Long-sealed Notorious B.I.G. autopsy released

LOS ANGELES (AP) — An attorney for the family of Notorious B.I.G. said Friday it's ridiculous that Los Angeles police have not arrested anyone for the rapper's 1997 killing, which has returned to the spotlight after coroner's officials released a long-sealed autopsy report.

The report revealed that injuries cause by a single bullet killed the rapper, whose real name was Christopher Wallace, during a drive-by shooting in March 1997. Wallace was hit by four bullets after leaving a music industry event, but one that hit his heart, left lung and colon caused his death, the 23-page report states.

Perry Sanders Jr. said he was not given any notice that the report would be released, and he criticized police for not closing one of Los Angeles' highest-profile unsolved murders, especially since he had been told that police had identified those responsible.

"I've been advised by the homicide detective that was in charge of the investigation and is no longer with the department that the crime has been solved for several years now," Sanders told The Associated Press. "This was confirmed by at least one other person who is currently on the force, and it is ridiculous that an arrest has not been made for a crime that's allegedly been solved for several years."

A 2011 book by former Los Angeles police detective Greg Kading claimed both murders had been solved, although no arrests have been made and federal prosecutors in 2005 declined to file charges after a lengthy, bi-coastal investigation.

Police spokesman Richard French declined to comment, saying Wallace's killing remained an open investigation.

The coroner's report had been sealed for more than 15 years until police lifted a hold on it last week, Chief Coroner Investigator Craig Harvey said. The report details the trajectory of each of the shots that hit the rapper from Brooklyn, N.Y., and states there were no signs of alcohol or drugs in his system when he died.

Sanders, who dropped a federal civil lawsuit against the city in 2010 in order to give investigators an opportunity to investigate further, said solving the case was more important than any lawsuit.

"In no way shape or form is this about civil litigation," he said. "This is about the criminal justice system and it functioning properly."

The lawsuit Sanders filed on behalf of Wallace's family and widow Faith Evans ended in a mistrial in 2005 after attorneys discovered the city withheld a trove of LAPD documents.

The civil case could be refiled, although that has not yet occurred.

Both Los Angeles police and the FBI investigated Wallace's killing, which came just months after another rap superstar, Tupac Shakur, was gunned down in Las Vegas. The FBI looked into whether any Los Angeles police officers were involved in Wallace's shooting.

The deaths of Wallace and Shakur have been the subject of rampant speculation about the motives. The one-time friends became rivals and instigators in an East Coast-West Coast rap rivalry during the mid-1990s.

In March 2011, the FBI electronically released files on its investigation, which were heavily redacted but shed new light on the efforts that investigators took to try to find those responsible for the rapper's death. Agents conducted surveillance and interviews in Los Angeles, San Diego and New York, the files showed.

The agency did not have an immediate comment Friday on the release of the coroner's report or whether it was still investigating Wallace's death.

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Anthony McCartney can be reached at http://twitter.com/mccartneyAP .

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The New Old Age Blog: A Son Lost, a Mother Found

My friend Yvonne was already at the front door when I woke, so at first I didn’t realize that my mother was missing.

It was less than a week after my son Spencer died. Since that day, a constant stream of friends had been coming and going, bringing casseroles and soup, love, support and chatter. Mom hated it.

My 94-year-old mother, who has vascular dementia, has been living in my home in upstate New York for the past few years. Like many with dementia, mom is courteous but, underneath, irascible. Pride defines her, especially pride in her Phi Beta Kappa intellect. She hates to be confronted with how she has become, as she calls it, “stupid.”

The parade of strangers confused her. She had to be polite, field solicitous questions, endure mundane comments. She could not remember what was going on or why people were there. It must have been stressful and annoying.

That night, like every night since the state troopers brought the news, I woke hourly, tumbling in panic. As if it were not too late to save my son. Mom knew something was wrong, but she could not remember what. As I overslept that morning, she must have decided enough was enough. She was going home.

In a cold sky, the sun blazed over tall pines. As I opened the door, the dogs raced out to greet Yvonne and her two housecleaners. Yvonne often brags about her cleaning duo. They were her gift to me. They were going to clean my house before the funeral reception, which was scheduled for later that week. This was a very big gift because, like my mother before me, I am a very bad housekeeper.

Mom’s door was shut. I cautioned the housecleaners to avoid her room as I showed them around. Yvonne went to the kitchen to listen to the 37 unheard messages on my answering machine; the housecleaners went out to their van to get their instruments of dirt removal.

I ducked into Mom’s room to warn her about the upcoming noise. The bed was unmade; the floor was littered with crumpled tissues; the room was empty.

Normally, I would have freaked out right then. I knew Mom was not in the house, because I had just shown the whole house to the cleaners. Although Mom doesn’t wander like some dementia patients, she does on occasion run away. But I could not muster a shred of anxiety.

“Yvonne,” I called, “did you see my mother outside?”

Yvonne popped her head into the living room, eyebrows raised.“Outside? No!” She was alarmed. “Is she missing?”

“Yeah,” I said wearily, “I’ll look.” I stepped out onto the front porch, tightening the belt of my bathrobe and turning up the collar. Maybe she had walked off into the woods. The dogs danced around my legs, wanting breakfast.

I had no space left in my body to care. Either we would find her, or we would not. Either she was alive, or she was not. My child was gone. How could I care about anything ever again?

Then I saw my car was missing. My mouth fell open and my eyeballs rolled up to the right, gazing blindly at the abandoned bird’s nest on top of the porch light: What had I done with the keys?

Mom likes to run away in the car when she is angry. She used to do it a lot when my father was still alive — every time they fought. Since Mom took off in my car almost a year ago, after we had had a fight, I’d kept the keys hidden. Except for this week; this week, I had forgotten.

I was reverting to old habits. I had left the doors unlocked and the keys in the cupholder next to the driver’s seat. Exactly like Mom used to do.

“Uh-oh,” I said aloud. Mom was still capable of driving, even though she did not know where she was going. I just really, really hoped that she didn’t hurt anybody on the road. I pulled out my cellphone, about to call the police.

“Celia!” Yvonne shouted from the kitchen. She hurried up behind me, excited. “They found your mother. There are two messages on your machine.”

At that very moment, Mom was holed up at the College Diner in New Paltz, a 20-minute drive over the mountain, through the fields, left over the Wallkill River and away down Main Street.

Yvonne called the diner. They promised to keep the car keys until someone arrived. By that time, Yvonne had to go to work. She drove my friend Elizabeth to the diner, and Elizabeth drove Mom home in my car.

Half an hour later, they walked in the front door. Mom’s cheeks were rouged by the chill air and her eyes sparkled, her white hair riffing with static electricity. “Hello, hello,” she sang out. “Here we are.” She was wearing the flannel nightgown and robe I had dressed her in the night before. It was covered by her oversized purple parka, and her bare feet were shoved into sneakers.

I started laughing as soon as I saw her. I couldn’t help it. Elizabeth and Mom started laughing too. “You had a big adventure,” I said, hugging them both. “How are you?”

“I’m just marvelous,” said my mother. Mom always feels great after doing something rakish. We settled her on the sofa with her feet on the ottoman. By the time I got her blanket tucked in around her shoulders, she had fallen asleep.

Elizabeth couldn’t stop laughing as she described the scene. “Your mother was holding court in this big booth. She was sitting there in her nightgown and her parka, talking to everybody, with this plate of toast and coffee and, like, three of the staff hovering around her.”

The waitress said Mom seemed “a little disoriented” when she got there. Mom said she was meeting a friend for breakfast, but since she was wearing a nightgown and didn’t know whom she was meeting or where she lived, the staff thought there might be a problem. They convinced Mom to let them look in the glove compartment of the car, where they found my name and number.

It was then that I realized I was laughing – something I’d thought I would never be able to do again. “Elizabeth, Elizabeth, I’m laughing,” I said.

“Ha, ha, ha,” laughed Elizabeth, holding her belly.

“Ha, ha, ha,” I laughed, rolling on the floor.

And she who gave me life, who had suffered the death of my child and the extinction of her own intellect, snoozed on: oblivious, jubilant, still herself, still mine.

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Stocks close higher after jobs report beats forecasts

Stocks are closing mostly higher on Wall Street after the government reported job growth that was better than economists had anticipated.

The Dow Jones industrial average closed up 81 points to 13,155 Friday, ending the week with a gain of 1 percent.

The Standard & Poor's 500 rose 4 points to close at 1,418. The Nasdaq composite edged down 11 points to 2,978, weighed down by another loss in Apple, its biggest component.

The Labor Department said the U.S. added 146,000 jobs last month, more than expected. The unemployment rate fell to 7.7 percent from 7.9 percent, but mainly because more people gave up looking for work.

Rising stocks outnumbered falling ones on the New York Stock Exchange. Trading volume was slightly lighter than the recent average, 3.1 billion shares.

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18 arrested in federal crackdown on gang that operated near USC

Federal authorities on Thursday announced a sweeping racketeering indictment against a Mexican Mafia-controlled gang that operated in an L.A. neighborhood just north of USC and was allegedly involved in at least one slaying, drug sales, extortion and robberies.

Eighteen members of the Harpys gang, also known as the Harpys-Dead End gang, were arrested Thursday morning on charges in three federal indictments resulting from “Operation Roman Empire.”

Those arrested include Vianna Roman, 37, daughter of a Mexican Mafia member, Danny Roman, who allegedly controlled the gang while serving a life sentence at Pelican Bay State Prison.

A total of 29 defendants were named in the racketeering indictment, eight of whom were already in state custody. Among them is Miguel Delgado, 18, accused of committing armed robbery against three USC students.

Federal prosecutors alleged that Vianna Roman and her husband, Aaron Soto, 40, traveled to and from Pelican Bay passing along orders from Danny Roman and collecting taxes to be funneled to him through profits the gang made through dealing in methamphetamine, cocaine, crack cocaine and heroin and through extorting businesses, including swap-meet vendors, via threats of violence.

Members of the gang are suspected in the slaying of one gang member who owed a debt, as well as plotting to kill a witness slated to testify against a gang member in a state court case, according to the indictment.

The gang has previously been targeted by the Los Angeles city attorney’s office in injunctions alleging the gang’s members were engaged in shakedowns, robberies, vandalism and murder. A judge issued a court order in 1998 that barred 30 of the gang’s members from associating with one another in the area.

At the time, one business owner said the Harpys asked for $150 to $180 a month for protection from the gang.

The gang controlled an area southwest of downtown that spanned from Normandie Avenue to Figueroa Street and Washington Boulevard to Jefferson Boulevard. Over the course of the operation, authorities seized 8½ pounds of methamphetamine, approximately one-half pound of heroin, approximately one pound of cocaine, 23 pounds of marijuana and 22 guns, according to a press release from the U.S. attorney's office.

If convicted of the racketeering charges, all but one of the defendants face a maximum sentence of life in prison, prosecutors said.

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Facebook might buy Microsoft’s Atlas Ad platform to compete with Google

Is Facebook (FB) preparing to compete with Google (GOOG) in online advertising? According to AllThingsD and BusinessInsider’s sources Facebook might be taking steps to build its own advertising network for online websites. AllThingsD says that rather than build a new advertising network from scratch, Facebook could just buy Microsoft’s (MSFT) Atlas Solutions platform “that already delivers billions of ad impressions a day.”

BusinessInsider reports that Facebook will reportedly pay a lower price than the $ 6 billion that Microsoft paid for aQuantive in 2007 that included Atlas Solutions. It’s estimated that Atlas is worth more than $ 30 million — a small price to pay to compete with Google’s DoubleClick ad network.

So why is Facebook interested in advertising now? Well, it’s got over 1 billion active users with emails, phone numbers, and unprecedented amounts of “likes.” As BusinessInsider puts it, Facebook has so much data it could “tell marketers whether or not a Facebook user saw, on Facebook.com, an ad for a product before going to the store and buying it.”

Get more from BGR.com: Follow us on Twitter, Facebook

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Actor Stephen Baldwin charged in NY tax case

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. (AP) — Actor Stephen Baldwin was charged Thursday with failing to pay New York state taxes for three years, amassing a $350,000 debt.

Rockland County District Attorney Thomas Zugibe said Baldwin, of Upper Grandview, skipped his taxes in 2008, 2009 and 2010.

The youngest of the four acting Baldwin brothers pleaded not guilty at an arraignment and was freed without bail. His lawyer, Russell Yankwitt, said Baldwin should not have been charged.

"Mr. Baldwin did not commit any crimes, and he's working with the district attorney's office and the New York State Tax Department to resolve any differences," Yankwitt said.

The district attorney said Baldwin could face up to four years in prison if convicted. The actor is due back in court on Feb. 5.

Zugibe said Baldwin owes more than $350,000 in tax and penalties.

"We cannot afford to allow wealthy residents to break the law by cheating on their taxes," the district attorney said. "The defendant's repetitive failure to file returns and pay taxes over a period of several years contributes to the sweeping cutbacks and closures in local government and in our schools."

Thomas Mattox, the state tax commissioner, said, "It is rare and unfortunate for a personal income tax case to require such strong enforcement measures."

Baldwin, 46, starred in 1995's "The Usual Suspects" and appeared in 1989's "Born on the Fourth of July." He is scheduled to appear in March on NBC's "The Celebrity Apprentice."

His brothers Alec, William and Daniel are also actors.

A bankruptcy filing in 2009 said Stephen Baldwin owed $1.2 million on two mortgages, $1 million in taxes and $70,000 on credit cards.

In October, Baldwin pleaded guilty in Manhattan to unlicensed driving and was ordered to pay a $75 fine. Earlier this year, he lost a $17 million civil case in New Orleans after claiming that actor Kevin Costner and a business partner duped him in a deal related to the cleanup of the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill. The actors and others had formed a company that marketed devices that separate oil from water.

Baldwin co-hosts a radio show with conservative talk figure Kevin McCullough.

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Well: Running in Reverse

This column appears in the Dec. 9 issue of The New York Times Magazine.

Backward running, also known as reverse or retro running, is not as celebrated as barefoot running and will never be mistaken for the natural way to run. But a small body of science suggests that backward running enables people to avoid or recover from common injuries, burn extra calories, sharpen balance and, not least, mix up their daily routine.

The technique is simple enough. Most of us have done it, at least in a modified, abbreviated form, and probably recently, perhaps hopping back from a curb as a bus went by or pushing away from the oven with a roasting pan in both hands. But training with backward running is different. Biomechanically, it is forward motion’s doppelgänger. In a study published last year, biomechanics researchers at the University of Milan in Italy had a group of runners stride forward and backward at a steady pace along a track equipped with force sensors and cameras.

They found that, as expected, the runners struck the ground near the back of their feet when going forward and rolled onto the front of their feet for takeoff. When they went backward though, they landed near the front of their feet and took off from the heels. They tended to lean slightly forward even when running backward. As a result, their muscles fired differently. In forward running, the muscles and tendons were pulled taut during landing and responded by coiling, a process that creates elastic energy (think rubber bands) that is then released during toe-off. When running backward, muscles and tendons were coiled during landing and stretched at takeoff. The backward runners’ legs didn’t benefit from stored elastic energy. In fact, the researchers found, running backward required nearly 30 percent more energy than running forward at the same speed. But backward running also produced far less hard pounding.

What all of this means, says Giovanni Cavagna, a professor at the University of Milan who led the study, is that reverse running can potentially “improve forward running by allowing greater and safer training.”

It is a particularly attractive option for runners with bad knees. A 2012 study found that backward running causes far less impact to the front of the knees. It also burns more calories at a given pace. In a recent study, active female college students who replaced their exercise with jogging backward for 15 to 45 minutes three times a week for six weeks lost almost 2.5 percent of their body fat.

And it aids in balance training — backward slow walking is sometimes used as a therapy for people with Parkinson’s and is potentially useful for older people, whose balance has grown shaky.

But it has drawbacks, Cavagna says — chiefly that you can’t see where you’re going. “It should be done on a track,” he says, “or by a couple of runners, side by side,” one facing forward.

It should be implemented slowly too, because its unfamiliar motion can cause muscle fatigue. Intersperse a few minutes periodically during your regular routine, Cavagna says. Increase the time you spend backward as it feels comfortable.

The good news for serious runners is that backward does not necessarily mean slow. The best recorded backward five-kilometer race time is 19:31, faster than most of us can hit the finish line with our best foot forward.

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Consumer Reports says Ford Fusion, C-Max don't achieve MPG claims

Ford Motor Co. has been crowing about the huge fuel economy ratings of its Fusion and C-Max hybrids.

Consumer Reports did its own tests and said it couldn’t replicate the 47 miles per gallon Ford is claiming for the city, highway and combined ratings for the vehicles.

“After running both vehicles through Consumer Reports real-world tests, CR’s engineers have gotten very good results. But they are far below Ford's ambitious triple-47 figures,” the magazine, which operates its own testing center in Connecticut, said Thursday.

In the Consumer Reports tests, the Fusion hybrid delivered 39 mpg overall and 35 and 41 in city and highway conditions, respectively.

The C-Max hybrid achieved 37 mpg overall, with 35 and 38 for city and highway.

“These two vehicles have the largest discrepancy between our overall mpg results and the estimates published by the EPA that we've seen among any current models,” the magazine said.

Ford responded in a statement, saying, "Early C-MAX Hybrid and Fusion Hybrid customers praise the vehicles and report a range of fuel economy figures, including some reports above 47 mpg. This reinforces the fact that driving styles, driving conditions, and other factors can cause mileage to vary."

A Times test-drive and review of the C-Max also found the fuel economy was lower than what was claimed – 37.5 mpg.

Fuel economy claims are facing greater skepticism as automakers make them the centerpiece of their advertising campaigns.

Consumer complaints to the Environmental Protection Agency, which monitors the fuel-rating system, prompted regulators to test Hyundai and Kia vehicles.

The agency said last month that Hyundai and Kia overstated the fuel economy on more than one-third of the vehicles they've sold in recent years.

The South Korean automakers issued an apology and said they would give special debit cards to nearly a million owners to make up for the difference in the lower miles per gallon logged by the vehicles.

Automakers measure the fuel economy of their own vehicles according to a standardized test regime overseen by the EPA. They submit their results to the agency, which then approves the ratings for the window sticker that goes on new cars.

The EPA also conducts its own tests for about 15% of the models annually.

But the EPA's auditing of mileage claims by automakers rarely turns up misrepresentations. It has happened only two other times since 2000, once with a 2012 BMW 328i and once with a 2001 Dodge Ram pickup.

 ALSO:

Fiat bikini commercial

Buick outsells Chevrolet in China

Car brand buyers with worst credit scores

Follow me on Twitter (@LATimesJerry), Facebook and Google+.

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Dispute over computer tied to killing of 4 at home, sources say

Detectives believe the quadruple homicide at a Northridge house over the weekend stemmed from a dispute over a computer and other property, law enforcement sources said.

Four suspects were taken into custody Tuesday at the Silverton Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas.

Law enforcement sources told The Times the killings appeared to stem from a dispute over personal property, including a computer. The sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the case was ongoing, said detectives were surprised that the dispute would have led to multiple deaths.

Photos: Four killed in Northridge shooting

City Councilman Mitchell Englander said one of the suspects was believed to have lived at the Northridge home, which authorities said had been converted into an illegal boardinghouse. It's unclear whether any of the victims lived at the home.

LAPD officials identified the suspects as Ka Pasasouk, 31, of Los Angeles; Howard Alcantara, 30, of Glendale; Donna Rabulan, 30, of Los Angeles; and Christina Neal, 33, of Los Angeles.

Pasasouk was arrested on suspicion of murder, Beck said.

Court records show Pasasouk has an extensive criminal record and was on probation at the time of the killings. He has several convictions dating back to at least 2004. Pasasouk pleaded no contest to possession of methamphetamine in 2011. The year before that, he pleaded no contest to unlawful taking of a vehicle and was sentenced to state prison. In 2006, he pleaded guilty to second-degree robbery and assault likely to produce great bodily injury and sentenced to state prison. In 2004, he pleaded guilty and no contest in separate cases again involving unlawful taking of a vehicle.

The three others faced charges of aiding a felon; Alcantara faced an additional charge of robbery.

All four suspects remained in Clark County Jail and were expected to be extradited to Los Angeles in the coming days, Beck said. The FBI assisted with the arrests, along with Las Vegas and Henderson, Nev., police.

Officers went to the home in the 17400 block of Devonshire Street in Northridge about 4:25 a.m. Sunday after a 911 caller reported hearing yelling and shots fired, police said. Authorities found four people — two men and two women — shot dead outside.

Three of the victims — a man and two women — were shot on the walkway on the left side of the home, a source familiar with the case told The Times on Monday. They were wearing hooded sweat shirts and were about two feet apart. All three had at least one bullet wound to the head.

One victim was crumpled on her knees, the source said, her face buried in the palms of her hands, "almost like she was praying." The other two victims on the walkway were face down.

The fourth victim — a man — was farther away and appeared as if he was trying to run to the backyard when he was shot. He had at least one gunshot wound, according to the source.

"It looked like a quick kill," said the source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the case is ongoing.

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25 top-rated Facebook games from 2012

Games can be both a welcome and an annoying diversion on Facebook, the world’s most popular online social network. This year, Facebook crossed a big milestone — reaching 1 billion active users. Game companies such as “FarmVille” creator Zynga Inc. and Rovio Entertainment Ltd. of “Angry Birds” fame seek to tap into that vast base of users to gain more players for their games.

This week, Facebook Inc. issued a list of the 25 top-rated games that launched on Facebook in 2012. The company says the rankings are based on user ratings and engagement with the games. It’s the same methodology that Facebook uses to rank apps in its App Center.

Some of the games are played on Facebook’s website, while others are only on Apple Inc.‘s iOS or Google Inc.‘s Android devices using Facebook’s app.

Here’s the list:

1. “SongPop” (by FreshPlanet, on Facebook.com, iOS and Android)

2. “Dragon City” (by Social Point, on Facebook.com)

3. “Bike Race” (by Top Free Games, on iOS)

4. “Subway Surfers” (by Kiloo, on iOS and Android)

5. “Angry Birds Friends (by Rovio, on Facebook.com)

6. “FarmVille 2″ (by Zynga, on Facebook.com)

7. “Scramble with Friends” (by Zynga, on iOS)

8. “Clash of Clans” (by Supercell, on iOS)

9. “Marvel: Avengers Alliance” (by Playdom, on Facebook.com)

10. “Draw Something” (by Zynga, on iOS and Android)

11. “Hay Day” (by Supercell, on iOS)

12. “Baseball Heroes” (by Syntasia, on Facebook.com)

13. “ChefVille” (by Zynga, on Facebook.com)

14. “CSR Racing” (by NaturalMotion Games, on iOS)

15. “Candy Crush Saga” (by King.com, on Facebook.com and iOS)

16. “Matching With Friends” (by Zynga, on Facebook.com)

17. “Legend Online” (by Oasis Games, on Facebook.com)

18. “Jurassic Park Builder” (by Ludia, on Facebook.com)

19. “Dungeon Rampage” (by Rebel Entertainment, on Facebook.com)

20. “Pockie Ninja II Social” (by NGames Ltd., on Facebook.com)

21. “Jetpack Joyride” (by Halfbrick, on Facebook.com)

22. “Social Empires” (by Social Point, on Facebook.com and iOS)

23. “Bil ve Fethet” (by Peak Games, on Facebook.com)

24. “Ruby Blast Adventures” (by Zynga, on Facebook.com and iOS)

25. “Pyramid Solitaire Saga” (by King.com, on Facebook.com)

Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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