San Bernardino council votes to slash budget more than $26 million

The City Council of San Bernardino, which is in bankruptcy and facing a $45.8-million budget shortfall, voted Monday to slash more than $26 million in spending and freeze debt payments as the municipality struggles to stay afloat.

The austerity plan, a required step in the federal bankruptcy process, freezes vacancies in the Police Department even as the city deals with an increase in violent crime. The Fire Department's overtime budget was slashed by 35%.

The city had already stopped making payments to CalPERS, the state's public employee pension fund, since filing for Chapter 9 bankruptcy protection Aug. 1, a move city officials estimate will save more than $12 million.

The council voted 5 to 2 in favor of the plan, which both Mayor Patrick Morris and City Atty. James Penman said was a mandatory step in the effort to restructure the city's debts and repair its finances under federal bankruptcy protection.

At a recent hearing, federal Bankruptcy Judge Meredith Jury told San Bernardino officials that she expected the budget-cutting plan to be filed soon. Some of the city's creditors have argued that San Bernardino does not qualify to file for municipal bankruptcy protection.

"We have a mountain to climb here," Morris said during Monday's meeting at City Hall.

Councilman Chas Kelley blasted the budget-cutting plan for being shortsighted and not addressing San Bernardino's long-term financial health, which he said depends on attracting business and expanding the middle class.

"This budget is a financial equivalent of using leeches to bleed a sick patient," Kelley said. "There is no vision in this budget for our city's economic renewal."

Joining Kelley in voting against the plan was Councilman John Valdivia, who objected to freezing the police force "in a city with all-time-high crime rate levels." The city has 299 sworn officers in the current budget, although 18 positions have been vacant.

Councilwoman Wendy McCammack acknowledged that many of the cuts were objectionable but said the council had little choice but to make the tough decisions demanded by the bankruptcy process. Failing to do so, she said, would lead to the city dissolving and being governed by the county.

phil.willon@latimes.com

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Mohamed Morsi of Egypt Faces Backlash Against Decree

Tara Todras-Whitehill for The New York Times

Protesters clashed with police in the streets of Cairo for the third straight day.

CAIRO — Cracks appeared on Sunday in the government of President Mohamed Morsi of Egypt, as he faces mounting pressure over his sweeping decree seeking to elevate his edicts above the reach of any court until a new constitution is approved.

Mr. Morsi’s justice minister began arguing publicly for a retreat. At least three other senior advisers resigned over the measure. And it has prompted widening street protests and cries from opponents that Mr. Morsi, who already governs without a legislature, was moving toward a new autocracy in Egypt, less than two years after the ouster of the strongman Hosni Mubarak.

With a threatened strike by the nation’s judges, a plunge in the country’s stock market and more street protests looming, Mr. Morsi’s administration sent mixed messages on Sunday over whether it was willing to consider a compromise. A spokesman for the president’s party insisted that there would be no change in his edict, but a statement from the party indicated for the first time a willingness to give political opponents “guarantees against monopolizing the fateful decisions of the homeland in the absence of the Parliament.”

And the justice minister, Ahmed Mekki, the influential leader of a judicial independent movement under Mr. Mubarak and one of Mr. Morsi’s closest aides, was actively trying to broker a deal with top jurists to resolve the crisis.

It is the most acute test to date of the ability and willingness of Mr. Morsi, Egypt’s first freely elected president and a former leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, to engage in the kind of give and take that democratic government requires. But he also must contend with real doubts about the willingness of his anti-Islamist opponents to join him in compromise. Each side is mired in deep suspicion of the other, a legacy of the decades when the Brotherhood survived here only as an insular secret society, demonized as dangerous radicals by most of the Egyptian elite.

“There is a deep mistrust,” said Emad Shahin, a political scientist at the American University in Cairo who studies the Brotherhood. “It is an ugly round of partisan politics,” he said, “a bone-crushing phase.”

The scale of the backlash against the decree appeared to catch Mr. Morsi’s government by surprise. “In his head, the president thought that this would push us forward, but then it was met with all this inflammation,” Mr. Mekki said. He faulted the president for failing to consult with his opponents before issuing it, but he also faulted the opponents for their own unwillingness to come to the table: “I blame all of Egypt, because they do not know how to talk to each other.”

Government and party officials maintained that Mr. Morsi was forced to claim the expansive new powers to protect the process of writing the country’s new constitution, and that the decree would be in effect only until the charter was in place. A court of judges appointed under the Mubarak government was widely rumored to be about to dissolve the elected constitutional assembly, dominated by Mr. Morsi’s Islamist allies — just as the same court had previously cast out the newly elected Islamist-led Parliament — and the decree issued by Mr. Morsi on Thursday gave him the power to stop it.

“I see with all of you, clearly, that the court verdict is announced two or three weeks before the court session,” Mr. Morsi told his supporters on Friday, referring to the pervasive rumors about the court’s impending action in a fiery speech defending his decree. “We will dissolve the entire homeland, as it seems! How is that? How? Those waywards must be held accountable."

He said that corrupt Mubarak loyalists were “hiding under the cover of the judiciary” and declared, “I will uncover them!”

But instead of rallying the public to his side and speeding the country’s political transition, as Mr. Morsi evidently hoped, his decree has unleashed new instability across the country. On Sunday, the first day of business here since the decree was issued, the Egyptian stock market fell by about 9.5 percent, erasing more than $4 billion of value.

The Muslim Brotherhood’s political offshoot, the Freedom & Justice Party, faced the ire of protesters. Nader Omran, a spokesman for the party, said on Sunday that as many as 13 of its offices around the country had been burned or ransacked, and he blamed the attacks on an organized conspiracy.

The most significant sign of the growing pressure on Mr. Morsi, though, may have been the apparent efforts of Mr. Mekki, the justice minister, to address the crisis by finding a way to scale back the decree.

Kareem Fahim, Nevine Ramzy, Mayy El Sheikh and Mai Ayyad contributed reporting.

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Tom Cruise Films Helicopter Scene in Empty Trafalgar Square

11/25/2012 at 05:15 PM EST

Tom Cruise in Trafalgar Square

FameFlynet

Back to work!

After spending Thanksgiving with daughter Suri, 6, Tom Cruise filmed scenes for the sci-fi action film All You Need Is Kill in London on Sunday.

The actor, who plays alien fighter Lt. Col. Bill Cage, landed in a helicopter in the middle of the usually bustling Trafalgar Square, which was shut down for the scene, in the heart of London.

Based on Hiroshi Sakurazaka's novel, the movie follows Cage as he battles the Mimics, a violent race of alien invaders, while stuck in a time loop.

Emily Blunt also stars in the film as Special Forces fighter Rita Vrataski, who according to Deadline.com, has destroyed more Mimics than anyone else on earth.

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AP PHOTOS: Simple surgery heals blind Indonesians

PADANG SIDEMPUAN, Indonesia (AP) — They came from the remotest parts of Indonesia, taking crowded overnight ferries and riding for hours in cars or buses — all in the hope that a simple, and free, surgical procedure would restore their eyesight.

Many patients were elderly and needed help to reach two hospitals in Sumatra where mass eye camps were held earlier this month by Nepalese surgeon Dr. Sanduk Ruit. During eight days, more than 1,400 cataracts were removed.

The patients camped out, sleeping side-by-side on military cots, eating donated food while fire trucks supplied water for showers and toilets. Many who had given up hope of seeing again left smiling after their bandages were removed.

"I've been blind for three years, and it's really bad," said Arlita Tobing, 65, whose sight was restored after the surgery. "I worked on someone's farm, but I couldn't work anymore."

Indonesia has one of the highest rates of blindness in the world, making it a target country for Ruit who travels throughout the developing world holding free mass eye camps while training doctors to perform the simple, stitch-free procedure he pioneered. He often visits hard-to-reach remote areas where health care is scarce and patients are poor. He believes that by teaching doctors how to perform his method of cataract removal, the rate of blindness can be reduced worldwide.

Cataracts are the leading cause of blindness globally, affecting about 20 million people who mostly live in poor countries, according to the World Health Organization.

"We get only one life, and that life is very short. I am blessed by God to have this opportunity," said Ruit, who runs the Tilganga Eye Center in Katmandu, Nepal. "The most important of that is training, taking the idea to other people."

During the recent camps, Ruit trained six doctors from Indonesia, Thailand and Singapore.

Here, in images, are scenes from the mobile eye camps:

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University's neighbors complain about student parking

On a recent stroll in her Westchester neighborhood, Leslie Rittenour watched a dusty white Cherokee with Washington plates wedge its way into a small parking spot on the street in front of her home.

Like the two cars it squeezed between — a gray Prius and a beat-up Honda — it had a Loyola Marymount University decal on its windshield.

Rittenour pursed her lips as she walked past the cars.

"They say it's a public street," Rittenour said, scoffingly. "If every day it's like this, it's really just an LMU parking lot."

For Rittenour and others whose homes border the edge of the university campus, competing with students for parking leads to frequent frustrations — ones they fear will get worse when the school starts charging for on-campus parking in January.

Local residents have had to get creative to find solutions. One woman put out a row of trash cans strung together with red ribbon to save spots for a dinner party. Others put bricks in the road.

Several neighbors gathered with a panel of LMU employees at the Westchester Senior Center on a recent evening to discuss some of the issues causing tension between the school and the neighborhood. The biggies: loud parties and street parking.

Clarence Griffin, director of LMU's community and government relations, nodded and jotted notes as neighbors made complaints. Though the university is bound by its 20-year master plan, officials are open to ideas from the community.

During the meeting, for example, one resident suggested that the school block off some entrances so students can't get to campus as quickly from the neighborhood. She asked Griffin if he would pass along her idea. He nodded. "I think that's definitely something that would be worthy of conversation," he said.

The school's master plan — a slew of modernization and renovation projects approved unanimously by the Los Angeles City Council in February 2011 — didn't increase the campus-enrollment cap of 7,800 students or its acreage. It did, however, approve more on-campus parking.

Neighbors welcome the prospect of added parking spots, but not the plan to charge for them. Students will pay $670 a year; staff, $696.

The school hopes the fees will add an incentive for the students, faculty and staff who live nearby to walk, ride a bike or take public transportation. LMU plans to expand its shuttle options and create a carpool website, which will help people find other commuters within their ZIP code.

Rio Gomez, a 21-year-old liberal studies junior who lives a 10-minute drive from campus, said that once LMU starts charging he'll probably do the same thing he does now: park off campus.

On a recent afternoon, he parked just south of campus along Loyola Boulevard and rushed to the library to print a paper for his educational psychology class.

His habit of parking on nearby streets started after one too many mornings of waiting in a long line of cars looking for campus parking.

"I'm a procrastinator," Gomez said through a smile. "I'm usually late to class, so I rush, park in a residential area and go to class."

One possible solution for keeping students off the streets is to create a permit-parking district.

Residents could get up to three annual passes for $34 each, two $22.50 visitor passes that would last four months and day passes that cost $2.50.

LMU officials are taking no position on the permit parking. If the neighbors want it, though, the school's master plan set aside $24,000 a year to help pay for residents' parking permits.

Linda Kokelaar, who lives just east of campus, vehemently opposes permit parking because she doubts the school's subsidy will cover everyone's fees.

"Why should we have that burden?" Kokelaar said. "That's not fair."

Kokelaar started a petition — "Permit Parking is NOT the Solution" — and enlisted the help of her 93-year-old neighbor Mary Rennells.

Rennells and her late husband moved into the Westchester neighborhood east of campus in 1949 and she doesn't like to see it change. So this summer, she canvassed the streets and collected signatures.

"I walked, and it's not easy to walk," Rennells said. "But I thoroughly enjoyed it. Everyone signed. I quit counting after 100."

On a recent afternoon, as she picked tulips from her small garden, a black Volvo zoomed up. A baby-faced boy clutching a stack of books hopped out. He is one of the crew of LMU students who live next door.

He saw Rennells and a smile spread across his face. He waved and said hi.

Rennells' eyes lit up and she waved back.

"They're really, really high-class boys," Rennells said. "They're really sweet to me."

marisa.gerber@latimes.com

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At Least 100 Dead in Bangladesh Fire, Official Says

Andrew Biraj/Reuters

Firefighters tried to control a fire at a garment factory in Savar, Bangladesh, on Saturday.

DHAKA, Bangladesh (AP) — At least 112 people were killed in a fire that raced through a multi-story garment factory just outside of Bangladesh's capital, an official said Sunday.

The blaze broke out at the seven-story factory operated by Tazreen Fashions late Saturday. By Sunday morning, firefighters had recovered 100 bodies, fire department Operations Director Maj. Mohammad Mahbub told The Associated Press.

He said another 12 people who had suffered injuries after jumping from the building to escape the fire later died at hospitals.

The death toll could rise as the search for victims was continuing, he said.

Mahbub said army soldiers and border guards had been deployed to help police keep the situation under control as thousands of anxious relatives of the factory workers gathered at the scene.

He would not say how many people were still missing.

Bangladesh has some 4,000 garment factories, many without proper safety measures. The country annually earns about $20 billion from exports of garment products, mainly to the United States and Europe.

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AP PHOTOS: Simple surgery heals blind Indonesians

PADANG SIDEMPUAN, Indonesia (AP) — They came from the remotest parts of Indonesia, taking crowded overnight ferries and riding for hours in cars or buses — all in the hope that a simple, and free, surgical procedure would restore their eyesight.

Many patients were elderly and needed help to reach two hospitals in Sumatra where mass eye camps were held earlier this month by Nepalese surgeon Dr. Sanduk Ruit. During eight days, more than 1,400 cataracts were removed.

The patients camped out, sleeping side-by-side on military cots, eating donated food while fire trucks supplied water for showers and toilets. Many who had given up hope of seeing again left smiling after their bandages were removed.

"I've been blind for three years, and it's really bad," said Arlita Tobing, 65, whose sight was restored after the surgery. "I worked on someone's farm, but I couldn't work anymore."

Indonesia has one of the highest rates of blindness in the world, making it a target country for Ruit who travels throughout the developing world holding free mass eye camps while training doctors to perform the simple, stitch-free procedure he pioneered. He often visits hard-to-reach remote areas where health care is scarce and patients are poor. He believes that by teaching doctors how to perform his method of cataract removal, the rate of blindness can be reduced worldwide.

Cataracts are the leading cause of blindness globally, affecting about 20 million people who mostly live in poor countries, according to the World Health Organization.

"We get only one life, and that life is very short. I am blessed by God to have this opportunity," said Ruit, who runs the Tilganga Eye Center in Katmandu, Nepal. "The most important of that is training, taking the idea to other people."

During the recent camps, Ruit trained six doctors from Indonesia, Thailand and Singapore.

Here, in images, are scenes from the mobile eye camps:

Read More..

Long Beach group helps disadvantaged teens aim for college

Charlene Chhom, 14, has never had her own room. She, five siblings, her mother and grandmother share a cramped four-bedroom house in the heart of the Cambodia Town neighborhood in Long Beach.

It can be hard for her to focus sometimes in the full house, so she studies at a Starbucks or locks herself in the room she shares with her sister.

"When we talk, it's like everybody talking," she says, her blue-shellacked fingernails tapping on the family's small kitchen table. "When I'm with my mentor, it's just me and her."

Charlene and her two younger brothers are among the 113 Long Beach students who participate in programs at Operation Jump Start, a local nonprofit that helps disadvantaged and low-income youths aim for college. The organization pairs each student, most in grades eight through 12, with a college graduate who can work with them for up to five years, escorting them to campus tours and volunteer activities.

"She's like the oldest of all my siblings," Charlene said of her mentor, Renee Van Winkle, 30, who gives her school advice and tips on her least favorite subject — geometry.

Operation Jump Start also provides tutoring and information sessions on picking high school classes and college requirements, and it gives incentives for high grade-point averages.

Before joining last year, Charlene thought she might go to community college or nearby Cal State Long Beach. But after a weeklong "camp-out" in UC Irvine's dorms this spring, part of a joint program with the center, Charlene says she hopes to apply there too.

Her sister Linda was the first in her family to "go dorming" at a four-year college, as Charlene puts it, and encouraged her younger siblings to join the mentoring program. The family took up an entire table last year when they watched Linda graduate from Operation Jump Start. Charlene says she was "really proud" of her sister, but also encouraged. "If she can pass OJS, then we can all pass OJS, and we can all go to college and make it," she said.

Executive Director Jill Jones calls the nonprofit's graduation ceremony, which participants from all grade levels attend, one of the most important events of the year. "They all get a sense that they're going to be there too," she said.

Through the generosity of Times readers and a match by the McCormick Foundation, nearly $450,000 was granted to local literacy programs this year as a result of the Los Angeles Times Holiday Campaign.

The Holiday Campaign, part of the Los Angeles Times Family Fund, a McCormick Foundation fund, raises contributions to support established literacy programs run by nonprofit organizations that serve low-income children, adults and families who are reading below grade levels, are at risk of illiteracy or have limited English proficiency.

Donations are tax-deductible as permitted by law and matched at 50 cents on the dollar. Donor information is not traded or published without permission. Donate online at latimes.com/donate or by calling (800) 518-3975. All gifts will receive a written acknowledgment.

christine.maiduc@latimes.com

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Protests Erupt After Egypt’s Leader Seizes New Power

Tara Todras-Whitehill for The New York Times

Egyptians in central Cairo ran from tear gas during clashes with the police on Friday. Protesters took to the streets in several cities. More Photos »

CAIRO — Protests erupted across Egypt on Friday, as opponents of President Mohamed Morsi clashed with his supporters over a presidential edict that gave him unchecked authority and polarized an already divided nation while raising a specter, the president’s critics charged, of a return to autocracy.  

In an echo of the uprising 22 months ago, thousands of protesters chanted for the downfall of Mr. Morsi’s government in Cairo, while others ransacked the offices of the president’s former party in Suez, Alexandria and other cities.

Mr. Morsi spoke to his supporters in front of the presidential palace here, imploring the public to trust his intentions as he cast himself as a protector of the revolution and a fledgling democracy.

In a speech that was by turns defensive and conciliatory, he ultimately gave no ground to the critics who now were describing him as a pharaoh, in another echo of the insult once reserved for the deposed president, Hosni Mubarak.

“God’s will and elections made me the captain of this ship,” Mr. Morsi said.

The battles that raged on Friday — over power, legitimacy and the mantle of the revolution — posed a sharp challenge not only to Mr. Morsi but also to his opponents, members of secular, leftist and liberal groups whose crippling divisions have stifled their agenda and left them unable to confront the more popular Islamist movement led by the Muslim Brotherhood.

The crisis over his power grab came just days after the Islamist leader won international praise for his pragmatism, including from the United States, for brokering a cease-fire between Hamas and Israel.

On Friday, the State Department expressed muted concern over Mr. Morsi’s decision. “One of the aspirations of the revolution was to ensure that power would not be overly concentrated in the hands of any one person or institution,” said the State Department spokeswoman, Victoria Nuland.

She said, “The current constitutional vacuum in Egypt can only be resolved by the adoption of a constitution that includes checks and balances, and respects fundamental freedoms, individual rights and the rule of law consistent with Egypt’s international commitments.”

But the White House was notably silent after it had earlier this week extolled the emerging relationship between President Obama and Mr. Morsi and credited a series of telephone calls between the two men with helping to mediate the cease-fire in Gaza.

For Mr. Morsi, who seemed to be saying to the nation that it needed to surrender the last checks on his power in order to save democracy from Mubarak-era judges, the challenge was to convince Egyptians that the ends justified his means.

But even as he tried, thousands of protesters marched to condemn his decision. Clashes broke out between the president’s supporters and his critics, and near Tahrir Square, the riot police fired tear gas and bird shot as protesters hurled stones and set fires.

Since Thursday, when Mr. Morsi issued the decree, the president and his supporters have argued that he acted precisely to gain the power to address the complaints of his critics, including the families of protesters killed during the uprising and its aftermath.

By placing his decisions above judicial review, the decree enabled him to replace a public prosecutor who had failed to win convictions against senior officers implicated in the killings of protesters.

The president and his supporters also argued that the decree insulated the Constituent Assembly, which is drafting the constitution, from meddling by Mubarak-era judges.

Since Mr. Mubarak’s ouster, courts have dissolved Parliament, kept a Mubarak loyalist as top prosecutor and disbanded the first Assembly.

But by ending legal appeals, the decree also removed a safety valve for critics who say the Islamist majority is dominating the drafting of the constitution.

Mayy El Sheikh contributed reporting from Cairo, and Helene Cooper from Washington.

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Research In Motion shares climb

TORONTO (AP) — Shares of Research in Motion Ltd. Jumped nearly 14 percent Friday as investors seemingly grew more optimistic about a February launch of the Canadian company’s much-delayed BlackBerry 10 smartphones.

RIM will release the latest version of its smartphone “not too long” after a Jan. 30 launch event, Kristian Tear, the company’s chief operating officer, has said.

The new phones are seen as critical to RIM’s survival as the smartphone pioneer struggles in North America to hold on to customers who are abandoning BlackBerrys for flashier iPhones and Android phones.

The Waterloo, Ontario, company seems to be preparing for a February global launch, a month earlier than many analysts were expecting, according to an analyst with National Bank Financial, a Canadian bank. Kris Thompson raised his shipments forecast for RIM for fiscal 2014 in a research note from Wednesday.

Thompson also increased his price target for the BlackBerry maker to $ 15 from $ 12.

RIM shares on the Nasdaq closed up $ 1.41, or nearly 14 percent, to $ 11.67 Friday in an abbreviated trading session on Wall Street.

The spike in the BlackBerry maker’s shares came after a week of steady gains amid more positive sentiment.

On Wednesday, shares in Research In Motion gained almost 5 percent on the Toronto Stock Exchange even though it was reported that the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board had dropped the BlackBerry maker in favor of Apple’s iPhone 5.

Thompson, the National Bank Financial analyst, was bolstered by RIM’s new management team, which he said is maintaining the BlackBerry smartphone subscriber base, managing costs and cash, and seemingly readying a February 2013 BB10 global product release, a month earlier than expected.

He said certification of the new BlackBerrys by wireless carriers is the key risk to his prediction and estimate of BlackBerry shipments. Carrier certification, which tests the new devices, can take time.

The new BlackBerry 10 system is designed for the touch screen, Internet browsing and apps experience that customers now expect. RIM’s current software is still focused on email and messaging and is less user-friendly, agile and robust than iPhone or Android.

Earlier this week, a prominent tech analyst gave RIM’s new operating system a small but improved chance of success. Analyst Peter Misek of New York-based Jefferies & Company said he’s still giving the BlackBerry 10 operating system only a 20 to 30 percent probability of success.

RIM was once Canada‘s most valuable company with a market value of more than $ 80 billion in 2008, but the stock has plummeted since, from over $ 140 per share. Its decline evokes memories of Nortel, another former Canadian tech giant, which declared bankruptcy in 2009.

Wireless News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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