Dorner's LAPD firing case hinged on credibility









For a Los Angeles Police Department disciplinary panel, the evidence was persuasive: Rookie officer Christopher Jordan Dorner lied when he accused his training officer of kicking a mentally ill man during an arrest.


But when a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge examined the case a year later in 2010 as part of an appeal filed by Dorner, he seemed less convinced.


Judge David P. Yaffe said he was "uncertain whether the training officer kicked the suspect or not" but nevertheless upheld the department's decision to fire Dorner, according to court records reviewed by The Times.





As the manhunt for the ex-cop wanted in the slayings of three people enters its sixth day, Dorner's firing has been the subject of debate both within and outside the LAPD. An online manifesto that police attributed to Dorner claims he was railroaded by the LAPD and unjustly fired. His allegations have resonated among the public and some LAPD employees who have criticized the department's disciplinary system, calling it capricious and retaliatory toward those who try to expose misconduct.


Seeking to address those concerns, LAPD Chief Charlie Beck announced this weekend that he was reopening the investigation into Dorner's disciplinary case. "It is important to me that we have a department that is seen as valuing fairness," Beck said.


LAPD records show that Dorner's disciplinary panel heard from several witnesses who testified that they did not see the training officer kick the man. The panel found that the man did not have injuries consistent with having been kicked, nor was there evidence of having been kicked on his clothes. A key witness in Dorner's defense was the man's father, who testified that his son told him he had been kicked by police. The panel concluded that the father's testimony "lacked credibility," finding that his son was too mentally ill to give a reliable account.


The online manifesto rails against the LAPD officials who took part in the review hearing and vows revenge. Police allege Dorner killed his own attorney's daughter and her fiance last weekend in Irvine.


"Your lack of ethics and conspiring to wrong a just individual are over. Suppressing the truth will [lead] to deadly consequences for you and your family," the manifesto says.


Dorner's case revolved around a July 28, 2007, call about a man causing a disturbance at the DoubleTree Hotel in San Pedro. When Dorner and his training officer showed up, they found Christopher Gettler. He was uncooperative and threw a punch at one of the officers, prompting Dorner's training officer, Teresa Evans, to use an electric Taser weapon on him.


Nearly two weeks later, Dorner walked into Sgt. Donald Deming's office at the Harbor Division police station. There were tears in Dorner's eyes, the sergeant later testified.


Deming gave the following account of what happened next:


"I have something bad to talk to you about, something really bad," Dorner told him.


Evans, Dorner explained, had kicked Gettler once in the face and twice in the left shoulder or nearby chest area. Afterward, Dorner said, Evans told him not to include the kicks on the arrest report.


"Promise me you won't do anything," Dorner asked Deming.


"No, Chris. I have to do something," Deming responded.


An internal affairs investigation into the allegation concluded the kicks never occurred. Investigators subsequently decided that Dorner had fabricated his account. He was charged with making false accusations.


At the December 2008 Board of Rights hearing, Dorner's attorney, Randal Quan, conceded that his client should have reported the kicks sooner but told the board that Dorner ultimately did the right thing. He called the case against Dorner "very, very ugly."


"This officer wasn't given a fair shake," Quan said, according to transcripts of the board hearing. "In fact, what's happening here is this officer is being made a scapegoat."


At the hearing, Dorner stuck to his story. Evans, he said, kicked Gettler once in the left side of his collarbone lightly with her right boot as they struggled to handcuff him. She kicked him once more forcefully in the same area, Dorner testified, and then much harder in the face, snapping Gettler's head back. Dorner said he noticed fresh blood on Gettler's face.


Dorner did not immediately report the kicks to a sergeant, he said, because he was asked only what force he had used, not what his partner had done. And as a rookie who had already filed complaints against fellow officers, he feared retaliation from within the department, Dorner testified.





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IHT Rendezvous: Meditations on the F1 Season to Come - and on 20 Seasons Run

PARIS — The 2013 Formula One season has not really begun. The first race takes place March 17 in Melbourne. But with the launches of the new cars and the first four days of test sessions ending Friday, the seeds have been planted. What kind of plant will grow is not easy to figure out.

I have been observing from the sidelines for a couple of weeks, watching the fanfare of the car launches — or rather, the lack of fanfare — and watching the lap-by-lap action on the track in Jerez, Spain. Every day I’ve asked myself, what is really new this year? The cars, most of them, are merely the technical evolutions of last year’s cars.

They all look fairly similar — although some, thank goodness, have smoothed out that ugly nose problem of last season. There is good reason for the familiarity; the technical regulations haven’t changed much since last season. The big changes will all occur next year, especially with the change in the engine specifications.

It is common knowledge within Formula One and to most fans that the first winter test sessions of the new cars reveal and mean very little. The engineers are not forced into running their cars to racing specifications, and they can test parts that would be deemed illegal in a race. They can run on low fuel to get great results to attract sponsors, or they can sandbag — run heavy with lots of fuel and ballast — to hide how fast their cars are to the competition.

That said, the tests often do give an idea of who is strong, and who is not. Last year, Ferrari was clearly off the pace — by 1.6 seconds, no less — and that weighed on the Italian team for the whole season. The Lotus was fast, though, and that showed early in the season too. So what about the last four days?

None of it seemed to make sense: Jenson Button started the first session as the fastest car in the McLaren Mercedes, setting his fastest time on the hard tires, which raises the question of how well he will do when racing on the faster soft tires.

Days later, when Felipe Massa was the fastest car of the day, in a Ferrari, still moaned about the speed of Button’s lap, even though it was slower than his. But it all had to do with tires and track conditions. Then there was the Lotus, with Romain Grosjean setting a fastest lap, and then Kimi Raikkonen doing the same.The new Toro Rosso car and the Force India team also posted amazingly fast laps.

Lewis Hamilton’s made his first test as part of the Mercedes team. Many people had criticized him for changing teams while he was secure in his seat at McLaren. Hamilton ended up running off the track with broken brakes after his first few laps. But he came back strongly and left the session on Friday smiling.

All these developments did add up to a conclusion, despite the story seeming to change every day. The story this season may well change from one race to another, one session to another, as it did the first part of last season.

The cars are currently so closely aligned — except for the ones like the Marussia and the Caterham, the smaller teams — that there could be a lot of shifting around of the powers that be.

If that’s the case, we’re in for another great and interesting season. On the other hand, this was just the first winter test session, and we have two more to go, starting with the one in Barcelona Feb. 19.

Another development in Formula One that gave me pause came in another venue entirely: in American journalism.

I’m talking about an 8,152-word article in the Feb. 4 issue of The New Yorker all about Formula One. “The Art of Speed; Bringing Formula One to America,” by Ben McGrath, is a well-written and entertaining, but surface-scratching story introducing Formula One to American readers.

I thoroughly enjoyed it, and felt stimulated seeing the high-brow literary colossus giving this much space and interest to the sport I have been covering for so many years for the International Herald Tribune and The New York Times. One of the things that intrigued me was that The New Yorker story read like a beginner’s guide to F1 — unlike, for instance, The Economist or other major publications that rarely cover the sport, but that when they do tend to be reporting on some kind of scandal.

It was, as the title suggested, an introduction to this sport that has never pierced the American consciousness the way other forms of auto racing — like Nascar — have, probably simply because there are no American heroes involved in it today.

On the other hand, like the season testing, it also left me wondering just how often Formula One has to be introduced in the United States after a history that goes back more than 60 years, and two Formula One world champion American drivers, one of whom is named Mario Andretti.

I’d say the article in The New Yorker is a pretty big step in that direction.

Of course, the topic of F1 and journalism reminded me that 2013 marks the 20th anniversary of my own beginning covering the sport for the International Herald Tribune. I published my first story in the paper on the series: Grand Prix Racing: 1993 Is Shaping Up Great Despite FISA

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Justin Bieber's Three Funniest Saturday Night Live Moments















02/10/2013 at 08:05 AM EST



A massive midwinter snow left the northeast feeling just a little bit chilly – make that freezing – but it was nothing a heartwarming bout of Bieber Fever couldn't cure.

Just tell that to the fans who may have caught actual fevers roughing it out on the snowy streets of N.Y.C. in hopes of scoring tickets to the singer's Saturday Night Live hosting debut.

So did Justin Bieber bring the sizzle with his punchlines? Or was it, at best, a comedy cold front? In case you missed it, we're breaking down our favorite moments from this weekend's SNL.

1. Happy Valentine's Day ... and Black History Month?
Fresh off his split from Selena Gomez, Bieber still couldn't resist the love in the air during this special time of the year. "You know," he deadpanned, "Black History Month." Beat. "It's also Valentine's Day, so we're going to celebrate them both tonight."

In an opening monologue that might have made you shift nervously in your seat between laughs, the pop star mixed romance with blips of misguided African-American history. For starters, we didn't know Denzel Washington invented the peanut. But by the end of the monologue, he spotted his dream girl in the audience: Whoopi Goldberg.

2. Bieber Addresses Marijuana Controversy
Well, that's one way to handle a scandal: More than a month since photos surfaced of the squeaky-clean pop star smoking what appeared to be marijuana, his late-night gig was the perfect opportunity to make a statement about the incident – or at least make a joke.

While swinging by the The Miley Cyrus Show in character (or should we say out of character?) as a Miley fan boy alter-ego, he told Vanessa Bayer's Cyrus, "I also heard [Bieber] got busted for smoking weed and that he's really sorry about it. ... People make mistakes." That was after he referred to his real identity as "that douche," of course.

3. Yes, Another Early Valentine's Day Present
As if his appearance alone wasn't already enough for all of the Be-liebers who stayed up past their bedtime Saturday, the pop star sandwiched his show with yet another "sexy Valentine's Day message." Getting in the spirit of cupid's holiday, Bieber gave us a glimpse at his big plans, which include champagne he's not old enough to buy, suggestive dice and a less-desirable wingman named Taco. More importantly, he revealed his true Valentine after taking a naughty picture on his cell phone: "Check your email, Hillary Clinton."


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After early start, worst of flu season may be over


NEW YORK (AP) — The worst of the flu season appears to be over.


The number of states reporting intense or widespread illnesses dropped again last week, and in a few states there was very little flu going around, U.S. health officials said Friday.


The season started earlier than normal, first in the Southeast and then spreading. But now, by some measures, flu activity has been ebbing for at least four weeks in much of the country. Flu and pneumonia deaths also dropped the last two weeks, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported.


"It's likely that the worst of the current flu season is over," CDC spokesman Tom Skinner said.


But flu is hard to predict, he and others stressed, and there have been spikes late in the season in the past.


For now, states like Georgia and New York — where doctor's offices were jammed a few weeks ago — are reporting low flu activity. The hot spots are now the West Coast and the Southwest.


Among the places that have seen a drop: Lehigh Valley Hospital-Cedar Crest in Allentown, Pa., which put up a tent outside its emergency room last month to help deal with the steady stream of patients. There were about 100 patients each day back then. Now it's down to 25 and the hospital may pack up its tent next week, said Terry Burger, director of infection control and prevention for the hospital.


"There's no question that we're seeing a decline," she said.


In early December, CDC officials announced flu season had arrived, a month earlier than usual. They were worried, saying it had been nine years since a winter flu season started like this one. That was 2003-04 — one of the deadliest seasons in the past 35 years, with more than 48,000 deaths.


Like this year, the major flu strain was one that tends to make people sicker, especially the elderly, who are most vulnerable to flu and its complications


But back then, that year's flu vaccine wasn't made to protect against that bug, and fewer people got flu shots. The vaccine is reformulated almost every year, and the CDC has said this year's vaccine is a good match to the types that are circulating. A preliminary CDC study showed it is about 60 percent effective, which is close to the average.


So far, the season has been labeled moderately severe.


Like others, Lehigh Valley's Burger was cautious about making predictions. "I'm not certain we're completely out of the woods," with more wintry weather ahead and people likely to be packed indoors where flu can spread around, she said.


The government does not keep a running tally of flu-related deaths in adults, but has received reports of 59 deaths in children. The most — nine — were in Texas, where flu activity was still high last week. Roughly 100 children die in an average flu season, the CDC says


On average, about 24,000 Americans die each flu season, according to the CDC.


According to the CDC report, the number of states with intense activity is down to 19, from 24 the previous week, and flu is widespread in 38 states, down from 42.


Flu is now minimal in Florida, Kentucky, Maine, Montana, New Hampshire and South Carolina.


___


Online:


CDC: http://www.cdc.gov/flu/


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Old mystery: Why did Gardena help get police vests to Cambodia?









A decade ago, Gardena Police Capt. Tom Monson was surprised to discover that a $5,190 check had been mailed to his station from the Honorary Consulate of the Kingdom of Cambodia.


Monson was unable to figure out what business the small police agency had with the government of Cambodia.


Shortly afterward, Monson was presented with another vexing puzzle. His police department had recently purchased 173 bulletproof vests from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department — a lot, considering that the department had fewer than 100 officers.





Then he noticed the price of those vests: $5,190. The same amount the Kingdom of Cambodia had paid to the department.


So began a mystery about ballistic vests, international police connections and local politics that still endures 10 years later.


A Times investigation has found that top sheriff's officials used the City of Gardena to funnel hundreds of bulletproof vests to Cambodian police.


Sheriff's media representatives gave The Times differing accounts about the transaction, initially denying any sheriff's officials were involved in sending the vests to Cambodia, then offering explanations contradicted by records and interviews. The officials involved in the transaction refused to discuss it.


Prompted by The Times' inquiry, Sheriff Lee Baca recently asked the county auditor-controller's office to examine the sale, and a sheriff's spokesman called that review "a complete vindication" that proved the transactions were "above board." But Auditor-Controller Wendy Watanabe said in an interview she was only told that the vests were sold to Gardena, not that Gardena was a go-between to get them to Cambodia.


"The word Cambodia didn't even come up in the conversation," she said.


It is not unusual for U.S. law enforcement agencies to donate used or obsolete equipment to other departments, including foreign ones. But in this case, the vests were sent through an intermediary and not declared to customs officials, as required by federal law. Instead, they were stuffed inside one of a number of patrol cars that the Sheriff's Department was shipping directly to Cambodia, avoiding the rigorous vetting process the U.S. government requires to prevent body armor from getting into the wrong hands abroad.


The U.S. Customs Service launched an investigation into the sale of the vests in 2002, and federal agents were told that the transactions were coordinated by Paul Tanaka, who is both the sheriff's second-in-command and the mayor of Gardena. Other members of the City Council were kept in the dark about the purchase — and the vests were never claimed by the city. They were picked up from the sheriff's warehouse, signed for by a sheriff's reserve, then packed into a patrol car headed for the Southeast Asian country.


The existence of the federal probe was never made public until now. Customs agents decided not to seek criminal charges, concluding there wasn't enough evidence to show that anyone involved in the transactions knew the relevant export laws.


David Johnson, a Washington, D.C., export controls attorney who reviewed the records for The Times, called that a "curious rationale," saying authorities don't have to prove knowledge of the law to press charges. "On its face, it seems like someone was going to great lengths to obfuscate the actual transaction," he said.


After closing the case, federal authorities referred the matter to sheriff's investigators. But a sheriff's spokesman said the department did not conduct its own investigation.


The spokesman, Steve Whitmore, said officials did nothing wrong and sent the vests through Gardena because they were under the mistaken impression that county rules prevented them from dealing directly with foreign nations. He could not explain why that same misunderstanding did not apply to the patrol cars, which officials did send directly to the Cambodians as part of the same shipment.


Tanaka declined to comment for this story. Several of the Gardena council members serving at the time said they never knew about the vests. "I'm very troubled by it," former Councilman Steven Bradford said in an interview.


::


City records showed that Gardena had made two purchases from the Sheriff's Department, the first in May for 173 unused ballistic vests and the second a month later for 300 used vests at a cost of $3,000. Monson and a colleague notified federal authorities.


Records obtained by The Times under the Freedom of Information Act detail the customs probe. Though the names of those interviewed were redacted, it is clear that investigators approached City Manager Mitchell Lansdell.


Lansdell, the records indicate, explained that the purchase was ordered by a councilman who also worked for the Sheriff's Department — a profile that fits only Tanaka. That councilman, the city manager said, called him at home and told him to buy vests that were about to be put up for sale by the Sheriff's Department.





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Berlusconi Remains the Wild Card in Italy Race





ROME — One candidate promised to drop an unpopular new property tax and refund all prior payments in cash. Another called that proposal a “poisoned meatball,” disconnected from reality. A third suggested that Al Qaeda blow up the Italian Parliament — then backtracked — and the man generally considered the front-runner is campaigning on vague promises of stability, so has often been ignored.




With only two weeks to go before national elections, the Italian campaign has become a surreal spectacle in which a candidate many had given up for dead, former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, has surged. Although he is not expected ever to govern again, with his media savvy and pie-in-the-sky offers of tax refunds, Mr. Berlusconi now trails the front-runner, Pierluigi Bersani, the leader of the Democratic Party, by about five or six points, according to a range of opinion polls published on Friday.


The polls found that the former comedian Beppe Grillo, who made the Qaeda quip as part of his antipolitical campaign, is close behind in third place, while the caretaker prime minister, Mario Monti, who made the “poisoned meatball” remark as he stepped up attacks on Mr. Berlusconi in an awkward transition from technocrat to candidate, is taking up the rear with around 10 percent to 15 percent of the vote.


Most analysts predict that the center-left will win, but with not enough votes to govern without forming an alliance with Mr. Monti’s centrists. Yet in a complex political landscape — and with significant policy differences between Mr. Monti and Mr. Bersani, who have been criticizing each other in their campaigns — nothing is a given, and the political uncertainty weighs on financial markets.


Some compare the election to a power struggle on a corporate board. “Mr. Berlusconi knows he can’t govern, but wants a strong seat at the table,” said Marco Damilano, a political reporter for L’Espresso, a weekly. The Democratic Party will have the majority of seats but will not be able to govern without making accords, he said, adding that “Monti wants the golden share,” in which his few seats count for a lot.


Many outsiders marvel at the survival skills of Mr. Berlusconi, who dragged down Italy’s finances and international standing to the point that Mr. Monti was brought on in November 2011 to lead an emergency technocratic government that lasted a year. But at least a good part of Mr. Berlusconi’s success has to do with his competition.


Mr. Monti lacks a strong party and has hit Italians with unpopular taxes, and centrists who might lean left are concerned that Mr. Bersani would be weak on the flagging economy. On top of that, Mr. Berlusconi, whose center-right People of Liberty is more a charismatic movement than a party, has true loyalists who do not know where else to turn.


“Berlusconi is politically dead, but his electorate is still there and it is looking for a new leader, and there isn’t one,” said Massimo Franco, a political columnist for the daily newspaper Corriere della Sera. “So it’s a sort of a nostalgic operation.”


In an auditorium near the Vatican, Mr. Berlusconi was greeted Thursday by rows of adoring fans, most of them retirees. “Ah,” he said. “It reminds me of the good old days.” Joking about his age, the 76-year-old former premier added: “I looked at myself in the mirror and saw someone who didn’t look like me. They don’t make mirrors the way they used to.”


In a two-hour off-the-cuff speech, he returned to familiar themes: depicting the left as unreconstructed, cold-war Communists; magistrates as politically motivated; the euro and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany as harming Italy; and Mr. Monti as a leader beholden to foreign interests who did nothing but raise taxes.


His supporters were mostly buying it. “Even if he doesn’t refund us the property tax, at least he’ll take it away,” said Francesca Cipriani, 70, a retiree, as she cheered Mr. Berlusconi.


“My house is worth 20 percent less,” Nicola Manichelli, 75, a retired taxi driver, chimed in.


Marcello Sorgi, a columnist for the Turin daily newspaper La Stampa, said: “Berlusconi voters fear that Monti will raise taxes, and that under Berlusconi that won’t happen. It’s not at all true, but Berlusconi’s propaganda works with his electorate.”


“His electorate still has a messianic, religious rapport with him,” Mr. Sorgi added.“Berlusconi is considered a kind of guru.”


Not so with Mr. Monti, who is beloved in Brussels, Berlin and Washington, but has been less popular with Italian voters. As he learns to campaign, Mr. Monti, an economist with no previous political experience, has sought the services of the political consulting firm AKPD Message and Media, whose co-founder, David Axelrod, President Obama’s key political strategist, visited Mr. Monti in Rome last month.


Mr. Monti, who is trying to capture the civic-minded centrists from both right and left who once voted for the centrist Christian Democrats before the party disbanded in a corruption scandal in the early 1990s, also opened a Facebook page. He uses it to post folksy musings that some critics say are undermining the authority of the slyly ironic but hardly showmanlike candidate instead of humanizing him.


Last week, an interviewer presented Mr. Monti with a puppy on live television, days after Mr. Berlusconi had appeared with one. “This is a mean blackmail,” Mr. Monti said with a smile, before stroking the fluffy pet and saying, “Feel how soft it is.”


Mr. Bersani, a longtime party veteran and former economic growth minister, speaks more to the old guard of the Italian left. He defeated Matteo Renzi, the charismatic 38-year-old mayor of Florence, in a rare party primary and has been running on the slogan “A Just Italy,” a message aimed at reassuring voters but which may not inspire them.


In a half-hour speech on Thursday to party loyalists, including municipal workers and frustrated university adjunct teachers, Mr. Bersani called attention to youth unemployment and the disconnect between the real economy and financial markets, and called for economic stimulation to help more people have steady jobs. “Europe isn’t just the fiscal compact,” he said.


Both Mr. Berlusconi and Mr. Bersani appear to speak more to their own constituencies than to the nation as a whole, long a characteristic of Italian politics. Faced with a political class that seems stuck in the past, Mr. Grillo and his antipolitical Five Star Movement have been gaining ground in the polls, campaigning in piazzas across Italy.


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Kelly Clarkson Already Has a Wedding Dress






Cover Story








02/09/2013 at 09:00 AM EST



Kelly Clarkson was about to experience a dream moment for any bride: trying on wedding dresses at Vera Wang's chiffon-and champagne-filled boutique in West Hollywood on Feb. 1.

"I was in the changing room, and I looked at my armpits, and I was like, 'Are you kidding me? I look like a cave woman!' " recounts the singer, relaxing a day later in jeans and a hoodie-covered Willie Nelson T-shirt in her adopted hometown of Nashville.

"And then I took my pants off, and I was like, 'Oh my God, my legs match!' My nails looked like a hot mess; my eyebrows looked like bushes. I was so not a girl. I started tearing up because I'm like, 'This is not me. I'm usually not this gross. I'm just so busy!'

"And then on top of that," Clarkson continues, "My friend got incredibly ill like in the movie Bridesmaids. She's like, 'We are totally not going to get asked back here.' "

So things didn't quite go as planned at Vera Wang, but by day's end, the bride-to-be did score the dress of her dreams. And a Grammy dress. And even a Jane Austen-inspired frock for an upcoming family portrait. (More on that in a bit.)

The wedding gown "is my personality in a dress," she says. "It's sweetly damaged. A little rock and roll. A little tattered. Nothing like a princess thing!"

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After early start, worst of flu season may be over


NEW YORK (AP) — The worst of the flu season appears to be over.


The number of states reporting intense or widespread illnesses dropped again last week, and in a few states there was very little flu going around, U.S. health officials said Friday.


The season started earlier than normal, first in the Southeast and then spreading. But now, by some measures, flu activity has been ebbing for at least four weeks in much of the country. Flu and pneumonia deaths also dropped the last two weeks, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported.


"It's likely that the worst of the current flu season is over," CDC spokesman Tom Skinner said.


But flu is hard to predict, he and others stressed, and there have been spikes late in the season in the past.


For now, states like Georgia and New York — where doctor's offices were jammed a few weeks ago — are reporting low flu activity. The hot spots are now the West Coast and the Southwest.


Among the places that have seen a drop: Lehigh Valley Hospital-Cedar Crest in Allentown, Pa., which put up a tent outside its emergency room last month to help deal with the steady stream of patients. There were about 100 patients each day back then. Now it's down to 25 and the hospital may pack up its tent next week, said Terry Burger, director of infection control and prevention for the hospital.


"There's no question that we're seeing a decline," she said.


In early December, CDC officials announced flu season had arrived, a month earlier than usual. They were worried, saying it had been nine years since a winter flu season started like this one. That was 2003-04 — one of the deadliest seasons in the past 35 years, with more than 48,000 deaths.


Like this year, the major flu strain was one that tends to make people sicker, especially the elderly, who are most vulnerable to flu and its complications


But back then, that year's flu vaccine wasn't made to protect against that bug, and fewer people got flu shots. The vaccine is reformulated almost every year, and the CDC has said this year's vaccine is a good match to the types that are circulating. A preliminary CDC study showed it is about 60 percent effective, which is close to the average.


So far, the season has been labeled moderately severe.


Like others, Lehigh Valley's Burger was cautious about making predictions. "I'm not certain we're completely out of the woods," with more wintry weather ahead and people likely to be packed indoors where flu can spread around, she said.


The government does not keep a running tally of flu-related deaths in adults, but has received reports of 59 deaths in children. The most — nine — were in Texas, where flu activity was still high last week. Roughly 100 children die in an average flu season, the CDC says


On average, about 24,000 Americans die each flu season, according to the CDC.


According to the CDC report, the number of states with intense activity is down to 19, from 24 the previous week, and flu is widespread in 38 states, down from 42.


Flu is now minimal in Florida, Kentucky, Maine, Montana, New Hampshire and South Carolina.


___


Online:


CDC: http://www.cdc.gov/flu/


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State fires contractor on tech project









SACRAMENTO – The state has fired the contractor on one of its biggest and most troubled technology projects after deep problems with the system were revealed.


The decision to terminate the contract Friday stalls the costly effort to overhaul an outdated and unstable computer network that issues paychecks and handles medical benefits for 240,000 state employees. The $371-million upgrade, known as the 21st Century Project, has fallen years behind schedule and tripled in cost.


The state has already spent at least $254 million on the project, paying more than $50 million of that to the contractor, SAP Public Services. The company was hired three years ago after the job sputtered in the hands of a previous contractor, BearingPoint.





But when SAP's program was tested last summer, it made errors at more than 100 times the rate of the aging system the state has been struggling to replace, according to state officials.


"It would be totally irresponsible to move forward," said Jacob Roper, a spokesman for the California controller.


The Times highlighted problems with the state's 21st Century Project in December, soon after officials sent a letter to SAP saying the overhaul was "in danger of collapsing."


During a trial run involving 1,300 employees, Roper said, some paychecks went to the wrong person for the wrong amount. The system canceled some medical coverage and sent child-support payments to the wrong beneficiaries.


Roper said the state also had to pay $50,000 in penalties because money was sent to retirement accounts incorrectly.


"State employees and their families were in harm's way," he said. "Taxpayers were in harm's way."


The controller's office, which oversees the upgrade, will try to recoup the money paid to SAP, Roper said. Meanwhile, officials will conduct an autopsy on the system to determine what can be salvaged.


And Senate leader Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) called for a hearing to examine how so much money could be spent on the project with "apparently little to show for it."


A spokesman for SAP, Andy Kendzie, said the company was "extremely disappointed" that the controller terminated the contract.


"SAP stands behind our software and actions," Kendzie said in a statement. "SAP also believes we have satisfied all contractual obligations in this project."


Kendzie did not directly address the controller's concerns about errors during testing, nor did he say whether the company would fight any state effort to recover the $50 million.


Other California entities have struggled with SAP's work.


A $95-million plan to upgrade the Los Angeles Unified School District's payroll system with SAP software became a disaster in 2007, when some teachers were paid too much and others weren't paid at all.


More recently, Marin County officials decided to scrap their SAP-developed computer system, saying it never worked right and cost too much to maintain.


Both of those projects were managed by Deloitte Consulting.


chris.megerian@latimes.com





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Currents: Freedom Has Its Own Constraints







NEW YORK — On the surface, all they have in common is their Sunday airtime, at least in the United States. One television show is about English aristocrats, crisp, proper, well-dressed even in bed. The other is about four young women, often lost and very often unclothed, in a setting quite different from Yorkshire: Brooklyn, New York.




But “Downton Abbey” and “Girls,” both hugely popular, sometimes seem to be talking to each other. And it is a conversation of richer importance to our politics and culture than the nudity on one show and the costumes on the other might initially suggest.


On issue after issue, Americans continue to debate the limits of individual freedom — whether to abort a fetus or own a gun or sell stocks or buy drugs. And in different ways, the two television shows address the promise and limitations of the modern, Western emphasis on — even sacralization of — the individual.


“Downton” and “Girls” serve as bookends in an era defined by a growing cult of the self. “Downton” is about the flourishing of selfhood in a rigid, early-20th-century society of roles. “Girls” is about the chaos and exhaustion of selfhood in a fluid, early-21st-century society that says you can be anything but does not show you how.


“I don’t know what the next year of my life is going to be like at all,” says Marnie, a smart, pretty, rather lost twentysomething on “Girls.” “I don’t know what the next week of my life is going to be like. I don’t even know what I want. Sometimes I just wish someone would tell me, like, ‘This is how you should spend your days, and this is how the rest of your life should look.”’


“Downton” returns us to an earlier stretch of selfhood’s arc, when too little guidance was rarely the problem.


Set on a manor in which the hierarchy and fixedness of the country — indeed, of the Empire — are especially concentrated, “Downton” is a world where there is a way to do everything, from cleaning spoons to dressing for dinner. Status has been and still seems immovable, and servants must act at least as convinced of their inferiority as the masters are. Novelty and that great leveler, money, are reflexively suspected.


The drama is this world’s cracking under the pressure of new ideas like individualism. Thus the family driver, believing in equality and marrying for love, runs away with the family daughter; thus the men wear black tie instead of white to dinner one night; thus a new generation of servants is less servile, more willing to question.


Mary McNamara, a television critic at The Los Angeles Times, has described “Downton” as “the tale of an oppressive social and economic system that is finally being called into question.” The drama comes from watching our world slowly, inevitably defeat theirs: “the bondage of social bylaws and expectation, the fear of new technology, the desire to cling to old ways.”


But now fast-forward a century, and these social upheavals, beginning auspiciously, have ended badly on “Girls.”


What begins on “Downton” as a new liberty to follow your heart, to dare love that others find unwise, has culminated in “Girls” in romantic pursuits that are dully mercenary and often unwise.


The daughters of the sexual revolution are depicted without much agency: Far from being conquerors, initiators, even equals, the girls of “Girls” are reactors, giving in to an ex who changes his mind, or a gay man wanting to try something, or a financier seeking a threesome that he manages to upgrade to traditionally twosome marriage.


What begins on “Downton” as a welcome questioning of age and status roles has snowballed by the “Girls” era into grave role confusion: parents who cannot teach their children how to live because they feel guilty about parenting, or want to be friends more than guides, or still dress like teenagers and call their offspring “prude.”


Nowhere is this overshooting truer than with the roles of the sexes. If “Downton” shows a world in which women are starting to claim their own sexuality, “Girls” portrays a sexual dystopia in which those women seem to have negotiated poorly: Men now reliably get what they want, while women must often content themselves with scraps, as when the character Hannah celebrates “almost” satiation in bed as the best she is likely to get.


The creator of “Girls,” Lena Dunham, is a self-proclaimed liberal. But her show is, as some conservatives gleefully note, full of ammunition for their side.


“There are reasons for conservatives not to like or even to refuse to watch ‘Girls,”’ Peter Lawler, a political philosopher in the conservative Catholic tradition, wrote recently, adding: “But we have to admit that things that are really revolting from a moral or relational point of view are actually portrayed quite negatively.”


If seen as a work of criticism rather than celebration, “Girls” makes Mr. Lawler optimistic: “The hope the show gives us is the persistence of relational human nature,” despite the characters’ failures, for now, to achieve it.


“Girls” is about atoms that desire in vain to form molecules; about sex lives that breed more confusion than excitement; about people with the liberty to choose every day, on various dimensions, whom to be — and who grow very tired of the choosing.


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