California's Iraq and Afghanistan war dead remembered

They came from Walker Basin, a speck of a community at the edge of the Sequoia National Forest. From the farm town of Reedley, where a barber gives boys joining the military free haircuts before they ship out.

They came from San Francisco. Los Angeles. San Diego.

When they died, photos went up on post office walls in their hometowns. On Veterans Day, there are parades and charity golf tournaments. Buddies gather at graves to drink to the ones who are gone.

In the 11 years since the wars began in Iraq and Afghanistan, 725 service members from California have been killed.

As all veterans are honored, the fallen are remembered

Many died young — 41% were not yet 22. Sixty-three were still teenagers.

They were fun-loving singles. Forty-seven were engaged. They were married, leaving behind 307 wives and husbands. They had children — 432 sons and daughters.

Forty of their obituaries noted that the Sept. 11 attacks spurred them to join up. Some were in elementary school when they watched the Twin Towers fall.

The scope of their loss can't be measured at one point in time. Life moves on, the wars are winding down. But towns, families and individual lives continue to be shaped by their absence.

Lately, 9-year-old Naomi Izabella Johnson has been asking a lot of questions about her father, Allen Johnson, a Special Forces medical sergeant from Los Molinos who was killed on foot-combat patrol in Khanaqin, Afghanistan, in 2005.

What was his favorite color? School subject? Animal? Book? Did he like mashed potatoes?

"It helps me for when I try to imagine him," she said.

Two months ago, her 10-year-old brother, Joshua, started crying inconsolably.

"What's wrong?" his mother, Eunice Johnson, recalled asking.

"I'm starting to forget — sometimes I can't see Daddy's face."

In Yuba City, Taylor Silva, 21, has been spending some time alone. Last week marked six months since her fiance, Chase Marta, 24, was killed by a roadside bomb in the Ghazni province of Afghanistan. He was one of more than 40 California service members to have died in the line of duty since last Veterans Day.

"I know his family and best friend have it just as hard. But we're all being a little quiet to each other because we're all a reminder to each other. His mom can't see me without crying," Silva said.

Seventeen women from California have been killed in the wars.

Hannah Gunterman McKinney of Redlands had told her father that the Army wouldn't send a new mother to Iraq. But she was deployed when her son, Todd Avery Gunterman, was just 1. Ten months later, in 2006, she was run over by a Humvee in Taji, north of Baghdad. She was 20.

She had joined the military as a way to earn money to go to fashion school. She reenlisted because she was a single mother and wanted to give her son financial stability. Now her parents are raising Todd Avery.

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War photography exhibit debuts in Houston museum

HOUSTON (AP) — It was a moment Nina Berman did not expect to capture when she entered an Illinois wedding studio in 2006. She knew Tyler Ziegel had been horribly injured, his face mutilated beyond recognition by a suicide bombing in the Iraq War. She knew he was marrying his pretty high school sweetheart, perfect in a white, voluminous dress.

It was their expressions that were surprising.

"People don't think this war has any impact on Americans? Well here it is," Berman says of the image of a somber bride staring blankly, unsmiling at the camera, her war-ravaged groom alongside her, his head down.

"This was even more shocking because we're used to this kind of over-the-top joy that feels a little put on, and then you see this picture where they look like survivors of something really serious," Berman added.

The photograph that won a first place prize in the World Press Photos Award contest will stand out from other battlefield images in an exhibit "WAR/PHOTOGRAPHY: Images of Armed Conflict and Its Aftermath" that debuts Sunday — Veterans Day — in the Houston Museum of Fine Arts. From there, the exhibit will travel to The Annenberg Space for Photography in Los Angeles, the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington and The Brooklyn Museum in Brooklyn, N.Y.

The exhibit was painstakingly built by co-curators Anne Wilkes Tucker and Will Michels after the museum purchased a print of the famous picture of the raising of the flag at Iwo Jima, taken Feb. 23, 1945, by Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal. The curators decided the museum didn't have enough conflict photos, Tucker said, and in 2004, the pair began traveling around the country and the world in search of pictures.

Over nearly eight years and after viewing more than 1 million pictures, Tucker and Michels created an exhibit that includes 480 objects, including photo albums, original magazines and old cameras, by 280 photographers from 26 countries.

Some are well-known — such as the Rosenthal's picture and another AP photograph, of a naked girl running from a napalm attack during the Vietnam War taken in 1972 by Huynh Cong "Nick" Ut. Others, such as the Incinerated Iraqi, of a man's burned body seen through the shattered windshield of his car, will be new to most viewers.

"The point of all the photographs is that when a conflict occurs, it lingers," Tucker said.

The pictures hang on stark gray walls, and some are in small rooms with warning signs at the entrance designed to allow visitors to decide whether they want to view images that can be brutal in their honesty.

"It's something that we did to that man. Americans did it, we did it intentionally and it's a haunting picture," Michels said of the image of the burned Iraqi that hangs inside one of the rooms.

In some images, such as Don McCullin's picture of a U.S. Marine throwing a grenade at a North Vietnamese soldier in Hue, it is clear the photographer was in danger when immortalizing the moment. Looking at his image, McCullin recalled deciding to travel to Hue instead of Khe Sahn, as he had initially planned.

"It was the best decision I ever made," he said, smiling slightly as he looked at the picture, explaining that he took a risk by standing behind the Marine.

"This hand took a bullet, shattered it. It looked like a cauliflower," he said, pointing to the still-upraised hand that threw the grenade. "So the people he was trying to kill were trying to kill him."

McCullin, who worked at that time for The Sunday Times in London, has covered conflicts all over the world, from Lebanon and Israel to Biafra. Now 77, McCullin says he wonders, still, whether the hundreds of photos he's taken have been worthwhile. At times, he said, he lost faith in what he was doing because when one war ends, another begins.

Yet he believes journalists and photographers must never stop telling about the "waste of man in war."

"After seeing so much of it, I'm tired of thinking, 'Why aren't the people who rule our lives ... getting it?' " McCullin said, adding that he'd like to drag them all into the exhibit for an hour.

Berman didn't see the conflicts unfold. Instead, she waited for the wounded to come home, seeking to tell a story about war's aftermath.

Her project on the wounded developed in 2003. The Iraq War was at its height, and there was still no database, she said, to find names of wounded warriors returning home. So she scoured local newspapers on the Internet.

In 2004 she published a book called "Purple Hearts" that includes photographs taken over nine months of 20 different people. All were photographed at home, not in hospitals where, she said, "there's this expectation that this will all work out fine."

The curators, meanwhile, chose to tell the story objectively — refusing through the images they chose or the exhibit they prepared to take a pro- or anti-war stance, a decision that has invited criticism and sparked debate.

And maybe, that is the point.

___

Plushnick-Masti can be followed on Twitter at https://twitter.com/RamitMastiAP

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Mind Faded, Darrell Royal’s Wisdom and Humor Intact Till End

Three days before his death last week at 88, Darrell Royal told his wife, Edith: “We need to go back to Hollis” — in Oklahoma. “Uncle Otis died.”

“Oh, Darrell,” she said, “Uncle Otis didn’t die.”

Royal, a former University of Texas football coach, chuckled and said, “Well, Uncle Otis will be glad to hear that.”

The Royal humor never faded, even as he sank deeper into Alzheimer’s disease. The last three years, I came to understand this as well as anyone. We had known each other for more than 40 years. In the 1970s, Royal was a virile, driven, demanding man with a chip on his shoulder bigger than Bevo, the Longhorns mascot. He rarely raised his voice to players. “But we were scared to death of him,” the former quarterback Bill Bradley said.

Royal won 3 national championships and 167 games before retiring at 52. He was a giant in college football, having stood shoulder to shoulder with the Alabama coach Bear Bryant. Royal’s Longhorns defeated one of Bryant’s greatest teams, with Joe Namath at quarterback, in the 1965 Orange Bowl. Royal went 3-0-1 in games against Bryant.

Royal and I were reunited in the spring of 2010. I barely recognized him. The swagger was gone. His mind had faded. Often he stared aimlessly across the room. I scheduled an interview with him for my book “Courage Beyond the Game: The Freddie Steinmark Story.” Still, I worried that his withering mind could no longer conjure up images of Steinmark, the undersize safety who started 21 straight winning games for the Longhorns in the late 1960s. Steinmark later developed bone cancer that robbed him of his left leg.

When I met with Royal and his wife, I quickly learned that his long-term memory was as clear as a church bell. For two hours, Royal took me back to Steinmark’s recruiting trip to Austin in 1967, through the Big Shootout against Arkansas in 1969, to the moment President Richard M. Nixon handed him the national championship trophy in the cramped locker room in Fayetteville. He recalled the day at M. D. Anderson Hospital in Houston the next week when doctors informed Steinmark that his leg would be amputated if a biopsy revealed cancer. Royal never forgot the determined expression on Steinmark’s face, nor the bravery in his heart.

The next morning, Royal paced the crowded waiting room floor and said: “This just can’t be happening to a good kid like Freddie Steinmark. This just can’t be happening.”

With the love of his coach, Steinmark rose to meet the misfortune. Nineteen days after the amputation, he stood with crutches on the sideline at the Cotton Bowl for the Notre Dame game. After the Longhorns defeated the Fighting Irish, Royal tearfully presented the game ball to Steinmark.

Four decades later, while researching the Steinmark book, I became close to Royal again. As I was leaving his condominium the day of the interview, I said, “Coach, do you still remember me?” He smiled and said, “Now, Jim Dent, how could I ever forget you?” My sense of self-importance lasted about three seconds. Royal chuckled. He pointed across the room to the message board next to the front door that read, “Jim Dent appt. at 10 a.m.”

Edith and his assistant, Colleen Kieke, read parts of my book to him. One day, Royal told me, “It’s really a great book.” But I can’t be certain how much he knew of the story.

Like others, I was troubled to see Royal’s memory loss. He didn’t speak for long stretches. He smiled and posed for photographs. He seemed the happiest around his former players. He would call his longtime friend Tom Campbell, an all-Southwest Conference defensive back from the 1960s, and say, “What are you up to?” That always meant, “Let’s go drink a beer.”

As her husband’s memory wore thin, Edith did not hide him. Instead, she organized his 85th birthday party and invited all of his former players. Quarterback James Street, who engineered the famous 15-14 comeback against Arkansas in 1969, sat by Royal’s side and helped him remember faces and names. The players hugged their coach, then turned away to hide the tears.

In the spring of 2010, I was invited to the annual Mexican lunch for Royal attended by about 75 of his former players. A handful of them were designated to stand up and tell Royal what he meant to them. Royal smiled through each speech as his eyes twinkled. I was mesmerized by a story the former defensive tackle Jerrel Bolton told. He recalled that Royal had supported him after the murder of his wife some 30 year earlier.

“Coach, you told me it was like a big cut on my arm, that the scab would heal, but that the wound would always come back,” Bolton said. “It always did.”

Royal seemed to drink it all in. But everyone knew his mind would soon dim.

The last time I saw him was June 20 at the County Line, a barbecue restaurant next to Bull Creek in Austin. Because Royal hated wheelchairs and walkers, the former Longhorn Mike Campbell, Tom’s twin, and I helped him down the stairs by wrapping our arms around his waist and gripping the back of his belt. I ordered his lunch, fed him his sandwich and cleaned his face with a napkin. He looked at me and said, “Was I a college player in the 1960s?”

“No, Coach,” I said. “But you were a great player for the Oklahoma Sooners in the late 1940s. You quarterbacked Oklahoma to an 11-0 record and the Sooners’ first national championship in 1949.”

He smiled and said, “Well, I’ll be doggone.”

After lunch, Mike Campbell and I carried him up the stairs. We sat him on a bench outside as Tom Campbell fetched the car. In that moment, the lunch crowd began to spill out of the restaurant. About 20 customers recognized Royal. They took his photograph with camera phones. Royal smiled and welcomed the hugs.

“He didn’t remember a thing about it,” Tom Campbell said later. “But it did his heart a whole lot of good.”

Jim Dent is the author of “The Junction Boys” and eight other books.

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Canada looks to lure energy workers from the U.S.

EDMONTON, Canada — With a daughter to feed, no job and $200 in the bank, Detroit pipe fitter Scott Zarembski boarded a plane on a one-way ticket to this industrial capital city.

He'd heard there was work in western Canada. Turns out he'd heard right. Within days he was wearing a hard hat at a Shell oil refinery 15 miles away in Fort Saskatchewan. Within six months he had earned almost $50,000. That was 2009. And he's still there.

"If you want to work, you can work," said Zarembski, 45. "And it's just getting started."

U.S. workers, Canada wants you.

Here in the western province of Alberta, energy companies are racing to tap the region's vast deposits of oil sands. Canada is looking to double production by the end of the decade. To do so it will have to lure more workers — tens of thousands of them — to this cold and sparsely populated place. The weak U.S. recovery is giving them a big assist.

Canadian employers are swarming U.S. job fairs, advertising on radio and YouTube and using headhunters to lure out-of-work Americans north. California, with its 10.2% unemployment rate, has become a prime target. Canadian recruiters are headed to a job fair in the Coachella Valley next month to woo construction workers idled by the housing meltdown.

The Great White North might seem a tough sell with winter coming on. But the Canadians have honed their sales pitch: free universal healthcare, good pay, quality schools, retention bonuses and steady work.

"California has a lot of workers and we hope they come up," said Mike Wo, executive director of the Edmonton Economic Development Corp.

The U.S. isn't the only place Canada is looking for labor. In Alberta, which is expecting a shortage of 114,000 skilled workers by 2021, provincial officials have been courting English-speaking tradespeople from Ireland, Scotland and other European nations. Immigrants from the Philippines, India and Africa have found work in services. But some employers prefer Americans because they adapt quickly, come from a similar culture and can visit their homes more easily.

Since 2010, about 35,000 U.S. workers a year have been issued work permits, according to Canadian immigration statistics. That's up 13% from earlier in the decade. And that figure is expected to grow as provinces continue to loosen requirements for temporary foreign workers.

Rudolf Kischer, a Vancouver-based immigration attorney, said his firm can hardly keep up with the processing of work permits for employers hiring U.S. help.

"We're the busiest we've ever been," he said.

Many of those workers are heading to where the labor market is hottest: Edmonton.

One of the fastest growing cities in Canada, this capital city owes its prosperity to the oil sands. Lying a few hours to the north, the sands are a mixture of sand, clay, water and bitumen — a heavy, black, viscous petroleum — that must be mined and processed to extract the oil. Alberta's massive deposits, which rival the conventional crude oil reserves of Venezuela and Saudi Arabia, are being developed at breakneck speed to meet the growing global demand for energy.

Edmonton has become a staging ground for oil companies that include Canada's Suncor Energy Inc., Shell Canada Ltd. and Chevron Canada Ltd. The energy sector has in turn boosted industries such as manufacturing, home building and retailing.

With a population of about 812,000, Edmonton looks a lot like many American cities. There are large strip malls anchored by U.S. retailers such as Costco and Home Depot, and ubiquitous coffee shops — except here Tim Horton's doughnut shops outnumber Starbucks 3 to 1.

The biggest difference: The unemployment rate here is 4.5%, and "We're Hiring" signs are posted in almost every window.

Moving to a city where the economy is firing on all cylinders was a sharp turn from struggling Motor City, Zarembski said.

Fat paychecks allowed him to ditch his battered Pontiac Grand Am for a late-model Dodge pickup truck. He has vacationed in the Dominican Republic and taken his 14-year-old daughter to Universal Studios in Florida. He's planning to buy a house in Edmonton's western suburbs soon.

With so much work available, Zarembski said, trade workers can afford to pick and choose. Jobs near Fort McMurray, a remote town six hours north, are the best-paid; a welder can make up $37 an hour. (At present Canadian and U.S. dollars are almost equivalent in value.) But laborers must stay in barracks-style camps, which energy companies have upgraded to woo them. The best ones offer private rooms with flat-screen TVs, gyms, prime dining and wireless Internet access.

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Bargains disappearing for distressed properties, Zillow says

Bargains on bank-owned homes are quickly vanishing in the country's most competitive markets.

Since the start of the mortgage meltdown, repossessed homes have been considered the discount aisles of real estate. Now competition among investors and first-time home buyers for affordable digs is making those distressed properties less affordable, a new analysis by Zillow.com shows.

"They will get somewhat of a deal, depending on the market," Zillow chief economist Stan Humphries said. "But, just generally, you are going to get less of a deal today than you would have gotten in late 2009 or early 2010."

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The shrinking discounts underscore how real estate has recovered this year as low interest rates and high affordability have sucked buyers back into the market. The number of for-sale homes has also fallen to levels not seen since the housing boom as foreclosures ease and homeowners — many who still owe more on their properties than they are worth — hold off on listing their houses for sale.

Zillow looked at sale prices of bank-owned homes and used a model to determine what that property would have brought if it had not been sold by a bank. In Las Vegas and Phoenix, for instance, a foreclosed home in September sold for the same price as a regular property.

Discounts were also marginal on bank-owned homes in the Inland Empire and the Sacramento region, 1.8% and 0.7%, respectively, according to the analysis. Both of these areas have grown increasingly competitive after being savaged by the housing bust. In the Los Angeles area, the foreclosure discount was 4.2% in September, Zillow said.

Certain Midwest and East Coast cities appeared to have the biggest foreclosure discounts. The Pittsburgh area had a discount of 27.4%, with Cleveland at 25.8%, Cincinnati 20.2% and Baltimore 20%.

Analysts figured the national foreclosure discount at just 7.7%. That's a big difference from the dog days of the housing bust, when people snapping up foreclosures could expect a discount of 23.7%, Zillow said.

Home shoppers looking for dime-store values now face a frustrating hunt. Gary K. Kruger, a real estate agent in Hemet, has seen buyers consistently bid on homes above the asking price and still struggle to make deals. One of his clients, a first-time buyer looking for a home in Vista, has bid on three properties — one a regular sale, one a bank-owned home and one a short sale — and lost each time.

Properties that are good for rentals or first-time buyers, along with properties priced in the lower-end of the move-up market, are "very, very hot," Kruger said.

"I have not had a successful person purchase a foreclosed home that was not an investor for months," he said. "Things are selling so quickly."

The story is similar in the Las Vegas region, said Keith Lynam, a real estate agent and chairman of the Nevada Assn. of Realtors' legislative committee. The number of foreclosed homes on the market in the Las Vegas area has dwindled to less than 300, compared with about 7,000 at its peak, Lynam said.

One of his clients, a potential buyer with a sizable down payment, has made half a dozen unsuccessful offers in the last six months.

"There is just zero inventory," Lynam said.

Experts are also revisiting the notion that foreclosed homes really drag down property values. A working paper by the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta published in August found that although the homes of troubled borrowers did drag down values of surrounding homes, the effects were small.

That paper also found that the worst declines occurred before the home was repossessed, indicating that the declines stemmed from people abandoning their homes or letting them fall into disrepair.

Sean O'Toole, a real estate investor and founder of the website ForeclosureRadar.com, agreed with the Zillow analysis. Previous studies failed to take into account the nature of most foreclosures and their geography, he said. Typically, and particularly during the last five years, foreclosures have been concentrated in more traditionally affordable areas. So comparing the median home price of all foreclosed homes during the bust with the median home price of non-foreclosed homes results in an apple-to-oranges comparison, he said.

"The results that Zillow got make perfect sense to me, because there is actually more demand for REO and foreclosures, because people believe they are a deal," O'Toole said, using shorthand for the term "real estate owned," which is how banks refer to the properties on their books. "There is more demand for those."

Michael Novak-Smith, a real estate agent in the Riverside area who specializes in listing foreclosures for banks, said the market has reached a frenzy few would have expected so soon after the bust. One bank-owned home he listed about two weeks ago in Fontana for $145,000 attracted 157 offers. The seller took an all-cash offer.

"That is really telling, because a lot of these buyers think they'll just go out and get a repo," Novak-Smith said. "But buyers need to come in strong with their best offers, because you will get beat right out. An entry-level house with 157 offers? That's just mind-boggling to me."

alejandro.lazo@latimes.com

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Walmart Moves Up Black Friday

Walmart is kicking off Black Friday shopping earlier than ever this year, opening stores at 8 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day.

“In addition to offering amazing low prices on the season’s top gifts, Walmart is taking the historic step to ensure wishlist items like the Apple iPad2 are available for customers during a special one-hour event on Thanksgiving,” the world’s largest retailer said in a statement today.

“We know it’s frustrating for customers to shop on Black Friday and not get the items they want,” said Duncan Mac Naughton, chief merchandising and marketing officer, Walmart U.S. “This year, for the first time ever, customers that shop during Walmart’s one-hour event will be guaranteed to have three of the most popular items under their tree at a great low price.”

Other retailers will also be opening earlier, including Sears at 8 p.m. on Thanksgiving, moved up from 4 a.m. on Black Friday last year. Kmart will be open Thanksgiving Day 6 a.m. to 4 p.m., then it will close and reopen 8 p.m. to 3 a.m. Macy’s, Kohl’s and Best Buy open at midnight; Toys R Us hasn’t announced its plans. Advice on how to snag the best deals.

To help convince folks to head out to the store after dinner, Walmart said it will guarantee that customers who are inside the store and in line between 10 p.m. and 11 p.m. can get these deals:

Apple iPad ®2 16GB with Wi-Fi – $ 399 plus get a $ 75 Walmart Gift Card

Emerson ® 32 720p LCD TV – $ 148

LG ® Blu-ray™ Player – $ 38

“If any of these items happen to sell out before 11 p.m. local time, Walmart will offer a Guarantee Card for the item which must be paid for by midnight and registered online. The product will then be shipped to the store where it was purchased for the customer to pick up before Christmas,” the retailer said.

A few of the top items available in store, while supplies last, include:

8 p.m. on November 22: Gifts for the Entire Family – Toys, Gaming, Home and Apparel

Xbox 360 ® 4GB + SkyLanders ™ Bundle – $ 149

Wii ™ Console- $ 89

More than 100 video games priced at $ 10, $ 15 or $ 25 each

Top Toys of the Season: Leappad ® 1.0 Learning Tablet ($ 65) and Furby ® ($ 45)

Razor ® Accelerator 12-Volt Electric Scooter – $ 79

Fisher Price Power Wheels ® Jeep ® Wrangler 6-Volt Ride Ons (Hot Wheels ® and Barbie ®) – $ 89 each

Licensed Boys’ and Girls’ 2-Piece Sleep Set – $ 4.50 each

Mens and Ladies Denim – $ 9.50 each

Home appliances such as a Crock Pot ® 6-Quart Slow Cooker and Mr. Coffee ® Programmable 12-Cup Coffee Maker – $ 9.44 each

Shark ® Steam Pocket Mop and Ninja ® Pulse Blender – $ 39 each

Fashion Dolls such as Barbie ®, Bratz ™ and Disney ® Princess – $ 5 each

Hundreds of DVD and Blu-ray movies such as Brave, The Amazing Spiderman, Hunger Game ranging from $ 1.96 to $ 9.96 each

Better Homes and Gardens ® 700-Thread Count Sheet Set – $ 19.96

48″ Air-Powered Hockey Table – $ 29.86

14′ Trampoline with Enclosure and Bonus Flash Light Zone – $ 159

10 p.m. on November 22: The BIG Event – Brand Name Electronics

Vizio ® 60″ 720p LED Smart TV with built in Wi-Fi – $ 688

Samsung ® 43″ 720p 600Hz Class Plasma HDTV – $ 378

HP ® 15.6″ Laptop with 4GB and 320GB hard drive – $ 279

Nikon ® D3000 Digital Camera with Lens Kit – $ 449

Samsung ® Smart ST195 Digital Camera – $ 99

Beats by Dr. Dre ® Headphones – $ 179.95

Nook ® Color ™ 8GB Tablet – $ 99

Virgin Mobile ® 3G/4G Hotspot – $ 39.88

5 a.m. on Nov. 23: Caffeine Not Needed – Great Savings on Gifts from Jewelry to Tires

Sharp ® 70″ 1080p 120Hz HDTV – $ 1,798

Acer ® 13.3″ Ultrabook ™ with 4GB and 320GB solid state drive – $ 499

$ 100 Walmart gift card with the purchase of select smartphones such as the Samsung ® Galaxy S III, Droid RAZR M by Motorola ® and HTC ® One X

Goodyear Tires ranging from $ 59 – $ 99 each

Forever Bride 1/3 -Carat T.W. Diamond Ring in 10K Gold – $ 198

Stanley ® 6-Drawer Rolling Tool Cabinet with 85-Piece Mechanic Tool Set – $ 99

Singer ® Sew Mate 5400 60-Stitch Sewing Machine – $ 99.97

5? Pre-Lit Harrison Christmas Tree – $ 20

Better Homes and Gardens Deluxe Recliner – $ 199

Black Friday Specials & More Online:

Samsung 50″ Class LED 1080p 60Hz HDTV – $ 698

Ematic 7″ Tablet Android 4.0 1GHz, 4GB – $ 49

Dsi XL Ultimate Bundle – $ 129

Razor A Kick Scooter, Multiple Colors – $ 25

Also Read
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Madonna fan guilty in NYC resisting arrest trial

NEW YORK (AP) — A former firefighter with a crush on Madonna has been convicted of resisting arrest outside her former New York City apartment building as he spray-painted poster boards with love notes.

A jury delivered its verdict Friday in Robert Linhart's trial. He could face up to a year in jail.

Defense lawyer Lawrence LaBrew tells the New York Post (http://bit.ly/ZgI4jl) that Linhart will appeal.

Linhart was arrested in September 2010. Police say he parked his SUV outside the singer's Manhattan apartment, laid out a tarp and wrote out such messages as "Madonna, I need you."

Jurors told the Post they felt it was fine for Linhart to express himself to the Material Girl. But they said they believed police testimony that he resisted arrest by flailing his arms.

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FEMA Chief Tours Damaged NYU Langone Medical Center

The federal government’s emergency management chief trudged through darkened subterranean hallways covered with silt and muddy water Friday, as he toured one of New York City’s top academic medical centers in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. The basement of the complex, NYU Langone Medical Center in Manhattan, smelled like the hold of a ship — a mixture of diesel oil and water.

“You’re going to deal with the FUD — fear, uncertainty and doubt,” W. Craig Fugate, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, told NYU Langone officials afterward, as they retreated to a conference room to catalog the losses. “Don’t look at this. Think about what’s next.”

NYU Langone, with its combination of clinical, research and academic facilities, may have been the New York City hospital that was most devastated by Hurricane Sandy. What’s next is a spectacularly expensive cleanup.

Dr. Robert I. Grossman, dean and chief executive of NYU Langone, looking pale and weary — as if he were, indeed, struggling to hold back the FUD — estimated that the storm could cost the hospital $700 million to $1 billion. His estimate included cleanup, rebuilding, lost revenue, interrupted research projects and the cost of paying employees not to work.

As the hurricane raged, the East River filled the basement of the medical center, at 32nd Street and First Avenue, knocked out emergency power and necessitated the evacuation of more than 300 patients over 13 hours in raging wind, rain and darkness. It disrupted medical school classes and shut down high-level research projects operating with federal grants.

Mr. Fugate arrived to inspect the damage and help plot the institution’s recovery, the advance guard of what aides said would be a hospital task force. He was brought in by Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, who kept saying that there was nothing like seeing the damage firsthand to understand how profound it really was.

“What was that movie — ‘Contagion?’ ” Mr. Schumer said, marveling at the hellish scene.

NYU Langone’s patients, a major source of revenue, have been scattered to other hospitals, creating a risk that they may never return. Dr. Grossman said he was counting on those patients’ loyalty.

John Sexton, president of New York University, which includes NYU Langone, and who also met with Mr. Fugate, raised fears that researchers might be lured away to other institutions because their grants were ticking away on deadline or because they must publish or perish. Outside the hospital, tanks of liquid nitrogen testified to the efforts to keep research materials from spoiling.

In inky blackness, the group stood at the brink of the animal section of the Smilow Research Center, where rodents for experiments had been kept, but they did not go inside. On Nov. 3, a memo sent to NYU Langone researchers said the animal section, or vivarium, was “completely unrecoverable.”

Dr. Grossman said that scientists had managed to save some rodents by raising their cages to higher ground.

A modernized lecture hall with raked seats used by medical students had been filled “like a bathtub,” he said, though it was dry on Friday. The library, he said, “is basically gone.”

Four magnetic resonance scanners, a linear accelerator and gamma knife surgery equipment, kept in the basement, were now worthless. Dr. Grossman said that in the future, he wanted to move such equipment, which is very heavy, to higher floors.

Electronic medical records were protected by a server in New Jersey, he said.

Richard Cohen, vice president for facilities operations, took the group past piles of sandbags and a welded steel door that had been blown out by the force of the flood. “That door was put in around 1959 to 1960, when doors were really doors,” Mr. Cohen said. “And this thing is completely torsionally twisted. I’ve never seen anything like that.”

Walking to the back of the hospital, Mr. Cohen used a loading dock as a measuring stick to estimate that the surge had risen to 14 ½ feet. “We were prepared for 12 feet, no problem,” Dr. Grossman said.

Dr. Grossman said it would take a couple of more weeks of assessing the damage to determine when the hospital could reopen. Outpatient business is already returning. Research and some inpatient services will come next.

Mr. Fugate said his agency would help cover the uninsured losses, and urged NYU Langone officials to move ahead.

At this point, Dr. Grossman said, he could only theorize as to why the generators had shut down. All but one generator is on a high floor, but the fuel tanks are in the basement. The flood, he said, was registered by the liquid sensors on the tanks, which then did what they were supposed to do in the event, for instance, of an oil leak. They shut down the fuel to the generators.

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As Black Friday sales drift earlier, some people push back

Upset by more store openings on Thanksgiving Day, shoppers and retail employees are stepping up efforts to get big chains to back off.

Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, has long been considered the start of the holiday shopping season, with retailers offering big discounts and early-morning deals to attract hordes of shoppers.

But opening times have been drifting earlier. Chains such as Wal-Mart and Sears have announced plans for Black Friday events this year starting as early as 8 p.m. Thanksgiving Day. Frustrated workers and customers say they are unhappy about cutting their family Thanksgiving dinners short.

More than 20 petitions on Change.org urge stores to open later.

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Casey St. Clair of Corona went online to ask Target Corp. to "take the high road and save Thanksgiving." Target ads leaked to Internet deal sites say the chain's stores are opening at 9 p.m. on Turkey Day. A Target spokeswoman declined to comment.

"I currently work two jobs, substitute teaching and [at] Target at nights and weekends, so having Thanksgiving off really does give me that one day to relax and visit family," St. Clair wrote on her Change.org petition page. "Having to work on Black Friday prevents me from going home to the East Coast to see my family."

Shoppers such as Brian Zinn, who created a petition asking stores to open no earlier than 8 a.m. Friday, are also outraged.

"People are being kept from seeing family and enjoying a holiday which should be a time of giving thanks, not going out to spend money on stuff we don't need," he wrote on his petition page. "Their decision to open their stores on a holiday is disgraceful, greedy and disrespectful to everyone."

Retailers in recent years have been experimenting with Black Friday specials that creep into Thanksgiving. But last year saw a substantial shift, analysts say, with Thursday night overtaking Friday morning as the official kickoff to the holiday shopping season, when retailers rake in up to 40% of their annual sales.

Analysts say bricks-and-mortar retailers may have little choice. To compete with online rivals that are accessible 24 hours a day, companies have to generate excitement in order to drag people out of bed to go shopping.

"They need to make it exciting for shoppers to come into stores," said Ron Friedman, a retail expert at advisory and accounting firm Marcum in Los Angeles. "The way to do that is open up early and have hot sale items, so people think they have to eat the turkey and run to the store."

Discount giant Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and department store chain Sears are each launching "door buster" deals starting at 8 p.m. Thanksgiving Day, their earliest times ever.

Most Wal-Mart stores are open 24 hours a day and have been open on Thanksgiving for many years, company spokesman Steven Restivo said. "Historically, much of our Black Friday preparations have been done on Thanksgiving, which is not unusual in the retail industry."

After opening at 4 a.m. Friday last year, Sears heard from many customers who wanted "to drop their drumsticks and get the door busters" right away, spokesman Brian Hanover said. Sears is trying to accommodate its employees by scheduling seasonal workers and volunteers who want the extra holiday pay.

"We see a demand from associates who ask to work, who want that opportunity to supplement their usual income," Hanover said.

No retailer wants to replicate J.C. Penney's experience, which opened on Friday morning last year and lost momentum to early-bird rivals.

Stores are facing even more pressure this year to match Wal-Mart, which as the world's largest retailer wields huge influence.

Analysts say most Black Friday shoppers, eager for discounts, aren't fazed by workers who cry foul and pass around petitions.

"As long as it doesn't affect them directly, they probably don't think too much about it," said Ken Perkins of Retail Metrics Inc.

Many industry watchers predict that Black Thursday will officially take over as the shopping holiday du jour.

"I hope that the day doesn't come that they all open their stores all day Thanksgiving," Friedman said. "But that day could come.

shan.li@latimes.com

adolfo.flores@latimes.com

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Prop. 30 win gives Jerry Brown major boost

SACRAMENTO — Just a few weeks ago, as support for Gov. Jerry Brown's tax initiative appeared to falter, some of his fellow Democrats were saying privately that he might be serving his last term.

None of them are saying that now.

Brown has emerged from his successful tax fight with replenished political capital, his experience and instinct trumping conventional wisdom.

"His standing in the Capitol is probably higher than it has ever been," said Tony Quinn, co-editor of the California Target Book, which monitors political races. "Now we have a strong governor.... He is going to be able to get his way a lot more."

A loss at the ballot box would have been catastrophic for Brown politically. It also would have devastated education budgets throughout the state. The passage of Proposition 30 addressed both scenarios.

Now, the Democrats who won record-high numbers in the Legislature on Tuesday will owe him for the billions of dollars they'll have to balance the budget. The business interests who fear what a supermajority of Democrats might do with new, unilateral power will be eager to work with the moderate governor. They may see the pragmatic Brown as a check on a hostile Legislature.

Brown himself is already talking about the next steps in the state's bullet-train program and about moving on a multibillion-dollar system to send more water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta to Southern California — projects that could reshape his image into one of a builder like his father, who was governor when the state built new freeways and universities.

He wants to focus on enduring changes to the state's spending policies that he hopes will enhance California's standing with Wall Street and put it on more stable financial footing.

He is vowing to steer the Capitol toward moderation in the coming years, working with business leaders to streamline state regulations that they complain hamper economic growth. He wants to lift some of the policies Sacramento has inflicted on local schools — often at the behest of the Democrats' labor allies — so they have more flexibility in deciding how to operate.

"The work is never done," Brown said at a Capitol news conference after the election, stressing that he would not lose sight of the nuts and bolts of government just because the financial books would be in order for now.

He joked at the Capitol on Wednesday that he never understood why there were so many doubters of his ability to pull off a Proposition 30 victory.

"Some people began to read tea leaves incorrectly," Brown told reporters. "And then you all go off like a herd of buffalo down the road. Hopefully you're all now back on the plane of common sense."

Brown's internal polls had shown steady support for his measure despite public surveys suggesting steep drops. He was watching a surge in Democrats signing up to vote, spurred by the new online voter registration system he signed into law. Unions were mobilizing to get voters to the polls.

The governor also knew he could ride the coattails of President Obama, who appealed to the same demographic group as Proposition 30 and has been consistently popular in California.

Still, the path to victory had looked rocky as election day loomed. As in his 2010 gubernatorial campaign, he had resisted pressure from old Capitol hands to mobilize all his forces quickly. He ignored advice to hit the stump early and hard, to hammer away at this theme or that, to blitz the airwaves from the beginning.

Unfavorable reviews of Brown's encore as governor began to mount. Brown had vastly more campaign money than his opponents, but No-on-30 ads blanketed the airwaves, helped by $11 million that secret donors gave a group devoted partly to defeating Brown's measure.

He tweaked his strategy after questioning employees at a San Diego coffee shop. When one young woman told him she hadn't seen his commercials because she doesn't watch TV, he called his chief advisor, his wife, Anne Gust Brown, to say they needed to reach the "non-TV voter."

Only days away from the election, he had not settled on whether he should be featured prominently in campaign advertisements. On a plane, in the air between Bakersfield and Fresno, he drilled a Central Valley state senator about how voters viewed him there and whether his face should appear on their television sets.

"If this had gone the other way, he would be perceived as a lame duck," said Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, a professor in the USC Price School of Public Policy. "You would have seen a lot more visible activity on the part of … possible opponents in the 2014 governor's race."

Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, a fellow Democrat, appeared to be positioning himself that way when he openly contradicted some of what Brown said on the campaign trail. As it became clear in the wee hours Wednesday that Proposition 30 would pass, Brown's press secretary had a message for Newsom in the form of a tweet.

It was a link to Elvis Presley performing "Are You Lonesome Tonight?"

evan.halper@latimes.com

anthony.york@latimes.com

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