CDC: 1 in 24 admit nodding off while driving

NEW YORK (AP) — This could give you nightmares: 1 in 24 U.S. adults say they recently fell asleep while driving.

And health officials behind the study think the number is probably higher. That's because some people don't realize it when they nod off for a second or two behind the wheel.

"If I'm on the road, I'd be a little worried about the other drivers," said the study's lead author, Anne Wheaton of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In the CDC study released Thursday, about 4 percent of U.S. adults said they nodded off or fell asleep at least once while driving in the previous month. Some earlier studies reached a similar conclusion, but the CDC telephone survey of 147,000 adults was far larger. It was conducted in 19 states and the District of Columbia in 2009 and 2010.

CDC researchers found drowsy driving was more common in men, people ages 25 to 34, those who averaged less than six hours of sleep each night, and — for some unexplained reason — Texans.

Wheaton said it's possible the Texas survey sample included larger numbers of sleep-deprived young adults or apnea-suffering overweight people.

Most of the CDC findings are not surprising to those who study this problem.

"A lot of people are getting insufficient sleep," said Dr. Gregory Belenky, director of Washington State University's Sleep and Performance Research Center in Spokane.

The government estimates that about 3 percent of fatal traffic crashes involve drowsy drivers, but other estimates have put that number as high as 33 percent.

Warning signs of drowsy driving: Feeling very tired, not remembering the last mile or two, or drifting onto rumble strips on the side of the road. That signals a driver should get off the road and rest, Wheaton said.

Even a brief moment nodding off can be extremely dangerous, she noted. At 60 mph, a single second translates to speeding along for 88 feet — the length of two school buses.

To prevent drowsy driving, health officials recommend getting 7 to 9 hours of sleep each night, treating any sleep disorders and not drinking alcohol before getting behind the wheel.

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Online:

CDC report: http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr

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Greuel faults DWP for bypassing bids on lobbying contracts

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power repeatedly bypassed its competitive bidding process when it awarded $480,000 in contracts to lobby Sacramento decision-makers, according to a report issued by City Controller Wendy Greuel.

DWP executives issued four no-bid contracts for state lobbying over the last two years, two of them to Mercury Public Affairs, a firm that includes former state Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez as one of its partners. No public debate or vote by the utility's five-member Board of Commissioners was required under DWP contracting rules because each agreement was $150,000 or less.

Greuel, who is running for mayor in the March 5 election, said the city utility had "lax controls" over the lobbying contracts and failed to require that two of the firms prepare reports showing what they had accomplished. Mercury also was paid $50,000 for a month of work to help secure passage of legislation on power plant upgrades that had been withdrawn on the first day of the firm's contract, the report found.

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FOR THE RECORD:
DWP lobbyist: An article in the Jan. 3 LATExtra section about DWP lobbying practices said the agency had been paying $15,000 to its in-house lobbyist Cindy Montañez in 2009. The article should have specified that Montañez was being paid $15,000 per month.

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"DWP should have terminated" the contract, Greuel wrote.

The inquiry, which was conducted with help from the city Ethics Commission, was launched last year after Greuel's office received a tip alleging that the lobbying work was awarded in exchange for favors. But no evidence of "a 'pay to play' arrangement" was found, her report said.

Mercury received DWP lobbying contracts worth $50,000 in 2010 and $150,000 in 2011, both focused on state government. The firm also received a no-bid, nine-month contract worth $141,000 in 2010 for lobbying at the federal level, which was not examined in the controller's report.

The DWP said the no-bid contracts were reviewed and approved by the city's lawyers. The three lobbying firms helped shape costly state regulations dealing with greenhouse gas emissions and pollution of ocean plant life caused by coastal power plants, utility officials said.

"Their effective advocacy contributed to favorable outcomes that will save LADWP's customers in excess of a billion dollars," the DWP said in a statement.

Mercury Managing Director Roger Salazar said his firm provided strategy for dealing with water quality regulators, as well as state lawmakers. "The legislative process doesn't always end with the pulling of a bill," he added.

The DWP's hiring practices for outside lobbyists attracted scrutiny in 2009 after high-level officials proposed a contract worth up to $2.4 million with Conservation Strategy Group — a Sacramento-based firm that planned to use Mercury and a second company as subcontractors.

The deal would have included the involvement of Nuñez, author of the state's landmark 2006 climate change law. But it was scuttled after DWP commissioners raised questions about the cost. The agency already was paying $15,000 to its in-house lobbyist Cindy Montañez, a former Assembly member who is now a City Council candidate.

DWP officials subsequently began using simple purchase orders instead of competitive bidding procedures to hire lobbying firms. The utility awarded a one-year, $130,000 agreement to Weideman Group in 2010 and a one-year, $150,000 agreement with Conservation Strategy Group in 2011.

Mercury received its $150,000 contract in April 2011, during the same week that Nuñez contributed $3,000 to three of the mayor's legal defense funds and $1,000 to a separate officeholder account belonging to Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. The defense funds were set up to pay nearly $42,000 in ethics fines levied against Villaraigosa for accepting free tickets to sports and cultural events.

Salazar said there was no link between the contracts and the donations from Nuñez. "Any insinuation that they are connected is absurd and irresponsible," he said.

Last month, the DWP's five-member board awarded a Sacramento lobbying contract worth $1 million annually to KP Public Affairs. That vote was taken after a competitive search process.

david.zahniser@latimes.com

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Mubarak Dictated Response to Protests in Cairo, Report Says

Ben Curtis/Associated Press

In January 2011, a protester was injured during clashes with security forces in Cairo.

CAIRO — Sitting in his palace in early 2011, as protests against him consumed Egypt, President Hosni Mubarak watched live video feeds of the demonstrations in Tahrir Square and the brutal response by his security forces, who used clubs, tear gas and live ammunition against civilians, according to a commission investigating deaths during the 18-day revolt and its aftermath.

The video was delivered on an encrypted channel to Mr. Mubarak and other top officials, along with detailed security reports. Facing the most severe challenge to his rule in three decades, and just days after protests had forced Tunisia’s autocratic president to flee his country, Mr. Mubarak authorized the use of any means to stop the demonstrations, his interior minister, Habib el-Adly, told the commission’s investigators.

“Mubarak knew everything, big and small,” Mr. Adly said, according to a commission member, Ali al-Gineidy. The group’s report, which was delivered on Wednesday to Mr. Mubarak’s successor, President Mohamed Morsi, has not been released to the public, but in recent days members have spoken about its findings.

The picture of Mr. Mubarak, 84, that has started to emerge from their comments — as a zealous watcher of the protests and the orchestrator of the crackdown — seems to contradict accounts by lawyers for the deposed president that he did not authorize the repression or know about the deaths. His court appearances after his ouster — in which he lay on a stretcher, wearing pajamas and sunglasses — and frequent reports of his ill health have reinforced his image as a detached, somewhat feeble leader.

In June, a court convicted Mr. Mubarak and Mr. Adly of being accessories to murder, but absolved them of more direct responsibility for the uprising’s casualties.

More than 800 people died during the uprising, and dozens more were killed during Egypt’s chaotic, military-led transition to civilian leadership. Only a few police officers are serving prison time in the killings, and hundreds of other officials have been acquitted. Human rights advocates hope the commission’s 700-page report will be a step toward breaking a culture of impunity that the revolt failed to crack. Even now, civilians are tortured by the security forces which the current Islamist government has taken no steps to reform.

Mr. Morsi appointed the 16-member commission in July, soon after he took office. The panel also investigated the deaths of protesters during the military-led transition period and found that soldiers had fired live ammunition at demonstrators, despite denials by military leaders.

In a telephone interview, Mohsin al-Bahnasi, a commission member, said enough evidence had been collected to convict members of the armed forces, although human rights advocates say that is unlikely because civilian courts have no power to try them.

In recent weeks, Mr. Morsi has called for top officials, including Mr. Mubarak and Mr. Adly, to be retried in the killings. On Wednesday, his office released a statement saying the public prosecutor would evaluate the commission’s findings.

Mr. Gineidy, who quit the commission before it submitted its report, praised its investigation but said its work had been jeopardized by Egypt’s judiciary, which has been unwilling to confront the security forces.

Mr. Gineidy said Mr. Morsi would have to “establish revolutionary courts or special circuits” to try perpetrators because many sitting judges, appointed by Mr. Mubarak, were still loyal to the old government.

The commission looked at evidence including Interior Ministry documents like weapons discharge reports and service orders that detailed security deployments, said Mr. Bahnasi, who gave a detailed interview about the report on Al Jazeera on Tuesday.

The commission recorded an interview with Mr. Adly in prison and spoke with officials with the Information Ministry, who told it about Mr. Mubarak’s video feeds.

The commission collected evidence that showed the authorities discussed covering up killings, including by quickly burying the bodies of victims. Interior Ministry documents showed that officers used machine guns and birdshot against the protesters.

Mr. Bahnasi said the commission also gathered evidence on the government’s widespread use of plainclothes thugs, who were commanded by senior officials of Mr. Mubarak’s political party and the Interior Ministry.

The government, Mr. Adly said, gave the thugs money and broken marble to attack the protesters.

On the rooftop of a hotel in Tahrir Square, military officers videotaped the protests, Mr. Gineidy said. The information minister arranged for the feeds to be piped to Mr. Mubarak and other officials. The government “recorded everything until the day he stepped down,” Mr. Bahnasi said on Al Jazeera.

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Review: Nintendo’s TVii tops button-laden remotes

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Nintendo‘s TV-watching tool for the new Wii U game console beats my regular remote control hands down.

Called TVii, the service transforms how you watch television in three key ways. It turns the touch-screen GamePad controller for the Wii U into a remote control for your TV and set-top box. It groups your favorite shows and sports teams together, whether it’s on live TV or an Internet video service such as Hulu Plus. And it offers water-cooler moments you can chat about on social media.

It takes some getting used to, and I had a lot of re-learning to do after years of using my thumb to channel surf. But once I did, I found the service an advance from the mass of buttons on most TV remote controls.

TVii comes free with the Wii U, although it didn’t become available in the U.S. until mid-December, about a month after the game machine’s debut.

One nice touch is that TVii gives you a way to search for shows over Internet video apps and live TV all in one place. I can then choose whether to watch it on the big TV or on my controller’s touch screen, which measures 6.2 inches diagonally.

Handling these different sources of video at once is a tall order, and Nintendo Co. does it pretty well. No one else has combined live and Web TV as seamlessly before. As the lines blur between the two, I would hope some of TVii’s advances are copied and improved upon by other gadget makers and TV signal providers.

For starters, TVii asks for your TV maker, your set-top box maker, your location and your TV provider (that could be an antenna). TVii then uses infrared codes to control your TV just like the old remote, and it can offer a traditional channel guide for live TV shows. TVii also asks for your favorite shows, sports teams and movies. This helps it create an easy-to-understand grouping of shows you might want to watch.

I appreciate the way TVii walked me through the setup process. It was refreshing, given the misfortune I recently had of trying to program the remote control that came with my cable set-top box, which is about as fun as doing your tax returns. TVii takes away the need to read folded-up instruction manuals that appear to be written by and for electronics hobbyists.

After the setup, TVii presents you with a series of icons for Favorites, TV, Movies, Sports and Search. A little avatar of your identity is in one corner, and tapping on it lets you adjust your favorites or go through the setup again. Each person in a household can have a different avatar and set of favorites.

In Favorites, your shows are listed with cover art, and you can swipe through the offerings. Tapping one, say, “The Mindy Project,” will pull up an episode list with pictures and brief summaries. Choosing an episode will bring up a range of options — the channel if it’s on live TV, or buttons for Hulu Plus or Amazon, where you can pay for monthly access or just one episode through the service’s app. (The free version of Hulu is blocked on gadgets, including the Wii U and tablet computers. Apple’s iTunes, unsurprisingly, isn’t integrated.) The option of clicking through to Netflix will be added some time in 2013.

One hiccup is that if you want to watch a show on live TV now, it asks if your TV’s input source is already set to the set-top box, rather than the Wii U or another gadget such as a DVD player. If it is, you tap “yes” and the channel changes. If not, you have to tap until the source switches to the right one and then tap “yes.” Still, there’s no need to go back to your TV’s remote control.

The other menu items for TV, Movies, Sports and Search operate pretty similarly. Eventually you’ll get a range of options to watch. In the case of sports, you’ll likely see several game possibilities, with the latest score showing up on each game icon.

As an alternative, you can resort to a physical TV button on the GamePad that brings up touch controls that mimic a simplified, standard remote.

Another option is using an altogether separate interface in which favorite channels and other controls are displayed graphically on a semi-circular wheel. It looks strange, and I wouldn’t recommend it.

Anyone who is frustrated by the jumble of cables and boxes that now surround TVs will see TVii’s appeal. My wife said she liked the ease of holding and touching the controller, rather than fiddling with the button-laden remote. One downside I can see with TVii is that you have to keep looking down to figure out what to watch. And you have to plug it in frequently, as the GamePad controller will die out after three to five hours of use.

TVii also offers a standard channel guide in which you can scroll up and down for programs on different channels or right and left for different times of day. A touch will change the channel to the program, which is nice.

For certain shows and sporting events, TVii will supply a running list of key events called “TV tags.” These descriptions of events, like the precise moment when Mindy’s Christmas party descends into chaos, are displayed on the GamePad’s screen, along with a screenshot. Tapping on one opens up a comment window, and an onscreen keyboard allows you to make a comment. For sports, you get a description of each play, such as the number of yards thrown in a pass, beside a graphic that gets updated.

Not many people have Wii U consoles yet, nor is everyone tuned to TVii. As a result, I found myself with only one or two commenters to share my thoughts with.

If you’ve connected TVii to Facebook and Twitter (again, some sign-up is involved), your comments will go out to your friends and followers, but the TV tag that you are commenting on won’t show up, so they might not know what you’re talking about. TVii adds the hashtag “NintendoTVii” to help readers take a guess.

In the end, TVii isn’t perfect.

It isn’t yet able to program your digital video recorder, although it will do so for TiVo DVRs by March. Sports are limited to pro and college basketball and football, and there’s no integration with fantasy sports leagues. And the battery life of the GamePad is short.

A review unit I was sent failed to take a charge and had to be replaced, although I haven’t found others who have had the same problem.

These irritations aside, Nintendo has given us a way to control the clutter of channels, apps and devices crowding around the TV. It’s relatively easy and intuitive and some updates are on the way. Considering the garble of the TV universe, that’s pretty good.

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About TVii:

TVii turns the GamePad controller for the Wii U into a remote control that integrates your live TV and Internet video experience. The service is free, but you’ll need a Wii U game console, which starts at $ 300. You’ll also need to pay extra to use video services such as Hulu Plus, Amazon and Netflix.

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Jennie Garth Wants to Date a Man with 'Positive Energy'

01/02/2013 at 07:10 PM EST

When it comes to her current love life, Jennie Garth has a new mantra.

"I'm learning to date again," the actress, who split from husband Peter Facinelli in March 2012, tells Health in its January issue, "[and] looks aren't important to me anymore. ... I like positive energy."

The actress, who dropped 30 lbs. last year, plans to keep her health a priority in 2013.

"Every day, I just renew my healthy choices," she says. "I feel really good about myself now, and I don't want to do anything to change that."

That means avoiding trendy diets or weight-loss gimmicks.

"My biggest regret is putting my body through fad diets: Atkins, cleanses, the hCG diet," Garth, 40, says. "I lost like 18 lbs., but it came right back. The worst was fasting with colonics for three or four days. It was the most horrifying experience ever."

In addition to her body, Garth says she's trying to maintain a positive outlook, even when times are tough.

"When I'm in excruciating pain, like with what I've been through with my breakup and that grief and loss that's just immobilizing, it helps to remember that it only lasts for 13 to 15 minutes, max," she tells Health. "And then it's over."

"Your mind is ready to go to something else," Garth continues. "You might come back to it, but it helps to just know that that pain is not going to last forever."

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Brain image study: Fructose may spur overeating

This is your brain on sugar — for real. Scientists have used imaging tests to show for the first time that fructose, a sugar that saturates the American diet, can trigger brain changes that may lead to overeating.

After drinking a fructose beverage, the brain doesn't register the feeling of being full as it does when simple glucose is consumed, researchers found.

It's a small study and does not prove that fructose or its relative, high-fructose corn syrup, can cause obesity, but experts say it adds evidence they may play a role. These sugars often are added to processed foods and beverages, and consumption has risen dramatically since the 1970s along with obesity. A third of U.S. children and teens and more than two-thirds of adults are obese or overweight.

All sugars are not equal — even though they contain the same amount of calories — because they are metabolized differently in the body. Table sugar is sucrose, which is half fructose, half glucose. High-fructose corn syrup is 55 percent fructose and 45 percent glucose. Some nutrition experts say this sweetener may pose special risks, but others and the industry reject that claim. And doctors say we eat too much sugar in all forms.

For the study, scientists used magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, scans to track blood flow in the brain in 20 young, normal-weight people before and after they had drinks containing glucose or fructose in two sessions several weeks apart.

Scans showed that drinking glucose "turns off or suppresses the activity of areas of the brain that are critical for reward and desire for food," said one study leader, Yale University endocrinologist Dr. Robert Sherwin. With fructose, "we don't see those changes," he said. "As a result, the desire to eat continues — it isn't turned off."

What's convincing, said Dr. Jonathan Purnell, an endocrinologist at Oregon Health & Science University, is that the imaging results mirrored how hungry the people said they felt, as well as what earlier studies found in animals.

"It implies that fructose, at least with regards to promoting food intake and weight gain, is a bad actor compared to glucose," said Purnell. He wrote a commentary that appears with the federally funded study in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association.

Researchers now are testing obese people to see if they react the same way to fructose and glucose as the normal-weight people in this study did.

What to do? Cook more at home and limit processed foods containing fructose and high-fructose corn syrup, Purnell suggested. "Try to avoid the sugar-sweetened beverages. It doesn't mean you can't ever have them," but control their size and how often they are consumed, he said.

A second study in the journal suggests that only severe obesity carries a high death risk — and that a few extra pounds might even provide a survival advantage. However, independent experts say the methods are too flawed to make those claims.

The study comes from a federal researcher who drew controversy in 2005 with a report that found thin and normal-weight people had a slightly higher risk of death than those who were overweight. Many experts criticized that work, saying the researcher — Katherine Flegal of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — painted a misleading picture by including smokers and people with health problems ranging from cancer to heart disease. Those people tend to weigh less and therefore make pudgy people look healthy by comparison.

Flegal's new analysis bolsters her original one, by assessing nearly 100 other studies covering almost 2.9 million people around the world. She again concludes that very obese people had the highest risk of death but that overweight people had a 6 percent lower mortality rate than thinner people. She also concludes that mildly obese people had a death risk similar to that of normal-weight people.

Critics again have focused on her methods. This time, she included people too thin to fit what some consider to be normal weight, which could have taken in people emaciated by cancer or other diseases, as well as smokers with elevated risks of heart disease and cancer.

"Some portion of those thin people are actually sick, and sick people tend to die sooner," said Donald Berry, a biostatistician at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.

The problems created by the study's inclusion of smokers and people with pre-existing illness "cannot be ignored," said Susan Gapstur, vice president of epidemiology for the American Cancer Society.

A third critic, Dr. Walter Willett of the Harvard School of Public Health, was blunter: "This is an even greater pile of rubbish" than the 2005 study, he said. Willett and others have done research since the 2005 study that found higher death risks from being overweight or obese.

Flegal defended her work. She noted that she used standard categories for weight classes. She said statistical adjustments were made for smokers, who were included to give a more real-world sample. She also said study participants were not in hospitals or hospices, making it unlikely that large numbers of sick people skewed the results.

"We still have to learn about obesity, including how best to measure it," Flegal's boss, CDC Director Dr. Thomas Frieden, said in a written statement. "However, it's clear that being obese is not healthy - it increases the risk of diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and many other health problems. Small, sustainable increases in physical activity and improvements in nutrition can lead to significant health improvements."

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Online:

Obesity info: http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/trends.html

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

Mike Stobbe can be followed at http://twitter.com/MikeStobbe

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Eric Garcetti invokes Latino-Jewish ancestry in mayor's race

Working a recent breakfast gathering of business owners in Northridge last week, Los Angeles mayoral contender Eric Garcetti introduced himself in Hindi when a Sikh businessman approached.

A few hours later, Garcetti donned a colorful Peruvian headpiece with ear flaps as he spoke Spanish with immigrants on the steps of City Hall, part of a show of solidarity for designating a stretch of Hollywood's Vine Street as "Peru Village."

After lunch, Garcetti joined rabbis at a City Hall menorah lighting. Wearing a yarmulke, the Hollywood-area councilman sang Hanukkah songs in Hebrew, English and Spanish. "Toda la familia," Garcetti said as the group huddled for a photo.

A top contender to succeed Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, Garcetti prides himself on his ease with the city's diverse cultures. He sees his mixed ancestry ("I have an Italian last name, and I'm half Mexican and half Jewish," he says) as a powerful part of his appeal in a city where voters for decades have split along racial and ethnic lines in mayoral elections.

But as the campaign begins to capture public attention, a big question is whether Garcetti can re-create the surge of Latino support that helped secure Villaraigosa's historic election eight years ago as the first Latino mayor of modern Los Angeles.

Garcetti, whose district includes Silver Lake and Echo Park, is counting on strong support citywide from Latinos and liberals, buttressed by scattered support from other groups. Weaving a multiethnic tapestry of voters will be crucial to offsetting his opponents' strengths, such as San Fernando Valley white voters who tend to turn out heavily in local elections and might favor City Controller Wendy Greuel, who previously represented the area on the City Council.

It's no small challenge. Greuel and City Councilwoman Jan Perry of South Los Angeles each aspire to be the first woman elected mayor of Los Angeles, another historical marker that could spark — to Garcetti's detriment — the kind of enthusiasm that carried Villaraigosa into office.

Also, some of the city's most prominent Latino political leaders have shunned Garcetti's candidacy in the March 5 mayoral primary, deciding to close ranks behind Greuel.

Villaraigosa has stayed neutral, but Greuel has won the backing of L.A. County Supervisor Gloria Molina, an iconic figure in Latino politics who broke barriers as the first Latina elected to the state Legislature, City Council and Board of Supervisors.

Also backing Greuel are Dolores Huerta, co-founder of United Farm Workers, and state Assembly Speaker John Pérez (D-Los Angeles).

When he announced his support for Greuel, Pérez, a cousin of Villaraigosa, appeared to challenge Garcetti's bid to assume a leadership position among the city's nearly 2 million Latinos.

"There isn't a Latino candidate running for mayor that I know of," he told KPCC  public radio.

After Garcetti called Pérez to complain, the Assembly speaker apologized, saying he misunderstood Garcetti's ethnic heritage.

Garcetti has Mexican roots through his father, former Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti. Eric's grandfather, Salvador Garcetti, was born in Mexico and grew up in Boyle Heights. Salvador was brought to the United States as a baby after his father, Massimo Garcetti, a judge who had emigrated from Italy, was hanged during the Mexican Revolution that began in 1910, Garcetti says. Eric's grandmother, Juanita Iberri, one of 19 children in a family that migrated from Sonora, Mexico, was born in Arizona.

On his mother's side, Garcetti is a descendant of Jewish immigrants from Russia, Poland and the Ukraine. They too settled in Boyle Heights in the early 20th century. Garcetti's maternal grandfather, Harry Roth, turned the family's Los Angeles clothing business, Louis Roth & Co., into a major national brand of high-end suits for men.

Eric Garcetti and seven relatives now oversee the Roth Family Foundation. On its website, it has reported giving $5.9 million in grants since 2000 to hundreds of organizations, among them the PUENTE Learning Center, Planned Parenthood LA and the Silverlake Conservatory of Music.

Garcetti, 41, was raised in Encino and attended a public elementary school at UCLA. From 7th to 12th grade, he went to Harvard, then a private boys' school in Studio City. The family moved to Brentwood when he was a senior.

"Weekends involved bowls of menudo at my grandparents' and bagels at my cousins' house," Garcetti said in an interview. "I think if you're Latino, you're very comfortable with the idea of mestizo, being mixed. So I kind of joke that I'm mestizo doble, double mixed."

At Columbia University, Garcetti earned a bachelor's degree in political science and a master's in international affairs. He studied the Eritrean Revolution as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University and the London School of Economics, a stint that led to travels around the world.

"Having studied international relations, having taught it, having visited, I think, 80 countries in my life, having lived on a number of continents, in some ways prepared me to be mayor of this town, where over 200 languages are spoken, 140 countries are represented," Garcetti said.

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In Hong Kong, Rival Protests Are Divided Over LeaderIn Hong Kong, Rival Protests Are Divided Over Leader

HONG KONG — Thousands of demonstrators in rival marches crowded through Hong Kong’s main shopping district on Tuesday to praise or condemn the city’s chief executive, who appears to retain the confidence of leaders in Beijing despite facing criticism here over a series of actions.

The New Year’s Day marches underlined deep political divisions in Hong Kong, a semiautonomous territory that Britain returned to Chinese rule in 1997.

Critics of the chief executive, Leung Chun-ying, accuse him of misleading the public on a controversial real estate issue, and of being a puppet installed by Beijing. Many of his critics also favor greater democracy for Hong Kong, where the chief executive is now chosen by a 1,200-member panel packed with Beijing loyalists; the general public elects half the legislature, while the other half is chosen by business leaders and other groups that also tend to follow Beijing’s wishes.

Mr. Leung’s backers, mainly organized by groups with lavish financial support from Beijing, contend that he is beginning to address deep-seated social issues here. They also tend to suggest that democracy is a Western concept that may not be compatible with local culture or with rapid economic development.

Supporters of Mr. Leung roughed up two local journalists at a separate rally on Sunday; many Beijing loyalists accuse Hong Kong journalists of being biased in favor of democracy.

But the events on Tuesday were largely peaceful. Organizers of two follow-up rallies in favor of Mr. Leung gave crowd estimates totaling 62,500, while a police spokeswoman put the figure at 8,560. Demonstrators seeking Mr. Leung’s resignation were more numerous, with rival groups of organizers providing estimates for a march and a separate rally totaling 142,000 people, while police estimates totaled 28,500.

Mr. Leung, who took office as chief executive on July 1, has faced heavy criticism for concealing during last winter’s election campaign that he had secretly expanded his $64 million home without receiving government planning permission or paying real estate fees due on the expansion.

Mr. Leung has been widely accused of hypocrisy because he won the election partly by criticizing his opponent, Henry Tang, for the unauthorized construction of a huge basement under a villa owned by Mr. Tang’s wife. That construction was also done without government planning permission, which is difficult to obtain, and without making a large payment to the government, which owns virtually all the land in Hong Kong and collects hefty lease payments based mainly on the square footage of developments.

Mr. Leung apologized this autumn for concealing his construction — he even built a false wall to hide his extension right before running for the territory’s top office. But he pointed out that he had not addressed his own compliance with Hong Kong real estate laws during the campaign.

“In fact, in my memory, I did not say I had no illegal structure,” he told the legislature.

Many Hong Kong residents blame growing immigration and tourism from mainland China for driving housing prices to unaffordable levels, for causing overcrowding in local schools and for making it harder for young people to find jobs. Mr. Leung has addressed these issues in his first six months in office by imposing steep taxes this autumn on short-term real estate investments by anyone who is not a permanent resident. He has also banned local hospitals, starting on New Year’s Day, from scheduling any more births for mainland mothers.

Continued support for Mr. Leung from Beijing makes it likely that he will remain in office. When the legislature took up a no-confidence measure three weeks ago, a majority of the lawmakers elected by the general public voted against Mr. Leung, but a majority of lawmakers representing business leaders and other social groups supported him. To pass, a majority of both groups was required.

In separate meetings with Mr. Leung nearly two weeks ago in Beijing, President Hu Jintao of China and Xi Jinping, who became the general secretary of the ruling Communist Party in November and is slated to become China’s next president in March, each said separately that they support Mr. Leung and his administration.

“You have a heavy workload and it is exhausting,” Mr. Xi said. “The central government affirms your work.”

Sprinkled among the protesters against Mr. Leung were a few people carrying the colonial Hong Kong flag that flew over the city during British rule. Beijing officials have asked Hong Kong residents not to display the flag, which they regard as a symbol of past foreign domination and humiliation of China.

Steveny Chan, a young woman who identified herself only as an office worker and carried a roughly 3-foot-by-2-foot colonial flag, said that she did not favor the return of Hong Kong to British rule. She said that she was displaying the flag as a nostalgic symbol of a time when the Hong Kong economy seemed to offer more opportunities for young people, and when Britain, before the return to China, was granting the people of Hong Kong growing autonomy.

“We’re missing the golden old days of Hong Kong,” she said.

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Brain image study: Fructose may spur overeating

This is your brain on sugar — for real. Scientists have used imaging tests to show for the first time that fructose, a sugar that saturates the American diet, can trigger brain changes that may lead to overeating.

After drinking a fructose beverage, the brain doesn't register the feeling of being full as it does when simple glucose is consumed, researchers found.

It's a small study and does not prove that fructose or its relative, high-fructose corn syrup, can cause obesity, but experts say it adds evidence they may play a role. These sugars often are added to processed foods and beverages, and consumption has risen dramatically since the 1970s along with obesity. A third of U.S. children and teens and more than two-thirds of adults are obese or overweight.

All sugars are not equal — even though they contain the same amount of calories — because they are metabolized differently in the body. Table sugar is sucrose, which is half fructose, half glucose. High-fructose corn syrup is 55 percent fructose and 45 percent glucose. Some nutrition experts say this sweetener may pose special risks, but others and the industry reject that claim. And doctors say we eat too much sugar in all forms.

For the study, scientists used magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, scans to track blood flow in the brain in 20 young, normal-weight people before and after they had drinks containing glucose or fructose in two sessions several weeks apart.

Scans showed that drinking glucose "turns off or suppresses the activity of areas of the brain that are critical for reward and desire for food," said one study leader, Yale University endocrinologist Dr. Robert Sherwin. With fructose, "we don't see those changes," he said. "As a result, the desire to eat continues — it isn't turned off."

What's convincing, said Dr. Jonathan Purnell, an endocrinologist at Oregon Health & Science University, is that the imaging results mirrored how hungry the people said they felt, as well as what earlier studies found in animals.

"It implies that fructose, at least with regards to promoting food intake and weight gain, is a bad actor compared to glucose," said Purnell. He wrote a commentary that appears with the federally funded study in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association.

Researchers now are testing obese people to see if they react the same way to fructose and glucose as the normal-weight people in this study did.

What to do? Cook more at home and limit processed foods containing fructose and high-fructose corn syrup, Purnell suggested. "Try to avoid the sugar-sweetened beverages. It doesn't mean you can't ever have them," but control their size and how often they are consumed, he said.

A second study in the journal suggests that only severe obesity carries a high death risk — and that a few extra pounds might even provide a survival advantage. However, independent experts say the methods are too flawed to make those claims.

The study comes from a federal researcher who drew controversy in 2005 with a report that found thin and normal-weight people had a slightly higher risk of death than those who were overweight. Many experts criticized that work, saying the researcher — Katherine Flegal of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — painted a misleading picture by including smokers and people with health problems ranging from cancer to heart disease. Those people tend to weigh less and therefore make pudgy people look healthy by comparison.

Flegal's new analysis bolsters her original one, by assessing nearly 100 other studies covering almost 2.9 million people around the world. She again concludes that very obese people had the highest risk of death but that overweight people had a 6 percent lower mortality rate than thinner people. She also concludes that mildly obese people had a death risk similar to that of normal-weight people.

Critics again have focused on her methods. This time, she included people too thin to fit what some consider to be normal weight, which could have taken in people emaciated by cancer or other diseases, as well as smokers with elevated risks of heart disease and cancer.

"Some portion of those thin people are actually sick, and sick people tend to die sooner," said Donald Berry, a biostatistician at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.

The problems created by the study's inclusion of smokers and people with pre-existing illness "cannot be ignored," said Susan Gapstur, vice president of epidemiology for the American Cancer Society.

A third critic, Dr. Walter Willett of the Harvard School of Public Health, was blunter: "This is an even greater pile of rubbish" than the 2005 study, he said. Willett and others have done research since the 2005 study that found higher death risks from being overweight or obese.

Flegal defended her work. She noted that she used standard categories for weight classes. She said statistical adjustments were made for smokers, who were included to give a more real-world sample. She also said study participants were not in hospitals or hospices, making it unlikely that large numbers of sick people skewed the results.

"We still have to learn about obesity, including how best to measure it," Flegal's boss, CDC Director Dr. Thomas Frieden, said in a written statement. "However, it's clear that being obese is not healthy - it increases the risk of diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and many other health problems. Small, sustainable increases in physical activity and improvements in nutrition can lead to significant health improvements."

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Online:

Obesity info: http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/trends.html

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

Mike Stobbe can be followed at http://twitter.com/MikeStobbe

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Colleges using online chat rooms to reach high school students

A curious high schooler hurls a flurry of questions at a UC Riverside advisor. The student asks about tuition, SAT scores, study-abroad programs, diversity and whether she would need a car.

Once she gets her answers, she leaves. She doesn't bother to say goodbye.

The student was sitting at a computer in the Northern California town of Watsonville. And the advisor was on a computer at UC Riverside.

Colleges nationwide have taken to using online chat rooms as a way of reaching high school students in what these days is their natural habitat: the Internet.

The chat rooms, accessible from college websites, serve as a virtual college fair, without a crush of students crowding around a table in a school gymnasium.

"As high school students change in how they're getting their information, it's important for us to make those changes as well," said Emily Engelschall, director of undergraduate admissions at UC Riverside. "Students feel more comfortable in that environment."

UC Riverside uses the service, named CollegeWeekLive, year round but typically sees a rush of interest just as the November application deadline nears and soon after acceptance letters begin going out in February. The chat rooms have been used by students in 191 countries.

Questions run the gamut, from the weather to particular majors. Some students want to know if their grades and test scores are strong enough to get accepted and whether financial aid is available.

And at times, high school boys act like, well, high school boys.

"Sometimes they ask questions like, 'How many cute girls are at your school?'" Engelschall said. "It's pretty funny, but we try to lead the conversation back to the admissions process: 'We have a diverse student population on campus.'"

The students in Laurie Kornblau's college preparation course at Sylmar High School frequently use the chat room.

Recently, fewer universities have been attending Sylmar's college fairs, and many of Kornblau's students cannot afford to travel to campuses to learn more about them.

"For a lot of them, this may be the closest they get," she said.

For college representatives who do attend the high school's fair, their attention and time is split among hundreds of students at once, Kornblau said. "You don't get the chance to really relax and talk — it's a cluster of people around a table," she said.

Students create a free account and are able to visit chat rooms for the 300 or so colleges that use CollegeWeekLive. Students can choose to give their name or stay anonymous, and they can browse videos and other information on each college's specific site.

For teenagers, the option of anonymity online gives them the freedom to ask whatever they want. They're not afraid to seek answers — even if they think it's a "dumb question," Kornblau said.

Anna Farello, a senior at El Segundo High School, chatted with multiple colleges earlier this year searching for information not found on the website or brochures. Some chats are monitored by current students, providing firsthand experience on campus life.

"I wanted to learn about things that you can't find on the website, ask questions about their personal experience," she said. "What was their favorite part about the college?"

In a recent chat, a student from Michigan asked a Pepperdine University representative about financial aid options and whether students are religious at the Church of Christ-affiliated school. Then she turned to life in Malibu.

"Great question Maggie!!" the representative wrote. "I would say the vibe of Malibu is Chill. It is really relaxed; even though it's Malibu and a ton of celebrities and other rich people live here, it's nonchalant and a family environment. Adam Sandler plays basketball on campus, [Pamela] Anderson is always at Starbucks."

The student replied: "That sounds wonderful!!! :) Thank you for all of your help, I am super excited to finish my applications and possibly begin a future at Pepperdine!"

At times, chat rooms can be difficult for counselors who must answer questions on the fly, said Engelschall of UC Riverside. Some questions can be very specific and send advisors searching for information while simultaneously answering other questions.

And the already short attention span of teenagers seems amplified on the Internet, Engelschall said.

"If they don't get their answer quickly, they're out of there," she said.

stephen.ceasar@latimes.com

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