, killing 11 people, including nine in three generations of a single family, in the deadliest single strike since the latest conflict began. Members of the family were buried Monday in a rite that turned into a gesture of defiance and became a rally supporting Gaza’s militant Hamas rulers.

A militant leader said Tel Aviv, in the Israeli heartland, would be hit “over and over” and warned Israelis that their leaders were misleading them and would “take them to hell.”

Israel says its onslaught is designed to stop Hamas from launching the rockets, but, after an apparent lull overnight, more missiles hurtled toward targets in Israel, some of them intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome defense system. Of five rockets fired on Monday at the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon, four were intercepted but one smashed through the concrete roof at the entrance to an empty school. There were no reports of casualties. Other rockets rained on areas along the border with Gaza.

Later a second salvo struck Ashkelon. Several rockets were intercepted, but one crashed down onto a house, causing damage but no casualties. News reports said 75 rockets had been fired by midafternoon.

On Sunday, a new volley of Palestinian rockets totaled nearly 100 by nightfall, including two that soared toward Tel Aviv but were knocked out of the sky by Israeli defenses.

Fares Akram and Jodi Rudoren reported from Gaza City, and Alan Cowell from London. Reporting was contributed by Isabel Kershner from Ashkelon, Israel; Ethan Bronner, Myra Noveck and Irit Pazner Garshowitz from Jerusalem; Rina Castelnuovo from Ashdod, Israel; Peter Baker from Bangkok; and David D. Kirkpatrick from Cairo.

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In Mark Cuban’s Humble Opinion, Facebook Still Kinda Sucks

Dallas Mavericks owner and billionaire Mark Cuban has confirmed reports from last week, in a post on his personal blog today, that he has a serious beef with Facebook. But before getting into all the reasons he no longer loves the social network, he clarifies one small point: “First, I’m not recommending to any of my companies that we leave facebook,” he writes. Last week ReadWriteWeb’s Dan Lyons kind of made it seem like Cuban planned to pull out altogether because of the way Facebook’s algorithm has affected the way people see his brands’s posts. The algorithm, Edgerank, controls brand posts so that not all fans are forced to see each one in their news feeds. Because of this, he quoted Cuban saying “We are moving far more aggressively into Twitter and reducing any and all emphasis on Facebook.” And later he had him talking about all the reasons he finds it horrible for businesses. Like, mainly, that it’s too expensive, a point that GigaOm’s Mathew Ingram called naive. “Really? That surprises you? What else did you think Facebook was going to do when it gave you a giant social platform for nothing?” Cuban now explains that he isn’t bailing on Facebook, just de-emphasizing it in favor of other Internet places, like Tumblr and Twitter. But, that does not mean that he does not hate Facebook as much as everyone has been saying he hates Facebook. He does.

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You can read the laundry list of reasons over at his personal blog, but some highlights include:

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• Its a time waster … FB doesn’t seem to want to accept that it’s best purpose in life is as a huge time suck. 


• IMHO, FB really risks screwing up something that is special in our lives as a time waster by thinking they have to make it more engaging and efficient.


• So by default you are not going to use your newsfeed as a primary source of information. It’s more like the township newspaper


• I also think that FB is making a big mistake by trying to play games with their original mission of connecting the world.  FB is a fascinating destination that is an amazing alternative to boredom which excels in its SIMPLICITY.  One of the threats in any business is that you outsmart yourself. FB has to be careful of just that.

Basically Mark Cuban thinks Facebook should stop trying to make money and stop trying to get too smart, which might work in the favor of Cuban who doesn’t want to spend too much money on something silly like social media. But,this doesn’t sound too appealing to Facebook, which as a public company needs to make money. Unless more join his cause, which could maybe happen. At least the Miami blog the 305 agrees with him. Anyone else? 

Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Nicki Minaj Is Afraid She Is 'Not So Nice' on American Idol

TV Watch

American Idol

11/19/2012 at 01:00 PM EST

From left: Mariah Carey, Keith Urban, Ryan Seacrest, Nicki Minaj and Randy Jackson

Michael Becker/FOX

Nicki Minaj is as fearless on stage as she is on the red carpet. But when it comes to the season premiere of American Idol on Jan. 16, the new judge isn't quite so brave.

"I'm scared," she told Idol host Ryan Seacrest on his radio show Monday morning.

What's she worried about? "Maybe I shouldn't have been so like ... " she says, before adding, "It's hard for me to not say how I really feel."

When Seacrest asks the singer, who performed Sunday on the American Music Awards, if she's nervous about how honest she was with the contestants, she answers, "Yes."

"Everyone else is so nice," she says. "I was just thinking back about some things and I was like, 'I wonder if that was not so nice.' "

But Minaj, 29, says she takes a tough-love approach only to help out season 11's singers.

"As an artist I've always grown more from the tougher criticism," she says, "and so I would like to be that person and to try to help people get that thick skin and to really give it their all, because it is a competition."

And though Minaj won't likely be hosting a viewing party with popcorn and friends, she does think Idol fans will enjoy the new lineup.

"I don't think I'm going to be able to watch it. I'm going to be so nervous," she says of the premiere. "But I know people are going to love it. I think it's a great dynamic."

Despite the on-set feud with costar Mariah Carey, Minaj says, "The chemistry of the judges, I feel it while I'm there. I think it's really different from anything we've seen before on Idol and people are going to like it."

Does that mean things have cooled off between the judges? Maybe. When asked if she'll perform with the singer, Minaj says, "If she'll have me, I'll be there waiting."

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EU drug regulator OKs Novartis' meningitis B shot

LONDON (AP) — Europe's top drug regulator has recommended approval for the first vaccine against meningitis B, made by Novartis AG.

There are five types of bacterial meningitis. While vaccines exist to protect against the other four, none has previously been licensed for type B meningitis. In Europe, type B is the most common, causing 3,000 to 5,000 cases every year.

Meningitis mainly affects infants and children. It kills about 8 percent of patients and leaves others with lifelong consequences such as brain damage.

In a statement on Friday, Andrin Oswald of Novartis said he is "proud of the major advance" the company has made in developing its vaccine Bexsero. It is aimed at children over two months of age, and Novartis is hoping countries will include the shot among the routine ones for childhood diseases such as measles.

Novartis said the immunization has had side effects such as fever and redness at the injection site.

Recommendations from the European Medicines Agency are usually adopted by the European Commission. Novartis also is seeking to test the vaccine in the U.S.

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Boy, 14, sexually assaults 65-year-old woman at store, authorities say

A 14-year-old California boy was arrested Thursday night in connection with the attempted murder, kidnapping and sexual assault of a 65-year-old woman.

Officers found the woman bound by duct tape in a ditch near Hiddenbrooke Parkway and Interstate Highway 80 around 6 p.m. Thursday, according to the Bay City News Service.

Police said the victim was kidnapped at gunpoint in front of a retail store and was forced to drive to a location five miles away where she was physically and sexually assaulted.

The suspect then fled in the victim's minivan and called one of her family members, demanding money for her safe return.

Detectives located the suspect after he returned to the area. He was found with a replica handgun and the victim's minivan, police said.

The teen has been booked into Solano County Juvenile Hall.

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Follow Wesley Lowery on Twitter and Google+.

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here: http://www.sacbee.com/2012/11/16/4991207/teen-arrested-in-vallejo-elderly.html#storylink=cpy

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