Westside Assembly race is a nail-biter

One contestant in a still-undecided Assembly race has already begun hiring staff "just in case."

His opponent, on the other hand, kept a commitment to go to Hawaii with her mother, on the advice of her political consultant who told her there was "nothing you can do here but wait" until the ballots are counted.

That's how Santa Monica Mayor Richard Bloom and Assemblywoman Betsy Butler, both Democrats, are coping with the uncertainty of not knowing which has won their contest in California's changed political landscape. Political observers say the state may now have more such close races because of redrawn political maps and a new system that allows members of the same party to compete against each other in fall general election races.

The Butler-Bloom race is among a handful of contests the secretary of state's office considers too close to call more than two weeks after the election, so they must sweat it out until county elections officials can finish counting the hundreds of thousands of eligible ballots that couldn't be tallied on election night.

Counties have until Dec. 4 to finish their work and report to the state the final tallies for 53 congressional, 80 Assembly and 20 state Senate races.

"This is the third time I've been in a close race, so I've got more experience than I'd like to have," Bloom, 59, quipped recently, as he continued to hold a thread-like lead over Butler. He lost his first race for the City Council, in 1998, by around 100 votes and squeaked onto this year's fall ballot in a tight four-way primary.

He's been raising money for election consultants to monitor the post-election day ballot processing and has spent time in Sacramento attending orientation sessions for new lawmakers. Bloom also has been — tentatively — hiring staff for what he hopes will be his Capitol and local offices for the 50th Assembly District.

"The timeline is very short, and if everything holds to expectations," Bloom said, "I need to be prepared to assume office" Dec. 3.

Butler, 49, spent the first couple of weeks after the election tending to business in her old district, in Marina del Rey and the South Bay, before deciding to join her mother this week on their annual trip to Hawaii.

"I advised her to go because there is really nothing she can do here but wait," Parke Skelton, Butler's campaign consultant, said this week.

The Butler campaign, the California Democratic Party and Assembly Speaker John A. Pérez (D-Los Angeles), who backed the incumbent, also are sending representatives to keep tabs on the canvassing at the registrar-recorder/county clerk's offices in Norwalk.

But there's little either side can do except watch and wait as scores of county workers painstakingly slog every day — including Thanksgiving and weekends — through the roughly 792,000 ballots left countywide after election night. (No one can say how many remained in the Assembly race; estimates by the campaigns put the number at 15,000 to 40,000.)

Batches of newly processed ballots are tallied every few days and updated results posted on the registrar's website, lavote.net.

By Tuesday a total of about 476,000 ballots had been processed. The latest batch, consisting of about 130,000 ballots, showed Bloom's lead had slipped to just 79 votes, the smallest since he finished election night 212 votes ahead. The current tally is 85,508 for Bloom, 85,429 for Butler. The next update is scheduled for Friday.

Visitors can watch the tallies through a window from the hallway but aren't allowed inside.

Two floors above the computer room, workers sort through the uncounted ballots, which include mail-in votes that arrived before the 8 p.m. election day deadline but not soon enough to be processed for counting that night.

Also being counted are provisional ballots, which were given, for example, to voters who had requested mail ballots but showed up at the polls without them, or whose registration could not be immediately verified or who dropped off their ballots at other precincts. Those must be checked against registration rolls and precinct rosters to be sure no one voted twice.

Other ballots are too damaged or too lightly marked to go through a tabulating machine; each of those is examined and, if valid, "remade" so it can be counted. (The ballots are designed to hide how someone voted to avoid tampering.)

When the counting is done, the losing side can seek a recount but would have to pay for it, with the money refunded only if the outcome changes.

jean.merl@latimes.com

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IHT Rendezvous: Remake of 'Red Dawn' Changes Its Political Hue

HONG KONG — There are essentially two versions of North Korea available to cartoonists, filmmakers, political analysts and Jon Stewart. The first is the Acme-rocket, Wile E. Coyote kind of place where the leisure-suited, bouffant-haired dictator receives daily injections of the blood of young virgins and makes a dozen holes-in-one during his first-ever round of golf.

The second version of North Korea is a baleful gulag of a country that’s perpetually railing against the running-dog American imperialists and threatening to turn Seoul into a sea of fire. A million goose-stepping troops in the North can’t wait to get it on with the traitors in the South, and the Kim family’s nuclear missiles are always kept on hair-trigger alert.

A new film, “Red Dawn,” a remake of the 1984 cult classic, in opting for the latter caricature mixes “bargain-bin special effects, bad acting and politics,” as Manohla Darghis says in her review this week in The Times.

The original film in ’84 had Soviet shock troops invading the United States — the bipolar Cold War was still in geopolitical play, of course — and they are eventually defeated by a flannel-shirted and letter-jacketed posse of patriotic and exceedingly attractive Michigan farm kids. Among these children of the corn are Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey, pre-“Dirty Dancing.”

“Back in a simpler time, the enemy was simpler,” Dan Bigman writes in Forbes. “They didn’t own all of our debt or build our iPads or have way better airports than we do. They were the vaunted Soviets, their cars sucked, they didn’t have cable and sometime around 1984, they invaded the United States in a desperate attack aimed at messing up Patrick Swayze’s hair.”

Hairstyles and history change, of course, so the script for the remake replaced the Soviet marauders with heathen hordes from China. The film was shot in 2009, but when MGM suddenly found itself facing a fiscal cliff, the movie was shelved.

By the time new financing was secured, China had become the fastest-growing market for Hollywood films — and the second-largest market in the world after North America.

Mainland moviegoers were not likely to pay their hard-earned yuan for a film featuring Chinese villains. (More likely, they’d wait for pirated copies on DVD.)

The censors in Beijing also were not likely to be happy. Nobody puts Beijing in a corner.

So the “Red Dawn” producers did some fast nipping and tucking, digitally morphing the invaders into North Koreans.

The film historian Peter X. Feng said on a Yahoo blog that this sort of political switcheroo dates to World War I, when Cecil B. DeMille had a Japanese villain in his 1915 film “The Cheat.” By the time the film was reissued in 1923, Japan had become an American ally, so the bad guy was turned into a Burmese.

“Without a single word from Chinese authorities, the U.S. studio spent another $1 million to re-edit its film,” said a story in Global Times, a mainland newspaper affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party.

“But no matter what villains the U.S. film producers choose, ‘Red Dawn’ and many more films involving conflicts with foreign countries often reflect Americans’ stubborn Cold War mindset.

“In their imagination, there is always an aggressive and ideologically different state that is trying to spy on or wage war with the U.S. The heroic American people always fight back and wipe out the villains.”

As Rendezvous reported in July, a number of changes have been made to major Hollywood films to appease the Communist censors. Laundry hanging outside in Shanghai was cut from “Mission: Impossible III.” Scenes from a shootout in Chinatown were whacked from “Men in Black 3.” And highly skilled Chinese engineers were written into “Salmon Fishing in the Yemen,” even though no such characters were in the original book.

Such artistic “compromises” carry a financial logic. The Chinese movie market, worth more than $2 billion last year, is seen as increasingly vital for Hollywood filmmakers: One film-industry expert said Chinese moviegoers can bump a film’s box-office receipts by as much as $50 million.

“We were initially very reluctant to make any changes,” Tripp Vinson, one of the movie’s producers, told The Los Angeles Times. “But after careful consideration we constructed a way to make a scarier, smarter and more dangerous ‘Red Dawn’ that we believe improves the movie.”

But the director of the original “Red Dawn,” John Milius, told The Los Angeles Times that a remake was “a stupid thing to do.”

“The movie is not very old,” said Mr. Milius, who saw the first script of the new film. “It was terrible. There was a strange feeling to the whole thing.” He said the remake was “all about neat action scenes and has nothing to do with story.”

And Manohla says in her review that “thinking adults will find a North Korean invasion the stuff of wing-nut fantasies.”

David Axe, writing on the Danger Room blog of Wired magazine, calls the new remake “the dumbest movie ever.”

“If you want to watch good-looking young men gun down hapless North Korean soldiers against the backdrop of your local schools, churches and shopping malls, the Milius-free ‘Red Dawn’ could be just the thing,” says Mr. Axe. “But act fast. This is one cinematic invasion almost certain to collapse quickly.”

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Mayim Bialik and Michael Stone Divorcing

By Mike Fleeman

11/21/2012 at 05:00 PM EST

After "much consideration and soul-searching," Mayim Bialik announced Wednesday that she and husband Michael Stone are divorcing after nine years of marriage.

The Big Bang Theory star, who has sons Miles, 7, and Fred, 4, with Stone, cites "irreconcilable differences" for the split, which she revealed in a statement on her Kveller.com parenting blog.

"Divorce is terribly sad, painful and incomprehensible for children. It is not something we have decided lightly," she writes.

The former star of TV's Blossom, 36, also says that the split is not due to the attachment parenting she discusses in her book Beyond the Sling. "Relationships are complicated no matter what style of parenting you choose," she says.

"The main priority for us now is to make the transition to two loving homes as smooth and painless as possible," Bialik, 36, continues. "Our sons deserve parents committed to their growth and health and that’s what we are focusing on. Our privacy has always been important and is even more so now, and we thank you in advance for respecting it as we negotiate this new terrain."

She concludes by saying, "We will be ok."

The couple were married in August 2003 in Pasadena, Calif.

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Study finds mammograms lead to unneeded treatment

Mammograms have done surprisingly little to catch deadly breast cancers before they spread, a big U.S. study finds. At the same time, more than a million women have been treated for cancers that never would have threatened their lives, researchers estimate.

Up to one-third of breast cancers, or 50,000 to 70,000 cases a year, don't need treatment, the study suggests.

It's the most detailed look yet at overtreatment of breast cancer, and it adds fresh evidence that screening is not as helpful as many women believe. Mammograms are still worthwhile, because they do catch some deadly cancers and save lives, doctors stress. And some of them disagree with conclusions the new study reached.

But it spotlights a reality that is tough for many Americans to accept: Some abnormalities that doctors call "cancer" are not a health threat or truly malignant. There is no good way to tell which ones are, so many women wind up getting treatments like surgery and chemotherapy that they don't really need.

Men have heard a similar message about PSA tests to screen for slow-growing prostate cancer, but it's relatively new to the debate over breast cancer screening.

"We're coming to learn that some cancers — many cancers, depending on the organ — weren't destined to cause death," said Dr. Barnett Kramer, a National Cancer Institute screening expert. However, "once a woman is diagnosed, it's hard to say treatment is not necessary."

He had no role in the study, which was led by Dr. H. Gilbert Welch of Dartmouth Medical School and Dr. Archie Bleyer of St. Charles Health System and Oregon Health & Science University. Results are in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine.

Breast cancer is the leading type of cancer and cause of cancer deaths in women worldwide. Nearly 1.4 million new cases are diagnosed each year. Other countries screen less aggressively than the U.S. does. In Britain, for example, mammograms are usually offered only every three years and a recent review there found similar signs of overtreatment.

The dogma has been that screening finds cancer early, when it's most curable. But screening is only worthwhile if it finds cancers destined to cause death, and if treating them early improves survival versus treating when or if they cause symptoms.

Mammograms also are an imperfect screening tool — they often give false alarms, spurring biopsies and other tests that ultimately show no cancer was present. The new study looks at a different risk: Overdiagnosis, or finding cancer that is present but does not need treatment.

Researchers used federal surveys on mammography and cancer registry statistics from 1976 through 2008 to track how many cancers were found early, while still confined to the breast, versus later, when they had spread to lymph nodes or more widely.

The scientists assumed that the actual amount of disease — how many true cases exist — did not change or grew only a little during those three decades. Yet they found a big difference in the number and stage of cases discovered over time, as mammograms came into wide use.

Mammograms more than doubled the number of early-stage cancers detected — from 112 to 234 cases per 100,000 women. But late-stage cancers dropped just 8 percent, from 102 to 94 cases per 100,000 women.

The imbalance suggests a lot of overdiagnosis from mammograms, which now account for 60 percent of cases that are found, Bleyer said. If screening were working, there should be one less patient diagnosed with late-stage cancer for every additional patient whose cancer was found at an earlier stage, he explained.

"Instead, we're diagnosing a lot of something else — not cancer" in that early stage, Bleyer said. "And the worst cancer is still going on, just like it always was."

Researchers also looked at death rates for breast cancer, which declined 28 percent during that time in women 40 and older — the group targeted for screening. Mortality dropped even more — 41 percent — in women under 40, who presumably were not getting mammograms.

"We are left to conclude, as others have, that the good news in breast cancer — decreasing mortality — must largely be the result of improved treatment, not screening," the authors write.

The study was paid for by the study authors' universities.

"This study is important because what it really highlights is that the biology of the cancer is what we need to understand" in order to know which ones to treat and how, said Dr. Julia A. Smith, director of breast cancer screening at NYU Langone Medical Center in New York. Doctors already are debating whether DCIS, a type of early tumor confined to a milk duct, should even be called cancer, she said.

Another expert, Dr. Linda Vahdat, director of the breast cancer research program at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York, said the study's leaders made many assumptions to reach a conclusion about overdiagnosis that "may or may not be correct."

"I don't think it will change how we view screening mammography," she said.

A government-appointed task force that gives screening advice calls for mammograms every other year starting at age 50 and stopping at 75. The American Cancer Society recommends them every year starting at age 40.

Dr. Len Lichtenfeld, the cancer society's deputy chief medical officer, said the study should not be taken as "a referendum on mammography," and noted that other high-quality studies have affirmed its value. Still, he said overdiagnosis is a problem, and it's not possible to tell an individual woman whether her cancer needs treated.

"Our technology has brought us to the place where we can find a lot of cancer. Our science has to bring us to the point where we can define what treatment people really need," he said.

___

Online:

Study: http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1206809

Screening advice: http://www.uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org/uspstf/uspsbrca.htm

___

Marilynn Marchione can be followed at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP

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Top L.A. official's daughter, 11, found unattended at City Hall

The president of the Los Angeles Board of Public Works is under investigation by Los Angeles police after her 11-year-old daughter was found unattended at City Hall last week, sources familiar with the case said Wednesday.

No charges have been filed against Andrea Alarcon, 33, and she was not arrested.

Sandi Gibbons, spokeswoman for Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley, confirmed an investigation regarding Alarcon had been referred to her office but said prosecutors requested more evidence before determining whether to file any charges.

"If police present us new evidence, we of course will review it and make a determination as to how to proceed. However, we cannot comment on the case because we have nothing pending at this time," Gibbons said.

Alarcon, an appointee of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, declined to discuss the investigation, saying she is celebrating the holiday with her family.

"My daughter and I have an extremely close relationship and as a single mother, she often accompanies me to special events for work," Alarcon said. "Out of respect for my daughter's privacy and because she is a minor, I really have nothing further to say about this matter."

Few details about the case were released. Sources told The Times that officers found Andrea Alarcon's daughter at City Hall at around 11:45 p.m. Friday and took her to the Los Angeles Police Department's Central Division station. Police tried to locate Alarcon, who turned up at around 2 a.m., said the sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the case was ongoing.

Police opened a child endangerment investigation and contacted the county's Department of Children and Family Services, the sources said.

The incident took place the same night that City Hall's rotunda and Spring Street entrance were used for a party thrown by Project Restore, a group devoted to restoring city-owned landmarks.

Cooley is currently prosecuting a perjury and voter fraud case against Alarcon's father, Councilman Richard Alarcon, and his wife, Flora Montes de Oca Alarcon. That case centers around whether the councilman lied about living in a house in Panorama City.

Last December, the California Highway Patrol arrested Andrea Alarcon on suspicion of DUI. Authorities allege that she showed "signs of intoxication" while in her car with a child. She was later charged by prosecutors with drunk driving and committing cruelty to a child by endangering her health, according to the complaint.

Alarcon pleaded not guilty to those charges and is due back in a San Bernardino courtroom in connection with the case next month. Michael Scafiddi, Alarcon's attorney in that case, said he expects some of those charges to be dismissed "in the near future."

david.zahniser@latimes.com

andrew.blankstein@latimes.com

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Toll Rises as U.S. Pushes for Israel-Hamas Truce

JERUSALEM — Efforts to agree on a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas intensified Tuesday, but the struggle to achieve even a brief pause in the fighting emphasized the obstacles to finding any lasting solution.

On the deadliest day of fighting in the week-old conflict, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton arrived hurriedly in Jerusalem and met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel to push for a truce. She was due in Cairo on Wednesday to consult with Egyptian officials in contact with Hamas, placing her and the Obama administration at the center of a fraught process with multiple parties, interests and demands.

Officials on all sides had raised expectations that a cease-fire would begin around midnight, followed by negotiations for a longer-term agreement. But by the end of Tuesday, officials with Hamas, the militant Islamist group that governs Gaza, said any announcement would not come at least until Wednesday.

The Israelis, who have amassed tens of thousands of troops on the Gaza border and have threatened to invade for a second time in four years to end the rocket fire from Gaza, never publicly backed the idea of a short break in fighting. They said they were open to a diplomatic accord but were looking for something more enduring.

“If there is a possibility of achieving a long-term solution to this problem through diplomatic means, we prefer that,” Mr. Netanyahu said before meeting with Mrs. Clinton at his office. “But if not, I’m sure you understand that Israel will have to take whatever actions necessary to defend its people.”

Mrs. Clinton spoke of the need for “a durable outcome that promotes regional stability and advances the security and legitimate aspirations of Israelis and Palestinians alike.” It was unclear whether she was starting a complex task of shuttle diplomacy or whether she expected to achieve a pause in the hostilities and then head home.

The diplomatic moves came as the antagonists on both sides stepped up their attacks. Israeli aerial and naval forces assaulted several Gaza targets in multiple strikes, including a suspected rocket-launching site near Al Shifa Hospital. That attack killed more than a dozen people, bringing the total number of fatalities in Gaza to more than 130 — roughly half of them civilians, the Gaza Health Ministry said.

A delegation visiting from the Arab League canceled a news conference at the hospital because of the Israeli aerial assaults as wailing ambulances brought victims in, some of them decapitated.

The Israeli assaults carried into early Wednesday, with multiple blasts punctuating the otherwise darkened Gaza skies.

Militants in Gaza fired a barrage of at least 200 rockets into Israel, killing an Israeli soldier — the first military casualty on the Israeli side since the hostilities broke out. The Israeli military said the soldier, identified as Yosef Fartuk, 18, had died from a rocket strike that hit an area near Gaza. Israeli officials said a civilian military contractor working near the Gaza border had also been killed, bringing the number of fatalities in Israel from the week of rocket mayhem to five.

Other Palestinian rockets hit the southern Israeli cities of Beersheba and Ashdod, and longer-range rockets were fired at Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Neither main city was struck, and no casualties were reported. One Gaza rocket hit a building in Rishon LeZion, just south of Tel Aviv, wounding one person and wrecking the top three floors.

Senior Egyptian officials in Cairo said Israel and Hamas were “very close” to a cease-fire agreement. “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 of a cease-fire, followed by its implementation for 48 hours. That would allow time for Mrs. Clinton to involve herself in the process here and create a window for negotiators to agree on conditions for a longer-term cessation of hostilities.

But it seemed that each side had steep demands of a longer-term deal that the other side would reject.

Khaled Meshal, the Hamas leader, said in Cairo that Israel needed to end its blockade of Gaza. Israel says the blockade keeps arms from entering the coastal strip.

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

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: November 20, 2012

Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article misspelled the family name of the Israeli soldier who was killed in a Palestinian rocket attack on Tuesday. He is Yosef Fartuk, not Yosef Faruk. 

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Eric Stonestreet Wasn’t Drunk, He Swears

We realize there’s only so much time one can spend in a day watching new trailers, viral video clips, and shaky cell phone footage of people arguing on live television. This is why every day The Atlantic Wire highlights the videos that truly earn your five minutes (or less) of attention. Today:

RELATED: What Happens When You Sing ‘All Night Long’ All Night Long

So if you were one of the few people watching the American Music Awards, (which no one watched) you may have seen Eric Stonestreet be a little tipsy. But that isn’t half as enjoyable as watching Eric Stonestreet watching himself be a little tipsy that night. (Also, wow, he’s sort of a bro.)

RELATED: Modern Family Is Scary

RELATED: ‘Seven Psychocats’ and the 50 Best Bond Moments in 007 Minutes

A few days ago we found out that Paul Rudd was in play called Grace on Broadway because … (wait for it) someone in the balcony puked on the audience members during the play. Four days late we can laugh at the whole thing. Mostly because we weren’t barfed on: 

RELATED: A ‘Mad Men’ Rickroll and the Man That Destroys Carnival Games

RELATED: A Video to Restore Our Faith in Humanity and a Glacier Tsunami

Here’s how to make some magic. What you’ll need: 

(1) Canadian newscaster with chubby fingers

(1) Technology

(1) Drunk piece of technology

Voila: 

And finally. Thanksgiving is upon us!  Today we’re thankful for squirrels who like to eat plastic: 

Wireless News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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The Voice: Top Eight Contestants Revealed

TV Watch

By Julia Haskins

11/20/2012 at 10:05 PM EST

From left: Adam Levine, Cee Lo Green, Christina Aguilera, Blake Shelton and host Carson Daly

Mark Seliger/NBC

Following what Blake Shelton called the "best episode of The Voice we've ever had", spirited group performances on Tuesday night's show kept the energy up and distracted viewers just long enough from the business at hand – impending eliminations.

Christina Aguilera brought the heat with her song "Let There Be Love." Rascal Flatts shared their hit "Changed." Later, Adam Levine performed a rendition of Queen's "Crazy Little Thing Called Love," followed by the contestants taking on Pat Benatar's "Hit Me with Your Best Shot."

But once again, the decisions about who would stay and who would go were completely up to the viewers. No input from the coaches could save contestants this time. Keep reading to find out which contestants will sing again next week ...

The first round of results turned out to be good news for Nicholas David and Cassadee, later joined by Dez Duron and Cody Belew in the top eight.

America also gave Terry McDermott, Melanie Martinez, Trevin Hunte and Amanda Brown another shot at superstardom.

That means Bryan Keith and Sylvia Yacoub won't be singing again on Monday night's episode.

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OB/GYNs back over-the-counter birth control pills

WASHINGTON (AP) — No prescription or doctor's exam needed: The nation's largest group of obstetricians and gynecologists says birth control pills should be sold over the counter, like condoms.

Tuesday's surprise opinion from these gatekeepers of contraception could boost longtime efforts by women's advocates to make the pill more accessible.

But no one expects the pill to be sold without a prescription any time soon: A company would have to seek government permission first, and it's not clear if any are considering it. Plus there are big questions about what such a move would mean for many women's wallets if it were no longer covered by insurance.

Still, momentum may be building.

Already, anyone 17 or older doesn't need to see a doctor before buying the morning-after pill — a higher-dose version of regular birth control that can prevent pregnancy if taken shortly after unprotected sex. Earlier this year, the Food and Drug Administration held a meeting to gather ideas about how to sell regular oral contraceptives without a prescription, too.

Now the influential American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists is declaring it's safe to sell the pill that way.

Wait, why would doctors who make money from women's yearly visits for a birth-control prescription advocate giving that up?

Half of the nation's pregnancies every year are unintended, a rate that hasn't changed in 20 years — and easier access to birth control pills could help, said Dr. Kavita Nanda, an OB/GYN who co-authored the opinion for the doctors group.

"It's unfortunate that in this country where we have all these contraceptive methods available, unintended pregnancy is still a major public health problem," said Nanda, a scientist with the North Carolina nonprofit FHI 360, formerly known as Family Health International.

Many women have trouble affording a doctor's visit, or getting an appointment in time when their pills are running low — which can lead to skipped doses, Nanda added.

If the pill didn't require a prescription, women could "pick it up in the middle of the night if they run out," she said. "It removes those types of barriers."

Tuesday, the FDA said it was willing to meet with any company interested in making the pill nonprescription, to discuss what if any studies would be needed.

Then there's the price question. The Obama administration's new health care law requires FDA-approved contraceptives to be available without copays for women enrolled in most workplace health plans.

If the pill were sold without a prescription, it wouldn't be covered under that provision, just as condoms aren't, said Health and Human Services spokesman Tait Sye.

ACOG's opinion, published in the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology, says any move toward making the pill nonprescription should address that cost issue. Not all women are eligible for the free birth control provision, it noted, citing a recent survey that found young women and the uninsured pay an average of $16 per month's supply.

The doctors group made clear that:

—Birth control pills are very safe. Blood clots, the main serious side effect, happen very rarely, and are a bigger threat during pregnancy and right after giving birth.

—Women can easily tell if they have risk factors, such as smoking or having a previous clot, and should avoid the pill.

—Other over-the-counter drugs are sold despite rare but serious side effects, such as stomach bleeding from aspirin and liver damage from acetaminophen.

—And there's no need for a Pap smear or pelvic exam before using birth control pills. But women should be told to continue getting check-ups as needed, or if they'd like to discuss other forms of birth control such as implantable contraceptives that do require a physician's involvement.

The group didn't address teen use of contraception. Despite protests from reproductive health specialists, current U.S. policy requires girls younger than 17 to produce a prescription for the morning-after pill, meaning pharmacists must check customers' ages. Presumably regular birth control pills would be treated the same way.

Prescription-only oral contraceptives have long been the rule in the U.S., Canada, Western Europe, Australia and a few other places, but many countries don't require a prescription.

Switching isn't a new idea. In Washington state a few years ago, a pilot project concluded that pharmacists successfully supplied women with a variety of hormonal contraceptives, including birth control pills, without a doctor's involvement. The question was how to pay for it.

Some pharmacies in parts of London have a similar project under way, and a recent report from that country's health officials concluded the program is working well enough that it should be expanded.

And in El Paso, Texas, researchers studied 500 women who regularly crossed the border into Mexico to buy birth control pills, where some U.S. brands sell over the counter for a few dollars a pack. Over nine months, the women who bought in Mexico stuck with their contraception better than another 500 women who received the pill from public clinics in El Paso, possibly because the clinic users had to wait for appointments, said Dr. Dan Grossman of the University of California, San Francisco, and the nonprofit research group Ibis Reproductive Health.

"Being able to easily get the pill when you need it makes a difference," he said.

___

Online:

OB/GYN group: http://www.acog.org

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'Modern Family' actress to remain with adult sister for now

Teen actress Ariel Winter of "Modern Family" will remain with her sister under temporary guardianship, and a trial has been scheduled to decide her future home, a judge ruled Tuesday.

L.A. County Superior Court Judge Michael Levanas said a county Department of Children and Family Services report found that allegations that Winter's mother emotionally abused her were substantiated, while the department found physical abuse allegations inconclusive.

The judge on Oct. 3 temporarily stripped Chrisoula Workman of custody of her daughter. Winter, through her sister's attorney, alleged in a court filing that she was subject to ongoing physical and mental abuse by her mother. Workman has denied all accusations of abuse and filed more than two dozen declarations from friends, acquaintances, stylists and others saying they never witnessed any abuse.

"I would love to have my daughter home," Workman said outside of court Tuesday. "I love her with all my heart."

Winter's father, Glenn Workman, also filed an objection to the guardianship late Monday, stating that he wants a better relationship with his daughter and would be willing to care for her. He is currently not living with Chrisoula Workman.

Winter, 14, has been in the care of her adult sister, Shanelle Gray, who was also removed from Chrisoula Workman's care in the 1990s amid accusations of abuse.

Winter has been acting since she was 7 and currently stars as Alex Dunphy on the hit ABC series "Modern Family."

"Minor Ariel Workman has been a victim of on-going physical abuse (slapping, hitting, pushing) and emotional abuse (vile name-calling, personal insults about minor and minor's weight, attempts to sexualize minor, deprivation of food etc.) for an extended period of time by the minor's mother, Chrisoula Workman," her attorneys said in a petition for guardianship.

A trial to determine whether Gray gains permanent guardianship of her sister has been scheduled for Dec. 12. But Levanas said the case would be removed from his courtroom if the Department of Children and Family Services filed its own case.

"I am sure this family is going to get better," the judge said.

Three days after Winter, whose real name is Ariel Workman, took legal action to split from her mother, Chrisoula Workman reported to the sheriff's Crescenta Valley station that her daughter's boyfriend had had unlawful sex with the underage actress.

Chrisoula Workman contends that she discovered her daughter in the guest bedroom of her Montrose home on Sept. 24 in bed with a young man, believed to be 18, according to sources not authorized to discuss the investigation.

The young man was described as the teenage actress' boyfriend of several months, according to the sources, who also said the teenagers have denied doing anything unlawful.

Outside court Tuesday, Winter's brother Jimmy Workman said his teenage sister "doesn't want rules and wants to be able to date" whom she wishes. He said he hopes his sister will be reunited with their parents.

andrew.khouri@latimes.com

Times Staff Writer Richard Winton contributed to this report.

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