Washed It!

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Detectives search Moreno Valley home in connection with Norma Lopez homicide case

Home prices rose in June, according to a closely watched national index released Tuesday, but many experts predict a drop in values this year with the expiration of popular federal tax credits for buyers.

Prices of previously owned single-family homes rose a modest 1% in June over May and 4.2% over June 2009, according to the Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller index of 20 metropolitan areas.

“While the numbers are upbeat, other more recent data on home sales and mortgages point to fewer gains ahead,” said David M. Blitzer, chairman of the index committee at S&P.

Federal tax credits of up to $8,000 drove sales during the spring as first-time buyers flooded into the real estate market, boosting sales of entry-level homes. Sales have been falling since the expiration of those credits, with sales of previously owned homes plunging 27.2% in July and sales of newly built homes falling 12.4% that month.

Those sales drops came despite record-low rates for mortgages.

Home prices in California cities continued to appreciate, the non-seasonally adjusted index showed, with Los Angeles up 0.6% from May, San Diego up 0.4% and San Francisco up 0.3%.

Las Vegas was the only city that did not post a month-over-month improvement, falling 0.6%. Phoenix and Seattle were flat.

Cities in the Midwest gained the most, with Chicago, Detroit and Minneapolis all up 2.5%.

alejandro.lazo@latimes.com
Home prices rise in June, but a drop may be looming

Five U.S. troops were killed by roadside bombs and insurgent fire in southern and eastern Afghanistan on Tuesday, the latest casualties in a particularly bloody spell that has left 12 service members dead in two days, and 19 since Saturday.

Meanwhile, on the southern outskirts of the capital, Kabul, a gunman opened fire on a busload of Afghan Supreme Court clerks, killing three and wounding 12, the Interior Ministry reported.

Assailants on two motorcycles halted the bus Tuesday morning in the Musayi district, an area where insurgents are active, court spokesman Abdul Malik Kamawi said. One gunman then boarded the bus and opened fire with an automatic weapon, killing two people, Kamawi said. A third died later in a hospital.

“We’re trying to find out who they were. For now, we can only say they are the enemies of the Afghan people,” Kamawi said.

Suspicion immediately fell on Taliban insurgents who have waged a continuous campaign against Afghan government officials and institutions and have stepped up attacks in the run-up to Sept. 18 elections for the lower house of parliament. Candidates and their aides have been threatened, kidnapped and killed, and many voters say they plan to stay away from the polls for fear of violence.

In Tuesday’s attacks, NATO said four troops were killed by a roadside bomb in eastern Afghanistan, while a fifth died in a battle with insurgents in the country’s south. No other details were given and the service members were not identified by name, as is standard procedure.

The deaths came a day after roadside bombs killed eight other members of the international force in Afghanistan, including seven U.S. troops, NATO said Tuesday. A 20-year-old Estonian soldier was also killed.

The deaths bring this month’s total to 55, including a Marine killed in fighting in the volatile southern province of Helmand on Friday whose death was not announced until Monday night. That is still fewer than the 66 killed in July, the deadliest month for U.S. troops in Afghanistan since the 2001 invasion.

Almost all of the recent coalition deaths have come in southern and eastern Afghanistan where the Taliban insurgency is most deeply entrenched and where fighting has been heaviest.

Those areas are also closest to the mountainous border with Pakistan, where insurgents maintain safe havens and training bases to instruct recruits, including foreign fighters, who are later infiltrated into Afghanistan.

NATO commanders have warned casualties will mount as coalition and Afghan forces enter areas under longtime Taliban control, particularly in the hard-line Islamic movement’s spiritual heartland of Kandahar province. The NATO force swelled this month to more than 140,000 — including 100,000 Americans — with the arrival of the last of the reinforcements that President Barack Obama ordered to Afghanistan in a bid to turn the tide of the nearly nine-year war.

Also Tuesday, NATO also said its forces, working with Afghan army and police, had killed 19 insurgents and captured five in a major air assault on the village of Omar in the eastern province of Kunar.

Ground forces taking part in the assault that began Monday uncovered insurgent fighting positions, along with weapons caches and ammunition stockpiles inside the village, it said.

The coalition also said it killed two insurgents and wounded a third in an airstrike Monday on a Taliban commander in charge of logistics in Kandahar, including the coordination of homemade bomb attacks.

A number of Taliban and allied Haqqani Network commanders were also detained in operations Monday, including one recently returned from teaching bomb-making techniques in Pakistan, NATO said.

In Zabul province bordering Kandahar, insurgents on Monday night ambushed a convoy carrying food and other supplies, killing two private security guards and wounding five others, provincial government spokesman Mohammad Jan Rasoolyar said.
12 U.S. troops killed in Afghanistan in 2 days

Thirty-three men stuck a half mile underground are now the longest-trapped miners in recent history as a huge drill is the early stages of digging a planned escape route.

The men were trapped Aug. 5 when a landslide blocked the shaft down into the San Jose copper and gold mine in northern Chile’s Atacama Desert. Last year, three miners survived 25 days trapped in a flooded mine in southern China, and the Chileans surpassed that mark Tuesday.

While doubts and extreme challenges remain, experts said the rescuers have the tools to get the job done — though the government still says it will take three to four months to reach the miners.

“The drill operators have the best equipment available internationally,” said Dave Feickert, director of KiaOra, a mine safety consulting firm in New Zealand that has worked extensively with China’s government to improve dangerous mines there.

“This doesn’t mean it will be easy,” he added. “They are likely to run into some technical problems that may slow them down.”

The 31-ton drill made a shallow, preliminary test hole Tuesday in the solid rock it must bore through, the first step in the weeklong digging of a “pilot hole” to guide the way for the rescue. Later the drill will be outfitted with larger bits to gradually expand the hole and make it big enough so the men can be pulled out one by one.

Before rescuers dug small bore holes down to the miners’ emergency shelter, the men survived 17 days without contact with the outside world by rationing a 48-hour supply of food and digging for water in the ground.

Aside from their rescue, a union leader has expressed concern for the men’s livelihoods.

San Esteban, the company that operates the mine, has said it has no money to pay their wages and absorb lawsuits, and is not even participating in the rescue. State-run mining company Codelco has taken over.

Union leader Evelyn Olmos called on the government to pay the workers’ wages starting in September, plus cover the roughly 100 other people at the mine who are now out of work and 170 more who work elsewhere for San Esteban. Its license has been suspended by the government.

“We want the government to pay our salaries in full until our comrades are freed and then pay our severances,” said Olmos.

Mining Minister Laurence Golborne said the government was prohibited by labor laws from assuming responsibility for the salaries. He said it was up to the mining company and would have to be worked out in Chilean courts.

Golborne noted the extraordinary circumstances of the mine collapse but pointed out there are many other Chileans who lack a job and said the government cannot be responsible for all of them.

Union leaders and others blame the government in part for the San Jose accident because the mine had been cited for safety violations in the past but was allowed to continue operating.

In 2007, executives were charged with involuntary manslaughter in the death of a miner. The worker’s family settled and the mine was closed until it could comply with safety rules, said Sen. Baldo Prokurica, who has long called for tougher regulations.

The next year, the mine reopened even though the company apparently had not complied with all the regulations, he said, adding that the circumstances surrounding the reopening are being investigated.

Workers at the current rescue operation are using the three existing bore holes to deliver food, water, air and medicine to the 33 miners, who are trapped about 2,300 feet underground in a shelter large enough to walk around in.

In an eight-minute video released by the government, the second made by the trapped miners, about a dozen of the men send greetings to their families and say they are feeling better since receiving the sustenance and supplies, including special clothes to keep them dry in the hot, humid mine.

The government last week said that five of the miners were suffering from depression, but Golborne said Sunday from the mine site that those men were doing better, had received antidepressants and were getting counseling.

Helping raise their spirits, the men spoke for about three minutes each to a family member on Sunday after a telephone line was lowered down one of the three existing 6-inch bore holes.

The men, while showing courage that has inspired people throughout Chile and the world, could not help but break down when speaking about their loved ones on the latest video.

“I’m sending my greetings to Angelica. I love you so much, darling,” said 30-year-old Osman Araya, as his voice choked and he began to cry. “Tell my mother, I love you guys so much. I’ll never leave you. I will fight to the end to be with you.”

The video showed the men mostly upbeat, joking on camera and talking about their absolute certainty that they would get out alive.

Experts say maintaining high morale among the men is essential. They will play a key role in winning their own rescue: The drilling technique that must be used means that up to 4,000 tons of rock and debris will fall down into a large mine shaft near the shelter — but far enough away from the men that they will not be in any danger.

Officials have said that it is essential the men be at their best physically and mentally because their own work clearing the rocks will be vital to keeping their eventual escape route from becoming plugged.
Drilling begins as Chile miners become longest-trapped in recent history

Time for an update on one of my all-time favorite fees — the fee that telecom companies charge to not provide you a service.

That service is publishing your name in a phone book, which is undoubtedly a pricey endeavor for phone and cable companies.

So if a customer asks that his or her name not be included in the directory, you’d think you’d be saving the telecom provider a little cash. That’s one less entry in the database, for example, one less dollop of ink at the printer.

But this month, Time Warner Cable more than doubled its fee for an unlisted number to a whopping $1.99 a month, or nearly $24 a year.

The higher fee applies immediately for new customers. Existing customers will see their unlisted number charge go up in January.

Again, that’s a recurring fee — now one of the highest of its type in the telecom industry — for something Time Warner isn’t doing for customers.

What prompted the increase? I asked Jim Gordon, a Time Warner spokesman, if the company’s own costs had gone up.

He declined to answer that question directly, saying only that this is “an administrative fee” and that it’s “consistent with our competitors in this space.”

Actually, it’s higher. Verizon Communications charges $1.75 a month not to list your name in its phone book and not to give your number to people who call directory assistance. AT&T charges $1.25 monthly not to provide these services.

OK, so why is the unlisted number fee charged on a recurring basis? After all, your ongoing preference can be recorded with a few taps at a keyboard, and then it’s done.

“It’s a recurring service that you’re provided throughout the month,” Gordon explained.

Let’s savor that a moment, shall we?

Time Warner and other telecom companies are charging for a service that consists of them basically not doing anything. And because they continue not to do anything month after month, they keep charging you on the grounds that it’s a recurring service.

Time Warner’s fee is all the more remarkable because the company doesn’t produce its own phone book. It pays Sprint to compile all its customers’ names and numbers, and to then pass them along to whichever phone company dominates a particular market for inclusion in that firm’s directory.

Just to be clear: That’s $1.99 a month not to be in a phone book that Time Warner doesn’t even publish.

AT&T’s and Verizon’s fees are a little more understandable. After all, they make extra cash selling ads in their phone books. The more people who choose not to be listed, the less valuable the directory becomes to advertisers, so the phone company wants to discourage people from leaving.

But Time Warner isn’t in the phone book business. Its recurring fee for unlisted numbers is a money grab, pure and simple.

And the unlisted number charge isn’t the only way that the cable giant has started reaching deeper into people’s pockets.

As of Aug. 6, the company raised its fee for customers to pay their bill by phone to $4.99 from $2.99. It also raised it fee for ordering pay-per-view by phone to $4.99 from $2.99.

I’m not trying to tell Time Warner how to run its business, but are such heavy-handed charges really the best way to maintain customer loyalty, especially during economic times like these?

Time Warner Cable doubles fee to not list phone number

Federal officials investigating conditions at the two Iowa mega-farms whose products have been at the center of the biggest egg recall in U.S. history found filthy conditions, including chickens and rodents crawling up massive manure piles and flies and maggots “too numerous to count.”

Water used to wash eggs at one of the producers tested positive for a strain of salmonella that appears to match the variety identified in eggs that have sickened at least 1,500 people, according to preliminary Food and Drug Administration reports of inspections at facilities operated by Wright County Egg and Hillandale Farms of Iowa Inc.

FDA officials who briefed reporters on the findings in a telephone conference call declined to say how serious the violations were for facilities that house millions of birds. Between them, the two producers have 7.5 million hens. But FDA Deputy Commissioner for Foods Michael Taylor said that “clearly the observations here reflect significant deviations from what’s expected.”

Food safety experts said conditions described in the reports are some of the worst they’ve seen in decades.

The reports offer clues to what may have caused the salmonella enteritidis outbreak that prompted the recall of half a billion eggs.

Investigators began examining conditions at the Wright County operation Aug. 12, the day before the company issued its first recall. Inspectors completed their work at that facility Aug. 30, according to documents released by the FDA.

They found:

•Barns with dozens of holes chewed by rodents that mice, insects and wild birds used to enter and live inside the barns;

•Flies on and around the egg belts and hen feeders;

•Manure built up in 4- to 8-foot-tall piles in pits below the hen houses, in such quantities that it pushed pit doors open, allowing rodents and other wild animals access to hen houses;

•Dozens of hens, which had escaped their cages, roaming freely, tracking manure from the pit to other caged parts of the barns;

•Hen houses with significant structural damage and improper air ventilation systems.

Investigators checked out the Hillandale site Aug. 19-26. Their tests of spent water from an egg wash station came up positive for salmonella, although it was not clear whether that contaminated water had been used to clean eggs, an FDA official said.

Wright County Egg recalled a total of 380 million eggs beginning Aug. 13, and Hillandale has since pulled 170 million eggs from the market. Last week, FDA officials said that salmonella tests taken at both operations came back positive.

In a statement, a Wright County Egg spokeswoman said that the company had fully cooperated with the FDA and that “to date, the vast majority of the concerns identified in the FDA report already have been addressed through repairs or other corrective measures.”

A spokeswoman for Hillandale said the company was “committed to taking the steps necessary to regain the full confidence of our customers and consumers.”

FDA officials declined to discuss what, if any, penalties the egg producers might face. Possible penalties include seizure of products, court orders requiring improvements in operations or criminal prosecution. Wright County Egg owner Austin DeCoster has a decades-long record of regulatory violations in at least three states and has paid millions of dollars in fines and settlements.

The agency also announced that next month it would begin inspection of the nation’s 600 largest egg farms, which produce 80% of the nation’s eggs. Those inspections, industry officials say, are expected to include some of the industry’s smaller operations — those with as few as 50,000 laying hens — as well as mega-farms such as those operated by the DeCoster family in Iowa.

Many of the eggs consumers eat are being produced by a shrinking number of farmers. There are 192 large commercial egg producers in the U.S. that control 95% of all the laying hens, compared with 2,500 in 1987, according to the trade group United Egg Producers. The majority of those operations are based in six states, including California.

Filthy conditions found at egg producers

Afghanistan’s attorney general denied Sunday that a prosecutor investigating allegations of corruption in the upper reaches of the government had been fired, saying the official simply had reached the point when retirement was mandatory.

Atty. Gen. Mohammad Ishaq Aloko said during an interview in his Kabul office that prosecutor Fazel Ahmed Faqiryar stopped working Thursday in accordance with Afghan law after 40 years of service. The rules state that officials must step down if they are older than 65 or have served for four decades, he said.

The prosecutor was not forced out because of any conflict with President Hamid Karzai, Aloko said. Faqiryar’s claim Saturday that he had been fired “is absolutely groundless,” he said. “He wants to be admired by the public and the media. His retirement has no relation with corruption.”

Faqiryar’s exit from his post comes amid growing concern in Washington that billions in U.S. taxpayer money have been pocketed by Karzai’s inner circle. At the same time, some U.S. officials fear that pushing the shaky government too hard on corruption could undermine the wider war effort.

A senior State Department official said Sunday that the facts of the prosecutor’s case seemed unclear and that he was unaware whether anyone in the administration was raising the issue with the Karzai government. “We are watching this very closely,” he said.

Another U.S. official said an open fight with Karzai probably would make him more intransigent and complicate relations ahead of parliamentary elections and major military operations scheduled for the coming weeks. “It’s not worth the potential trouble over one prosecutor where the facts aren’t entirely clear,” the official said.

Both officials requested anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter.

In an interview Sunday in his modest Kabul apartment, Faqiryar disputed Aloko’s account, saying he was authorized to work past 65. Like many Afghans, he doesn’t know his exact birthday but says he’s about 72. He also said he had worked only 39 years and five months, not counting schooling and five years under Taliban rule when he was off the government clock.

The prosecutor, who was also deputy attorney general, said his relations with the Karzai administration turned sour last year when he briefed a closed-door session of parliament regarding about 25 corruption cases the attorney general’s office was working on, naming governors, ministers and ambassadors who were targets of investigation.

The attorney general quickly expressed his unhappiness with the move, Faqiryar said, “so from that time, our relations went bad.”

Faqiryar said this rather tense atmosphere carried on until he sent a midlevel prosecutor to speak about corruption on a television station this month. After that, he said, his retirement was fast-tracked.

Faqiryar said he’d watched legal cases involving powerful officials delayed, sidelined and dismissed or the parties ruled not guilty. “We can implement the law on poor people,” he said, “but not on rich and influential people.”

Analysts said the Karzai administration appeared to be following a strategy used by other rulers in South Asia of diverting state resources to secure personal loyalties.

“It’s not aimed at using government money to make a good society but, rather, to cement alliances,” said Rasul Bakhsh Rais, a political science professor at Pakistan’s Lahore University of Management Sciences and the author of a book on war, ethnicity and governance in Afghanistan. “It’s a very heartbreaking story in Afghanistan.”

This month, Karzai stepped in to stop the prosecution of a close aide, Mohammed Zia Salehi, who according to investigators was heard on a wiretap demanding a bribe from another Afghan hoping to foil a corruption investigation.

The Salehi case was still under investigation, Aloko said Sunday, but there was no risk of his escaping since “he’s working in a high post.” He added that Salehi would remain free until his case was in the investigation process.

In many parts of the country, the government only recently has gained a foothold amid security concerns, Aloko added, and, although many lower-level officials have been prosecuted, cases involving ministers have not gone ahead since, under the constitution, they need to be tried in special courts, which have not yet been established.

“Corruption is greatly reduced compared with before,” he said. “Today, rule of law is revived, everyone fears the law and being prosecuted, and we have made progress.”

.

mark.magnier@latimes.com

Times staff writer Magnier reported from New Delhi and special correspondent Yaqubi from Kabul. Times staff writers David S. Cloud and Paul Richter in Washington and special correspondent Hashmat Baktash in Kabul contributed to this report.

Prosecutor investigating Afghan corruption wasn’t fired, official says

Anton Geesink, who helped make judo a universally popular sport by winning a gold medal at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, has died. He was 76.

Geesink died Friday, according to the Dutch state broadcaster NOS. He had spent several weeks in a hospital in his hometown of Utrecht, Netherlands. No other details were released.

The 6-foot-6 Geesink stunned Japan by becoming the first Westerner to win the World Judo Championship in 1961 in Paris, then won his Olympic gold three years later in Tokyo, the first time the Olympics included judo. He won another world title in Rio de Janeiro in 1965, along with a record 21 European championships.

At the 1964 Games, Japan dominated the judo competition, but its champion, Akio Kaminaga, was no match for Geesink in the open division, where there were no weight classifications. According to United Press International’s account of the match, Geesink “crushed Kaminaga to the mat and held him there for the required 30 seconds.”

Jim Bregman, a member of the U.S. judo team in 1964, told The Times in 1984: “The entire Japanese team returned to the locker room and wept, but this was no humiliation really.

“Anton was more than just a big guy, as many thought. What he was was a 6-foot-6, 300-pound technical genius, a very powerful, very fast judo player of consummate skill in a very large frame. Anton Geesink was quite the package.”

Antonius Johannes Geesink was born April 6, 1934, in Utrecht in the Netherlands. He first participated at the European championships in 1951, finishing second.

The International Olympic Committee praised Geesink as a “great athlete” who “dedicated his entire career to the promotion of sport and its values.” Geesink had been a member of the Olympic committee since 1987.

In 1999, Geesink received a warning from the committee in connection with a bribery scandal in the selection of Salt Lake City for the 2002 Winter Olympics. A foundation bearing his name received a $5,000 check from Tom Welch, the former Salt Lake City organizing committee chief. Geesink maintained that he did nothing wrong and that the money was not paid to him.

Geesink is survived by his wife, Jans, and their three children.

news.obits@latimes.com
Anton Geesink dies at 76; Olympic gold medalist popularized judo

Manny Ramirez will be sent to the Chicago White Sox on a waiver deal Monday, according to a baseball source who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The Dodgers aren’t expected to get any players in return, but are likely to unburden themselves of the $4 million or so that Ramirez is due to earn over the remainder of the regular season.

In his last game for the Dodgers, Ramirez pinch hit against the Colorado Rockies in the sixth inning with the bases loaded. He was ejected from the game after only one pitch as he argued that the called strike was a ball.

Manny Ramirez headed to White Sox

Five years after Hurricane Katrina, President Obama recommitted the nation to ongoing repair of the Gulf Coast as the region’s fragile recovery hung in the balance and his own popularity needed shoring up amid disappointment with the administration’s handling of the gulf oil spill.

Obama underscored the optimism and ongoing frustration felt in New Orleans, a city that had shown signs of renewal despite lingering devastation.

Residents worry the nation will leave them behind, fatigued over the one-two punch of the hurricane and BP spill. Obama seemed intent on convincing them otherwise.

“I wanted to come here and tell the people of this city directly: My administration is going to stand with you – and fight alongside you – until the job is done,” Obama said at Xavier University, a historically black college where he delivered the commencement address less than a year after Katrina.

After being criticized for his administration’s slow response to this year’s BP oil spill, Obama impressed on gulf residents the improvements he had made in streamlining Katrina aid — including $1.8 billion for Orleans Parish Schools announced Friday.

Obama pledged to finish the largest civil-works project in the nation’s history — shoring up the failed levees — by next year. He noted the June groundbreaking on a new Veterans’ Administration hospital.

The White House sent top administration officials as the region held days of panel discussions, art exhibits — even a funeral for Katrina where attendees hoped to bury their grief and move on from the largest residential disaster in the nation’s history.

Yet for a president who works to separate his legacy in the gulf from that of his predecessor, President Bush, the administration’s handling of the BP spill links the two by the perceived inability of government to adequately respond to disaster.

“We are going to stand with you until the oil is cleaned up, the environment is restored, polluters are held accountable, communities are made whole and this region is back on its feet,” Obama said.

Obama made an unscheduled lunch stop before the afternoon speech, ordering a shrimp po’boy at the Parkway Bakery and Tavern, a 100-year-old restaurant in the Mid-City neighborhood of New Orleans, eating with the first lady and their daughters. The president greeted patrons with hugs and handshakes.

“We’re just going to keep on building, we’re going to keep on working, alright?” the president said, according to the pool report.
Obama, in New Orleans, promises to ‘fight alongside’ Gulf Coast