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..

Democrats' new power in Legislature could bring peril too

SACRAMENTO — Having won a coveted two-thirds supermajority in the Legislature for the first time in more than a century, California Democrats now face the temptations of one-party government — and the perils that come with it.

The party's liberal allies are urging legislative leaders to aggressively exercise their newfound powers, allowing them to sidestep Republicans on tax votes and in placing measures on the statewide ballot.

Among the proposals are new levies on oil companies, overturning the state's ban on same-sex marriage and overhauling Proposition 13, the landmark property-tax initiative.

"This is a huge opportunity," said Joshua Pechthalt, president of the California Federation of Teachers. "We shouldn't be timid about our political agenda."

Political experts, however, said that Democrats could risk a backlash if they overreach, particularly on fiscal matters.

Party leaders and Gov. Jerry Brown persuaded Californians to approve billions of dollars in new taxes on the November ballot — the first statewide tax increase since 2004 — by arguing that the new money would put the state's finances back on track.

"When Santa brings you everything you want for Christmas, to start making your wish list for next year on Dec. 26 looks bad," said Thad Kousser, a UC San Diego political scientist.

State Sen. Ted Lieu (D-Torrance) tested that theory this month when he floated legislation to place a measure on the 2014 ballot to triple the state's vehicle license fee.

The lawmaker said his proposal, which would have raised money for roads and public transit projects, prompted hundreds of negative comments from constituents — and an admonishment from Senate leader Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento).

Now chastened, Lieu said Democrats should restrain themselves.

"It's clear to me that we need to demonstrate that we can responsibly work with this revenue and not go right back to the voters and ask for more," he said.

Democratic leaders are emphasizing restraint, with an eye toward maintaining their tenuous supermajorities. Voters will weigh in on the party's new dominance as early as next year, when two state senators leave the Legislature for Congress and Assembly members run for their seats.

How party leaders use their new powers could affect the outcome of those special elections — as well as the future prospects of centrist Democrats who eked out unexpected victories in Republican-rich areas of the Central Valley and Southern California.

When Assembly Speaker John A. Pérez (D-Los Angeles) was asked what he intended to do with his caucus' new power, he responded with one word: Nothing.

Steinberg, his Senate counterpart, has been more forthcoming, suggesting lawmakers pursue changes to the state's tax structure and restore money to social services. He said he also wanted to tweak the initiative process by setting expiration dates for ballot measures and requiring proponents to negotiate with the Legislature to refine their proposals.

"We have a responsibility to move the state forward," Steinberg said. "I promise that we will exercise this new power with strength but also with humility and with reason."

Any pursuit of taxes would set up a showdown with Brown, who has pledged not to raise levies without voter approval. Although Democrats now possess the power to override the governor's vetoes, such moves are extremely rare and risk undermining the leader of their own party.

Liberals, however, sense a mandate in the November election results.

They cited record turnout among Latino, Asian and African American voters, who supported Brown's tax-hike measure, Proposition 30, in large numbers, according to exit poll data. Those voters also said by a 2-1 margin that they believed government should be doing more to solve the nation's problems.

Labor leaders were heartened by voter approval of a separate ballot measure that eliminated a controversial corporate tax break and diverted the money to help balance the budget and pay for a new green-energy program.

They said they wanted lawmakers to reevaluate similar business breaks in hopes of freeing up revenue for infrastructure projects.

Activists also suggested they would pursue another longtime goal: a single-payer healthcare system.

"For the very first time in decades we have an opportunity to reshape California," said Rick Jacobs, chairman of the Courage Campaign, a liberal advocacy group that pushed the governor to focus his November tax measure on the wealthy. "Some of us may want to take more risks than others."

michael.mishak@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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What Made Jessica Biel Want to Steal a Girdle?

Stylewatch
Style News Now

11/21/2012 at 11:00 AM ET

Suzanne Tenner

Her wedding gown was dreamy, pink and modern, but while filming Hitchcock, Jessica Biel found herself taken with her character’s muted — and binding — mid-century costumes.

“I would have stolen that girdle, and pretty much everything that I could have,” the actress joked to PEOPLE at the film’s Los Angeles premiere on Tuesday. “But I literally think that they would have hunted me down.”

In fact, while many actors are free to keep a memento from the project that they have worked on, Biel quickly got the sense that playing Vera Miles would be a labor of love steeped in authenticity — without the benefit of a fashion souvenir.

“Those costumes came from an amazing old costume house, and I really don’t know how many women wore the same costumes [on prior films],” Biel explained. “They have so much history, and they were not allowed to be taken away, so I didn’t actually take anything.”

That’s not to say that the stunning newlywed walked away completely empty-handed; Biel admitted that the experience, while sometimes uncomfortable, altered the way in which she views both fashion and femininity.

“I think every time that I step back into that period and really explore those beautiful, feminine shapes, especially where it’s all about the waist, I try to take that and bring that into my personal fashion and life,” she shared. “I try to do a little bit more of the feminine thing.” Tell us: Do you plan to see Hitchcock?

–Reagan Alexander

PHOTOS: SEE STARS ON SET IN ‘LIGHTS! CAMERA! FASHION!’

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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..

Santa Maria settles lawsuit with girl who said officer raped her

Santa Maria Police Officer Albert Covarrubias Jr. was fatally shot last Jan. 28 by colleagues attempting to arrest him at a DUI roadblock. He had been under investigation over allegations that he was involved in an inappropriate relationship with a teenage girl. (Associated Press / January 30, 2012)

By Steve Chawkins, Los Angeles Times

November 23, 2012, 7:54 p.m.

The city of Santa Maria has settled a lawsuit from a teenage girl who said a police officer threatened and raped her over several weeks before being fatally shot by colleagues attempting to arrest him.

Gilbert Trujillo, Santa Maria's city attorney, said Friday that the $185,000 settlement was "an effort to move forward and put this unfortunate chain of events behind us."

The girl was a 17-year-old police Explorer when she became involved with the 29-year-old officer, Albert Covarrubias Jr. In her federal lawsuit, she said he threatened to kill her boyfriend if she didn't have sex with him.

When other Santa Maria officers tried to arrest him at a DUI roadblock he was manning last Jan. 28, Covarrubias fired his gun and was fatally shot in return fire, according to an investigation by the Santa Barbara County district attorney's office.

"He chose to resist," then-Police Chief Danny R. Macagni told reporters. Covarrubias was under investigation at the time of the shooting over allegations that he was involved in an inappropriate relationship with a teenage girl.

Macagni said developments in the investigation of the officer forced police to take immediate action. He said that the allegations of sexual misconduct were "very explicit."

The police chief said detectives believed that Covarrubias knew he was under investigation, that witnesses were being intimidated and that the public would be at risk if the officer was not arrested before he left his shift.

"The information that we had in hand demanded that we not let him leave that scene, get in a car, drive somewhere. It would put the public at risk if he did," Macagni said. "We just did not know what was going to happen. And we did not expect him to react the way he did."

The case shocked the agricultural city of 100,000 — where, in the wake of several incidents, officers took a vote of no confidence in Macagni. He retired in August.

steve.chawkins@latimes.com

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Leader of the Other ‘United States’ Urges Changing Mexico’s Name

MEXICO CITY — With just over a week left in office, the president of Mexico has offered perhaps the boldest proposal of his six-year tenure. He wants Mexico to just be “Mexico.”

The formal name of the country is Estados Unidos Mexicanos, often translated as “United Mexican States” or “United States of Mexico.”

It is the “Estados Unidos” that nags at President Felipe de Jesús Calderón Hinojosa (called just “Lipe” by some) and he wants it out, once and for all. It happens to be the Spanish name of the big neighbor up north, and that is no accident.

Mexico was christened with the longer formal name in the early 19th century after independence from Spain, inspired by the democratic example next door. Other names considered at the time, noted Mr. Calderón, a fan of history, were Mexican Empire and Republic of Mexico. (“México” is derived from the Nahuatl word for the region.)

Now it is time, he said, for Mexico to step out of the shadow of the United States, at least in name.

“Mexico does not need a name that emulates another country and that none of us Mexicans use every day,” he said Thursday at a morning announcement at the presidential residence.

“Mexico is the name that corresponds to the essence of our nation. Pardon the expression, but the name of Mexico is Mexico.”

Making it so, however, will take a constitutional change.

With Mr. Calderón leaving office on Dec. 1, the prospects seemed uncertain; his office did not respond to questions on why he proposed the shift only now.

Associates have said he is looking for work in the United States after he leaves office, but Mr. Calderón is not known to particularly love the country and never shies from using it as a political whipping boy. He chose to make his announcement as the United States of America celebrated Thanksgiving Day.

Still, it is not an entirely new idea. Such a name change has been proposed occasionally in the past but without getting very far. “With so many real problems in this country, I don’t think that it matters,” said Enrique Krauze, a leading historian and political analyst. “No one ever calls Mexico anything other than Mexico.”

Opposition lawmakers, too, shrugged at the idea, with some viewing it as the early onset of Mr. Calderón’s post-presidency blues.

“He is not prepared to leave power,” said Iris Vianey Mendoza, a senator with the leftist Party of the Democratic Revolution. “The problem is not that our name emulates that of the American government but that we don’t fight our subordinate relationship to it.”

Mr. Calderón’s proposal likewise got a mixed reaction of derision, acceptance and some practical questions on social media. One user on Twitter, Ángel Quintanilla, did the math in heavily bureaucratic Mexico and wrote, “I don’t think @FelipeCalderón even considered the cost and hassle that changing every law and official document entails.”

Karla Zabludovsky contributed reporting.

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Jake Owen Welcomes a Daughter

Mom & Babies
Celebrity Baby Blog

11/22/2012 at 08:30 PM ET

Courtesy Jake Owen

It’s a Thanksgiving baby!

Jake Owen and his wife Lacey welcomed their first child, daughter Olive Pearl Owen, on Thursday, Nov. 22 in Nashville, Tenn., his rep confirms to PEOPLE.

Pearl, as she will be called after Owen’s late godmother, weighed in at 6 lbs., 3 oz. and is 19½ inches long.

“Lacey and I are so excited to start our own family,” Owen, 31, tells PEOPLE. “We are looking forward to teaching Pearl everything we learned from our parents and also learning from her.”

Sharing a photo of his newborn daughter on Twitter, the musician wrote, “Today is the greatest day of my life. Turkey baby!!! Happy Thanksgiving.”

It’s been a whirlwind year for Owen and his wife, 22. After getting engaged on stage in April, the couple wed on the beach in May and announced the pregnancy in July.

– Sarah Michaud with reporting by Julie Dam

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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..

San Francisco sheriff can't put the past behind him

SAN FRANCISCO — This is what it's like to be Ross Mirkarimi, the love-him-or-hate-him sheriff of San Francisco.

Mayor Edwin M. Lee isn't talking to him. Women's advocates are considering a recall. A band of Mission District healers wants to restore him to spiritual health during a drumming and dancing commemoration of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Towards Women and Girls.

Oh, and he probably won't get his gun back until he's off probation.

It has been quite a year for Mirkarimi, starting with the revelation that he had grabbed his wife during a New Year's Eve fight, bruising her arm and leading to misdemeanor charges of domestic violence.

The sheriff eventually pleaded guilty to one count of false imprisonment and is now more than halfway through 52 weeks of domestic violence counseling. He will be on probation for three years.

Instead of ending the political theater, however, Mirkarimi's plea — which he now seems to regret — set off months of public furor. The mayor suspended him without pay. The city Ethics Commission voted 4 to 1 that he had committed official misconduct and should be removed from office.

But Mirkarimi's former colleagues on the Board of Supervisors instead voted last month to return him to the helm of the Sheriff's Department, after listening to hours of angry testimony from the sheriff's supporters, who questioned just what constituted domestic violence and attacked the advocates who work on the behalf of battered women.

"We all have disagreements with wife," declared one man. "That's our thing."

"All the things you domestic violence ladies say is nice and needs to be said," a woman said. "But go and find the women who really need to be helped, the ones who are shot, stabbed, beaten. Eliana doesn't need your help."

The Eliana in question is Venezuelan telenovela star Eliana Lopez, Mirkarimi's wife, with whom he has since reunited.

Now the mayor and Dist. Atty. George Gascon want Mirkarimi to recuse himself from any responsibility that could possibly intersect with victims or perpetrators of domestic violence.

That's an awful lot of turf in the realm of San Francisco law enforcement.

The department oversees widely praised counseling programs for batterers. It supervises inmates who have been charged with domestic violence. Deputies serve restraining orders that protect battered women.

The sheriff also is responsible for disciplining deputies who have been brought up on domestic violence charges.

"As a result of your probationary status for a domestic violence crime, there is a clear conflict of interest," Gascon wrote to the sheriff last month, after Mirkarimi was reinstated with back pay. "As a result, you are not able to adequately perform the duties of your office that relate to crimes of domestic violence."

Mirkarimi emphatically disagrees. This week, during an appearance at the Commonwealth Club of California, he told the audience that such a point of view was "wrong in every aspect."

If his nearly year-long ordeal "has changed me, it's changed me for the better," Mirkarimi said when asked about whether he could be objective in his job. "What they're getting wrong is the fact that rarely does any matter related to a program or a policy about domestic violence reach the desk of the sheriff."

Should that happen, he told Lee in a letter this month, "the matter will be determined independently by the Undersheriff with no input from me."

When asked about his deeply strained relationship with the mayor, Mirkarimi said he would "continue to send him love letters." He vowed not to back down from "doing the work on behalf of the people as I was elected to do."

It has been awkward, the sheriff admitted, to "communicate through the Chronicle," finding out how the mayor feels about him on Page One of San Francisco's biggest newspaper, responding in kind in the next day's edition.

But Mirkarimi wasn't beyond sending a message to Lee via the Commonwealth Club appearance, which will be broadcast in coming weeks on KQED Public Radio.

"I think that it's best that we do meet," Mirkarimi said. "I invite him to choose a venue that he would like. I'll meet with him in public. We'll have a public discussion, maybe in a forum like this.... Because I believe he wants the same things as I want."

Maybe some things, but not that meeting thing.

Said Lee spokeswoman Christine Falvey: "The mayor will meet with the sheriff when there is something to meet about."

Until that time comes, she said in a text message, "the sheriff should be focused on the many public safety agencies that have concerns about his status as a probationer and overseeing intervention programs."

maria.laganga@latimes.com

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