City Room: Cuomo Declares Public Health Emergency Over Flu Outbreak

With the nation in the grip of a severe influenza outbreak that has seen deaths reach epidemic levels, New York State declared a public health emergency on Saturday, making access to vaccines more easily available.

There have been nearly 20,000 cases of flu reported across the state so far this season, officials said. Last season, 4,400 positive laboratory tests were reported.

“We are experiencing the worst flu season since at least 2009, and influenza activity in New York State is widespread, with cases reported in all 57 counties and all five boroughs of New York City,” Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said in a statement.

Under the order, pharmacists will be allowed to administer flu vaccinations to patients between 6 months and 18 years old, temporarily suspending a state law that prohibits pharmacists from administering immunizations to children.

While children and older people tend to be the most likely to become seriously ill from the flu, Mr. Cuomo urged all New Yorkers to get vaccinated.

On Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta said that deaths from the flu had reached epidemic levels, with at least 20 children having died nationwide. Officials cautioned that deaths from pneumonia and the flu typically reach epidemic levels for a week or two every year. The severity of the outbreak will be determined by how long the death toll remains high or if it climbs higher.

There was some evidence that caseloads may be peaking, federal officials said on Friday.

In New York City, public health officials announced on Thursday that flu-related illnesses had reached epidemic levels, and they joined the chorus of authorities urging people to get vaccinated.

“It’s a bad year,” the city’s health commissioner, Dr. Thomas A. Farley, told reporters on Thursday. “We’ve got lots of flu, it’s mainly type AH3N2, which tends to be a little more severe. So we’re seeing plenty of cases of flu and plenty of people sick with flu. Our message for any people who are listening to this is it’s still not too late to get your flu shot.”

There has been a spike in the number of people going to emergency rooms over the past two weeks with flulike symptoms – including fever, fatigue and coughing – Dr. Farley said.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Mr. Cuomo made a public display of getting shots this past week.

In a briefing with reporters on Friday, officials from the C.D.C. said that this year’s vaccine was effective in 62 percent of cases.

As officials have stepped up their efforts encouraging vaccinations, there have been scattered reports of shortages. But officials said plenty of the vaccine was available.

According to the C.D.C., makers of the flu vaccine produced about 135 million doses for this year. As of early this month, 128 million doses had been distributed. While that would not be enough for every American, only 37 percent of the population get a flu shot each year.

Federal health officials said they would be happy if that number rose to 50 percent, which would mean that there would be more than enough vaccine for anyone who wanted to be immunized.

Two other diseases – norovirus and whooping cough – are also widespread this winter and are contributing to the number of people getting sick.

The flu can resemble a cold, though the symptoms come on more rapidly and are more severe.

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Treasury Will Not Mint $1 Trillion Coin to Raise Debt Ceiling

WASHINGTON — The Treasury Department said Saturday that it will not mint a trillion-dollar platinum coin to head off an imminent battle with Congress over raising the government’s borrowing limit.

“Neither the Treasury Department nor the Federal Reserve believes that the law can or should be used to facilitate the production of platinum coins for the purpose of avoiding an increase in the debt limit,” Anthony Coley, a Treasury spokesman, said in a written statement.

The Obama administration has indicated that the only way for the country to avoid a cash-management crisis as soon as next month is for Congress to raise the “debt ceiling,” which is the statutory limit on government borrowing. The cap is $16.4 trillion.

“There are only two options to deal with the debt limit: Congress can pay its bills, or it can fail to act and put the nation into default,” Jay Carney, the White House press secretary, said in a statement. “Congress needs to do its job.”

In recent weeks, some Republicans have indicated that they would not agree to raise the debt limit unless Democrats agreed to make cuts to entitlement programs like Social Security.

The White House has said it would not negotiate spending cuts in exchange for Congressional authority to borrow more, and it has insisted that Congress raise the ceiling as a matter of course, to cover expenses already authorized by Congress. In broader fiscal negotiations, it has said it would not agree to spending cuts without commensurate tax increases.

The idea of minting a trillion-dollar coin drew wide if puzzling attention recently after some bloggers and economic commentators had suggested it as an alternative to involving Congress.

By virtue of an obscure law meant to apply to commemorative coins, the Treasury secretary could order the production of a high-denomination platinum coin and deposit it at the Federal Reserve, where it would count as a government asset and give the country more breathing room under its debt ceiling. Once Congress raised the debt ceiling, the Treasury secretary could then order the coin destroyed.

Mr. Carney, the press secretary, fielded questions about the theoretical tactic at a news conference last week. But the idea is now formally off the table.

The White House has also rejected the idea that it could mount a challenge to the debt ceiling itself, on the strength of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which holds that the “validity of the public debt” of the United States “shall not be questioned.”

The Washington Post earlier published a report that the Obama administration had rejected the platinum-coin idea.

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S.F. mourns a twin with a passion for fashion

SAN FRANCISCO — They were known simply as the San Francisco Twins.

At 5-foot-1 and about 100 pounds apiece, the fashion enthusiasts were an integral part of the city fabric for four decades. With matching furs, hats and high-end purses, they completed each other's sentences, posed for countless tourist snapshots and modeled for the likes of Reebok, Joe Boxer and IBM.

Now one is gone.

Vivian Brown, 85, who had Alzheimer's, died in her sleep Wednesday, leaving behind Marian, who was eight minutes younger. The illness, and news of the twins' financial distress, brought an outpouring of support from city residents in recent months.

Donations managed by Jewish Family and Children Services helped Vivian move into an elegant assisted living facility in Lower Pacific Heights and provided for a car service so Marian could visit "as much as she wanted to," Development Director Barbara Farber said. "The community really responded.…It's been a beautiful thing."

At a benefit concert for the twins in August, the Go-Go's Jane Wiedlin and other musicians honored Marian. Cash flowed in to cover her meals at Uncle Vito's Pizza on Nob Hill, long one of the ladies' regular haunts.

On Friday, fans offered collective condolences as they swallowed some bitter medicine: The sightings that brought joy to many — of the twins in leopard-print cowboy hats parading up and down Powell Street and window shopping at Union Square — are forever a thing of the past.

In saying goodbye to Vivian, the city has ushered out an era of style.

"All of that has gone, and that's true of all cities," said Ann Moller Caen, the widow of Pulitzer Prize-winning San Francisco columnist Herb Caen, who wrote often about the twins. "They've lost the elegant few."

Mayor Ed Lee echoed residents' grief in online postings throughout the day, saying that "San Francisco is heartbroken" over Vivian's passing and was "fortunate to have called her a true friend."

The twins, who were born in Kalamazoo, Mich., and held degrees in business administration, moved to San Francisco in 1973, prompted by Vivian's chronic bronchial condition. Once on the West Coast, Vivian became a legal secretary and Marian worked at a bank.

But fashion was their passion, and they cut a striking double image.

There were the fitted white suit jackets with pleated skirts, veiled hats and white fur coats; the red wool Ellen Tracy suits with black felt hats and black gloves.

"When you first came to the city and saw them, you might think it was a little joke. But it really wasn't," Caen said Friday. "They were very warm and very pleasant to everyone, and they just loved Herb. And he loved them."

Evelyn Adler recalled that her father, who sold shoes at the Emporium on San Francisco's Market Street in the 1970s, had regularly waited on "the girls," as he called them.

"They were always at the very height of sometimes ridiculous fashion," said Adler, 82. Her father, she said, had talked of how years of wearing pointy shoes left the twins with overlapping toes. (They later embraced lower heels that were "much more suited to their feet," Adler said.)

As a volunteer for Jewish Family Services, Adler recently shopped for a new wardrobe for Vivian — and was taken aback by the sight of the twins in separate outfits. About a quarter-century ago, the twins admitted to an interviewer that after a six-month attempt to dress differently in their 20s, they had abandoned the project forever. Even their lingerie matched.

They had their regular haunts, which Marian now frequents solo.

David Dubiner, owner of Uncle Vito's Pizza, said the sisters began coming in nearly two decades ago. They always sat at the table by the window, chatting with tourists for so long that their food had to be reheated.

Vivian often did more talking, Dubiner said, but Marian now holds court for two.

On Thursday evening, Marian arrived alone at the Sir Francis Drake Hotel on Union Square to "have a glass of champagne and toast her sister goodbye," said Tom Sweeney, chief doorman at the hotel who for the last 37 years watched the twins descend the four blocks from their Nob Hill apartment.

"They're quite the personalities of San Francisco," Sweeney said. "We'll definitely miss Vivian."

lee.romney@latimes.com

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A Google-a-Day Puzzle for Jan. 12

Our good friends at Google run a daily puzzle challenge and asked us to help get them out to the geeky masses. Each day’s puzzle will task your googling skills a little more, leading you to Google mastery. Each morning at 12:01 a.m. Eastern time you’ll see a new puzzle posted here.

SPOILER WARNING:
We leave the comments on so people can work together to find the answer. As such, if you want to figure it out all by yourself, DON’T READ THE COMMENTS!

Also, with the knowledge that because others may publish their answers before you do, if you want to be able to search for information without accidentally seeing the answer somewhere, you can use the Google-a-Day site’s search tool, which will automatically filter out published answers, to give you a spoiler-free experience.

And now, without further ado, we give you…

TODAY’S PUZZLE:

Note: Ad-blocking software may prevent display of the puzzle widget.

Ken is a husband and father from the San Francisco Bay Area, where he works as a civil engineer. He also wrote the NYT bestselling book "Geek Dad: Awesomely Geeky Projects for Dads and Kids to Share."

Read more by Ken Denmead

Follow @fitzwillie and @wiredgeekdad on Twitter.

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Former Lab Technician Denies Faulty DNA Work in Rape Cases

A former New York City laboratory technician whose work on rape cases is now being scrutinized for serious mistakes said on Friday that she had been unaware there were problems in her work and, disputing an earlier report, denied she had resigned under pressure.

The former lab technician, Serrita Mitchell, said any problems must have been someone else’s.

“My work?” Ms. Mitchell said. “No, no, no, not my work.”

Earlier, the city medical examiner’s office, where Ms. Mitchell said she was employed from 2000 to 2011, said it was reviewing 843 rape cases handled by a lab technician who might have missed critical evidence.

So far, it has finished looking over about half the cases, and found 26 in which the technician had missed biological evidence and 19 in which evidence was commingled with evidence from other cases. In seven cases where evidence was missed, the medical examiner’s office was able to extract a DNA profile, raising the possibility that detectives could have caught some suspects sooner.

The office declined to identify the technician. Documents said she quit in November 2011 after the office moved to fire her, once supervisors had begun to discover deficiencies in her work. A city official who declined to be identified said Ms. Mitchell was the technician.

However, Ms. Mitchell, reached at her home in the Bronx on Friday, said she had never been told there were problems. “It couldn’t be me because your work gets checked,” she said. “You have supervisors.”

She also said that she had resigned because of a rotator cuff injury that impeded her movement. “I loved the job so much that I stayed a little longer,” she said, explaining that she had not expected to stay with the medical examiner’s office so long. “Then it was time to leave.”

Also on Friday, the Legal Aid Society, which provides criminal defense lawyers for most of the city’s poor defendants, said it was demanding that the city turn over information about the cases under review.

If needed, Legal Aid will sue the city to gain access to identifying information about the cases, its chief lawyer, Steven Banks, said, noting that New York was one of only 14 states that did not require routine disclosure of criminal evidence before trial.

Disclosure of the faulty examination of the evidence is prompting questions about outside review of the medical examiner’s office. The City Council on Friday announced plans for an emergency oversight committee, and its members spoke with outrage about the likelihood that missed semen stains and “false negatives” might have enabled rapists to go unpunished.

“The mishandling of rape cases is making double victims of women who have already suffered an indescribably horrific event,” said Christine C. Quinn, the Council speaker.

A few more details emerged Friday about a 2001 case involving the rape of a minor in Brooklyn, in which the technician missed biological evidence, the review found. The victim accused an 18-year-old acquaintance of forcing himself on her, and he was questioned by the police but not charged, according to a law enforcement official.

Unrelated to the rape, he pleaded guilty in 2005 to third-degree robbery and served two years in prison. The DNA sample he gave in the robbery case was matched with the one belatedly developed from evidence the technician had overlooked in the 2001 rape, law enforcement officials said. He was recently indicted in the 2001 rape.

Especially alarming to defense lawyers was the possibility that DNA samples were cross-contaminated and led to false convictions, or could do so in the future.

“Up to this point,” Mr. Banks said, “they have not made information available to us, as the primary defender in New York City, to determine whether there’s an injustice that’s been done in past cases, pending cases, or allowing us to be on the lookout in future cases.” He added, “If it could happen with one analyst, how does anyone know that it stops there?”

The medical examiner’s office has said that the risk of cross-contamination was extremely low and that it does not appear that anyone was wrongly convicted in the cases that have been reviewed so far. And officials in at least two of the city’s district attorneys’ offices — for Brooklyn and Manhattan — said they had not found any erroneous convictions.

But Mr. Banks said the authorities needed to do more, and that their statements thus far were the equivalent of “trust us.”

“Given what’s happened,” he said, “that’s cold comfort.”

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Business Briefing | Retailing: Best Buy Shares Rally on Improved Holiday Sales

The Best Buy Company had better-than-expected holiday sales, setting off a gain of $2, or 16.4 percent, in its stock price, to $14.21 a share on Friday. The holiday quarter accounted for about a third of Best Buy’s revenue last year. The chain said that revenue at stores open at least a year fell 1.4 percent for the nine weeks ended Jan. 5. The company’s performance in the United States was flat. The chief executive, Hubert Joly, said in a statement that the result was better than the last several quarters. A Morningstar analyst, R. J. Hottovy, said the results showed that some of Best Buy’s initiatives, like more employee training and online price matching helped increase sales.

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Restored funding for prescription drug-monitoring program urged

California Atty. Gen. Kamala D. Harris on Thursday called on Gov. Jerry Brown to restore funding to a prescription drug-monitoring program that health experts say is key to combating drug abuse and overdose deaths in the state.

Harris' appeal to restore funding to CURES, as it is known, follows an article in The Times last month that reported that the system, once heralded as an invaluable tool, had been severely undermined by budget cuts and was not being used to its full potential.

The CURES database contains detailed information on prescription narcotics, including the names of patients, the doctors prescribing the drugs and the pharmacies that dispense them. The system was designed to help physicians detect "doctor-shopping" patients who dupe multiple physicians into prescribing drugs such as OxyContin, Vicodin and Xanax.

Harris' request followed Brown's unveiling of a proposed $97.7-billion budget, which projects a surplus — a feat that has been accomplished only one time in the last decade. With California's fiscal condition improving, Harris said it was up to the state to make sure the money was "spent wisely."

"This includes smart investments that benefit Californians, such as restoring funding for the state's prescription drug-monitoring program," she said in a statement.

Brown's office had no comment.

The governor's budget does increase Harris' Department of Justice general fund allocation by 4.5% to $174.3 million, but it does not earmark money for CURES. Harris could seek legislative authority to spend some of her budget on the program.

"We are going to have a discussion on the funding and where the money will come from," said Lynda Gledhill, a spokeswoman for Harris.

CURES is the nation's oldest and largest prescription drug-monitoring program and once served as a model for other states. Today, it has fallen behind similar programs elsewhere. CURES data could be used to monitor physicians whose prescribing puts patients at risk. But it is not.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control recommends that states use such data to keep tabs on doctors, and at least half a dozen states do so.

As part of spending cuts aimed at maintaining the state's solvency amid a deep recession, Brown gutted the Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement, which ran CURES, in 2011, shortly after Harris succeeded him as attorney general. Harris kept the program alive with about $400,000 in revenue from the Medical Board of California and other licensing boards. But it is down to one employee and has no enforcement capacity.

State officials have estimated it would cost about $2.8 million to make CURES more accessible and easier to use, and $1.6 million more per year to keep it running. However, officials say the program — with little or no additional financial resources — could now be used to identify potentially rogue doctors.

Bob Pack, an Internet entrepreneur, has advocated using CURES more vigorously to track reckless physicians and pharmacies as well as doctor-shopping patients. He became active on the issue after a driver high on painkillers and alcohol struck and killed his two young children in the Bay Area suburb of Danville in 2003.

Pack, who helped design an online portal to give physicians and pharmacists immediate access to CURES, said he was happy to see Harris ask Brown to restore funds for the program.

"But that's only a request," he said. "No one knows if that's really going to happen. Meanwhile, doctors are continuing to over-prescribe and thousands of Californians are dying from prescription drug overdoses. I hope this … has some bite to it."

An aide to Harris said restoring the CURES program is a high priority.

"She's committed to fixing the database and making it as strong as possible," said Travis LeBlanc, special assistant attorney general. "When we have limited resources and in a budget crunch, we need to focus our resources and use it in smart, efficient ways, and [CURES] is one of those," he said.

lisa.girion@latimes.com

scott.glover@latimes.com

Times staff writer Hailey Branson-Potts contributed to this report.

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Warner Bros. Wins Superman Copyright Battle Using Facebook Case As Precedent

Warner Bros. scored a huge victory in the long-running and byzantine legal battle over the copyright to Superman yesterday, thanks to a ruling by 9th Circuit Court of Appeals that cements the studio’s control over the lucrative superhero character. The decision drew, in part, on precedent established in a lawsuit against Facebook by the Winklevoss twins and held that a 2001 agreement between the heirs of Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel and Warner Bros was indeed binding and that a district judge in a 2008 case had “erred” in granting the Siegel heirs partial copyright.

This decision follows a ruling last October that denied any part of the copyright to the heirs of Superman’s other co-creator, Joe Shuster. Shuster and Siegel famously sold their creation to DC Comics for a mere $130 in 1938, long before the character went on to become a multi-billion dollar franchise for the studio, thanks to the success of numerous Hollywood blockbusters, television shows and other merchandise.

The recent ruling on the fate of Superman hinged upon a 2001 agreement between the Siegel heirs and Warner Bros, which the Siegels had claimed was not finalized and therefore not enforceable. In their decision on the case, the 9th Circuit repeatedly cited a lawsuit involving Facebook as precedent, wherein the Winklevoss brothers — who sued the social media site for allegedly stealing their idea  – had similarly claimed that an earlier mediated agreement was non-binding. The court disagreed, and found that under California law, a “term sheet” agreement could be enforceable “even though everyone understood that certain material aspects of the deal would be papered later.”

Jeff Trexler, an attorney and law professor who previously served as a clerk in the 9th Circuit, told Wired that while ”it’s entirely possible that the court would have reached the same outcome without the Facebook ruling… Facebook made it practically inevitable.”

Wired reached out for comment to Warner Bros, who responded:

This is a great day for Superman, for his fans, for DC Entertainment and for Warner Bros. Today’s ruling vindicates DC Comics’ long-held position that it entered into a binding agreement with the Jerry Siegel family in 2001.  The Court’s decision paves the way for the Siegels finally to receive the compensation they negotiated for and which DC has been prepared to pay for over a decade.  We are extremely pleased that Superman’s adventures can continue to be enjoyed across all media platforms worldwide for generations to come.

The decision comes at a fortunate time for the studio, whose new Superman reboot Man of Steel heads to theaters in June. Before the latest ruling, Warner Bros. would have been unable to create new “derivative works” based on Superman’s first appearance in Action Comics #1 — presumably including Superman films — without accounting for the profits to the Siegels as co-owners, complicating plans for a potential Man of Steel sequel and the Justice League movie slated for 2015.

Now, Warner Bros. will likely be able to proceed without further hindrance, ending a nearly 65-year legal battle whose uglier moments included a letter from Siegel’s dying widow (the original model for Lois Lane) accusing the Warner Bros. lawyers of harassment and a still-ongoing lawsuit by Warner Bros. accusing the Siegel’s lawyer Marc Toberoff of misconduct.

In 2011, Jerry Siegel’s daughter Laura Siegel Larson published a letter likening her family’s legal battle with Warner Bros. to a “David versus Goliath struggle” and said that her father had “co-created Superman as the ‘champion of the oppressed… sworn to devote his existence to helping those in need!’ But sadly his dying wish, for his family to regain his rightful share of Superman, has become a cautionary tale for writers and artists everywhere.”

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BRIT Awards hand posthumous nomination to Winehouse

LONDON (Reuters) – Scottish singer Emeli Sande joined folk act Mumford and Sons and indie rockers Alt-J with three BRIT Award nominations apiece on Thursday, but the biggest surprise was a posthumous nod for Amy Winehouse 18 months after she died.

Winehouse was included in the “British female solo” category, in which she was up against Sande, Jessie Ware, Paloma Faith and Bat for Lashes.

She was shortlisted for “Lioness: Hidden Treasures”, an album of unreleased songs and demos dating back to 2002 which hit stores in December, 2011 and topped the British charts.

The “Back to Black” singer’s father Mitch Winehouse said he was “delighted” with what he called the first ever posthumous BRIT nomination, adding in a statement:

“It proves that her music still has an enormous effect on the public now and for the generations to come.”

The other surprise package in a list some critics said largely upheld the BRITs’ reputation for rewarding commercial success over musical originality, veteran rockers the Rolling Stones were nominated for British live act.

The ageing quartet returned to the stage for a short, sellout tour at the end of 2012 in London and the United States to mark 50 years in business.

Despite criticism of high ticket prices, the band won critics and audiences over with hit-laden performances that belied their age.

“We all had such a blast, everyone was at the top of their game & the hometown audiences at The O2 were just fantastic…” lead singer Mick Jagger wrote on Twitter. “It’s great to be nominated … we will see you soon.”

The last time the group was nominated was in 1996 and it is the only act to be nominated in both this year’s awards and at the first BRIT Awards in 1977.

OLYMPIC BOOST

Sande took part in the opening and closing ceremonies at the London Olympics, helping to boost sales of her debut album “Our Version of Events” which sold an estimated 1.4 million copies in Britain last year.

She was nominated for best British female, best British single for “Next to Me” and the coveted Mastercard British album of the year prize. Sande also features on another contender for the single prize, Labrinth’s “Beneath Your Beautiful”.

Among the best album contenders are the other acts who each picked up three nominations – Mumford and Sons, who have enjoyed success both in Britain and the United States, and Alt-J, the former for “Babel” and latter for “An Awesome Wave.”

Alt-J walked away with the prestigious Mercury Prize for the same record in November.

Rounding out the album category are rapper Plan B for “Ill Manors” and Paloma Faith for “Fall to Grace”.

Boyband sensation One Direction received a nomination for best British group, and are up against Alt-J, Mumford and Sons, Muse and The xx.

A new award will be introduced at the ceremony on February 20 at London’s O2 Arena.

The BRITs Global Success Award will go to the British act with the highest international sales during the 2012 calendar year excluding the domestic market.

Confirmed to perform on the night were Muse, Robbie Williams, Sande, Mumford and Sons, Ben Howard and One Direction.

This year’s statuettes were designed by artist Damien Hirst and feature his trademark spots on a white background.

(Reporting by Mike Collett-White; Editing by Jason Webb)

Music News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Parental Consent Rule May Proceed for a Circumcision Ritual, a Judge Says

New York City health officials may proceed temporarily with a plan to require parental consent before an infant may undergo a particular Jewish circumcision ritual, a federal judge ruled Thursday.

City officials say 12 cases of herpes simplex virus have likely resulted from the procedure, known as metzitzah b’peh, since 2000, including one Brooklyn case reported this week. Two infants died, and two suffered permanent brain damage. Most Jews no longer practice metzitzah b’peh, in which the circumciser uses his mouth to suck blood from the wound, but it remains common among some ultra-Orthodox communities.

Citing the risk of infection, health officials in September introduced a regulation that would require parents to provide written consent stating that they were aware of the health risks.

But the Central Rabbinical Congress of the United States and Canada, Agudath Israel of America, and the International Bris Association sued in October to stop the rule from taking effect, calling it an infringement of their constitutional rights. They also denied the procedure posed a risk and asked a federal court to put the rule on hold while the litigation proceeded.

In denying the request for a preliminary injunction, Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald of the United States District Court for the Southern District wrote that the risks were clear.

“In light of the quality of the evidence presented in support of the regulation, we conclude that a continued injunction against enforcement of the regulation would not serve the public interest,” she wrote.

City lawyers said they were gratified by the ruling, but Andrew Moesel, a spokesman for the plaintiffs, said the groups would appeal. “We continue to believe that this case is a wrongful and unnecessary intrusion into the rights of freedom of religion and speech,” he said.

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