Netflix Inc.’s recently announced and much-reviled price increase will bring weaker third-quarter financial results than Wall Street had expected, contributing to a 10% drop in the company’s stock in after-hours trading Monday.

Revenue in the three months ended June 30 was $789 million, just slightly below the consensus estimate from analysts of $791.5 million.

However, the company’s predicted results for the current quarter were a significant disappointment. Netflix said it would generate between $799.5 million and $828.5 million in revenue, lower than the $846.5 million consensus. Earnings per share are expected to be between 72 cents and $1.07; Wall Street had forecasted $1.09.

In a letter to investors, Netflix Chief Executive Reed Hastings and Chief Financial Officer David Wells said slow growth in the current quarter would be driven by the price increase that sparked outrage among some users.

“In Q3 we will see only the negative impact of the pricing change, given that the announcement was early in the quarter and that the increases won’t take effect until late in the quarter (September 15 on average),” the executives wrote.

Some people who currently subscribe to combined DVD-and-streaming plans that cost $10 or more per month have been switching to the $8 per month streaming-only plan or the newly-instituted $8 per month DVD-only plan rather than pay as much as $6 more per month under the new pricing structure.

In a tacit acknowledgement of the anger the price increase sparked, including more than 80,000 comments on the company’s Facebook page, the letter said, “We hate making our subscribers upset with us, but we feel like we provide a fantastic service and we’re working hard to further improve the quality and range of our streaming content in Q4 and beyond.”

The company predicted it would end the current quarter with between 24.6 million and 25.4 million subscribers in the U.S., which could mean no increase from its June 30 total of 24.6 million. Netflix expects that about 10 million people will choose the streaming-only plan, 3 million the DVD-only plan, and 12 million will pay higher prices for both.

Currently, about 75% of Netflix’s new subscribers choose streaming-only.

In Canada, where only streaming is offered, Netflix ended the prior quarter with 970,000 subscribers and expects to grow to between 1.15 million and 1.45 million by Sept. 30. In the fourth quarter, Netflix will launch in virtually every Latin American country.

In a sign of the growing costs of acquiring content for its streaming video library, Netflix’s net income and operating income for its domestic and international businesses are expected to decrease in the third quarter from the second quarter, despite growing revenue.

The value of content already in Netflix’s streaming library skyrocketed to $612.6 million June 30, up from $192.3 million on March 31. Payments not yet due under digital content deals it has signed also grew significantly, to $419.8 million from $82 million.

The company did not comment on a soon-to-close agreement with DreamWorks Animation that was confirmed today by a person familiar with the matter.

Netflix stock closed up 2%, or $4.95, at $281.53 prior to the release of its financial results. The high-flying shares are up 60% this year.

RELATED:

Netflix hikes prices for many consumers with separate pricing for DVDs, streaming

DreamWorks Animation stock up on news of Netflix deal

No more fresh episodes of ‘Saturday Night Live’ on Netflix

– Ben Fritz

Photo: Netflix CEO Reed Hastings at the launch of the company’s Canadian service last September. Credit: Mike Cassese / Reuters.

Following through on a campaign promise, Gov. Jerry Brown signed a law Monday easing access to privately funded financial aid for undocumented college students. He also signaled that he was likely to back a more controversial measure allowing those students to seek state-funded tuition aid in the future.

Assemblyman Gil Cedillo (D-Los Angeles), author of the private financial aid measure, described it as an important but incremental step toward expanding opportunities for deserving students who were brought to the U.S. illegally through no choice of their own. Cedillo is pressing ahead with a more expansive measure that would make certain undocumented students eligible for the state’s Cal Grants and other forms of state tuition aid.

Brown said he was “positively inclined” to back that bill but would not make a decision until it crosses his desk.

“I’m committed to expanding opportunity wherever I can find it, and certainly these kinds of bills promote a goal of a more inclusive California and a more educated California,” Brown told reporters after the bill-signing ceremony Monday.

For Brown, signing Cedillo’s bill was a gesture of goodwill toward Latino voters, who helped elect him in large numbers last fall. Legislation providing education funding to undocumented students has been a top priority for many Latino groups, which have found many of their efforts thwarted so far at the federal level. Last year proponents failed to marshal enough votes in the U.S. Senate to ensure passage of the federal DREAM Act, which would have created a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants brought to the U.S. before age 16 if they attended a college or served in the military.

Brown’s position on the California Dream Act was being closely monitored after he angered some prominent Latino leaders by vetoing a bill last month that would have made it easier for farmworkers to organize. Though Brown noted in his veto message that he signed legislation helping farm workers unionize during his first stint as governor in the mid-1970s, his veto was sharply criticized by the United Farm Workers, which counted the bill among their top priorities.

But several analysts who study Latino politics said the California Dream Act was far more important symbolically to many in the Latino community. Fernando Guerra, director of the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University, said the bill was viewed by many as a measure of social acceptance of Latinos because it would increase opportunity for the best and brightest among the undocumented.

The California Dream Act has drawn strong support across the Latino community, said Jaime A. Regalado, director of the Pat Brown Institute of Public Affairs.

“If [Brown] was looking at the balance sheet, understanding politically that he needed to sign one of these measures, it was not going to be competitive,” Regalado said. “It’s seen as a civil rights issue in the Latino community, especially for youth. The farmworkers’ struggle is not necessarily seen as what it once was. This is an issue of the now, an issue of the moment, part of the Latino agenda and part of the future.”

But opponents of the legislation say it will diminish opportunities for U.S. students.

“Obviously it falls into a different realm when the money is coming out of private pockets than it does when it’s coming out of taxpayers’ pockets,” said Ira Mehlman, a spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a group that advocates halting illegal immigration, “but nevertheless, foundations and other institutions that get tax exemptions should not be promoting policies that encourage people to remain illegally in the United States.”

During a signing ceremony at Los Angeles City College, Brown largely brushed over the thorny politics of illegal immigration and sought to frame the legislation as part of the struggle to maintain education funding during California’s budget crisis.

“The debate is very clear: shrivel public service, shrink back, retrench, retreat from higher education, from schools, from the investment in people; or make the investment,” Brown said. “This is one piece of a very important mosaic, which is a California that works for everyone.”

Brown used the issue last year against his Republican opponent, Meg Whitman, during a Fresno debate.

After an undocumented student had asked the candidates to explain their position on such legislation, Brown said that he backed the proposal and that Whitman wanted to kick undocumented students out of college, adding “that is wrong morally and humanly.”

maeve.reston@latimes.com

Johan Ahlander and Wojciech Moskwa

Reuters

8:46 a.m. CDT, July 26, 2011

Alister Bull

Reuters

8:32 a.m. CDT, July 26, 2011

PERUGIA, Italy (Reuters) – Independent forensic experts took the stand on Monday to attack key pieces of evidence used to convict U.S. student Amanda Knox of the murder of her British roommate in the Italian city of Perugia in 2007.

The two court-appointed experts, Carla Vecchiotti and Stefano Conti, told an appeal hearing that the knife thought to have been used to kill 21 year-oldMeredith Kercher carried no trace of blood but may have been contaminated with other DNA traces.

Presenting the findings from a report released last month, they said police had used the same gloves to take different pieces of evidence during their initial examination of the house the two women shared in the university town of Perugia.

Kercher was found half naked in November 2007 lying in a pool of blood with herthroat cut.

Knox, 24, her former Italian boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito and Ivoirian Rudy Guede were convicted and jailed in 2009 for the murder after what judges concluded was a frenzied sex game that spiraled out of control.

Both Knox and Sollecito, who have appealed against the original ruling were in court on Monday as was Knox’s mother, Edda Mellas.

“You know, it was an excellent day, to be able to see everything, step by step exactly what our experts said, you know, and now confirmed by independent experts is very powerful,” Mellas told Reuters Television after the hearing.

CONTAMINATION

The report by Vecchiotti and Conti confirmed police conclusions that Knox’s DNA was found on the handle of a knife they identified as the murder weapon but said that the material found on the blade was starch, rather than blood.

“There are no scientific elements which would confirm the presence of blood traces on the knife. The protocols for minimizing the risk of contamination were not respected,” their testimony said.

They also said there was no DNA evidence on a clip from Kercher’s bra which police said was traceable to Sollecito.

The two independent experts had been commissioned by the appeal court to go over the forensic evidence in the case which has attracted huge media interest and severe criticism of police methods from the defense team.

They made a scathing attack on the original investigation, saying that proper decontamination procedures had not been followed, there was insufficient documentation of the amount of DNA evidence collected and inadequate “real time” analysis.

The next hearing is scheduled for July 30 when the experts face cross-examination by prosecutor and the defense team.

Francesco Maresca, a lawyer for the Kercher family, said the evidence provided by Vecchiotti and Conti was not conclusive.

“I hope, I am certain and trust that on Saturday we will be able to clarify in court the fact that they did not follow the original investigation and therefore did not follow the profound exchange of dialogue between various consultants and once again we will remind of the principal factors in this case,” he said.

(Writing by James Mackenzie)

Rangers slugger’s theory about eye color puts day games in new light

Rangers slugger may have bright idea for Cubs

During the last three decades of their century-plus championship drought, with most of their home games played during the day, Cubs management has searched for solutions. And searched and searched.

Rangers slugger’s theory about eye color puts day games in new light

Rangers slugger may have bright idea for Cubs

During the last three decades of their century-plus championship drought, with most of their home games played during the day, Cubs management has searched for solutions. And searched and searched.

Rangers slugger’s theory about eye color puts day games in new light

Rangers slugger may have bright idea for Cubs

During the last three decades of their century-plus championship drought, with most of their home games played during the day, Cubs management has searched for solutions. And searched and searched.

Rangers slugger’s theory about eye color puts day games in new light

Rangers slugger may have bright idea for Cubs

During the last three decades of their century-plus championship drought, with most of their home games played during the day, Cubs management has searched for solutions. And searched and searched.

Rangers slugger’s theory about eye color puts day games in new light

Rangers slugger may have bright idea for Cubs

During the last three decades of their century-plus championship drought, with most of their home games played during the day, Cubs management has searched for solutions. And searched and searched.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) – A grizzly bear has attacked seven teenagers in Alaska, injuring four of them, Alaska State Troopers said on Sunday.

The teens were hiking in the Talkeetna Mountains east of Denali National Park and were trying to cross a river when the grizzly attacked Saturday night, the troopers said.

• Topics
• 
  Animal Attacks
  
• 
  Alaska
  
• 
  Injuries and Wounds
  
• See more topics »

The two 17-year-old students in the lead, Joshua Berg ofNew York and Samuel Gottsegen of Denver, bore the brunt of the attack, the troopers said.

Other members were able to activate an emergency beacon and the group was rescued on Sunday morning by the Alaska Air National Guard, the troopers said.

While Berg and Gottsegen were the most severely mauled, two other students, 16-year-old Noah Allaire of Albuquerque and 18-year-old Victor Martin of Richmond,California, also were hospitalized with injuries.

Martin was released late Sunday but the other three remained hospitalized. Their conditions were not available.

The three other teens received minor injuries or suffered from exposure-related ailments, the troopers said.

The students were on the 24th day of a 30-day backpacking trek through the Alaska wilderness as part of the National Outdoor Leadership School.

The bear was a sow that appeared to be guarding a cub, said Don Ford, the outdoor school’s Alaska director.

“They believe there was a cub,” Ford said. “They didn’t actually see the cub, but they saw some rustling in the brush.”

The seven students were part of a larger group that included three instructors, the school said in a statement.

Ford said the entire expedition was terminated and the remaining students and instructors were being flown back to the school’s Alaska headquarters.

The school has never before had a bear maul any of its Alaska expedition members, Ford said.

“This is our 40th year of operation in Alaska. We have not had a bear attack in all of that 40 years,” he said.

The National Outdoor Leadership School, based in Lander,Wyoming, is a non-profit educational organization that conducts expeditions and instructional courses around the world.

(Editing by Dan Whitcomb)

Pictures: Chicagoan wins air guitar title

Chicagoan Justin Howard rocked Metro and the panel of judges at the U.S. Air Guitar National Finals, beating nearly two dozen of the country’s top air rockers for the right to represent the United States at next month’s 16th annual Air Guitar World Championships in Oulu, Finland, where he will battle champions from more than 20 other countries.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – House of Representatives Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said she will seek an ethics investigation Monday into sexual misconduct allegations against Representative David Wu.

Pelosi called for the investigation after reported accusations that theOregon Democrat had an unwanted sexual encounter with the teen-aged daughter of a campaign donor.

• Topics
• 
  Values
  
• 
  Ethics
  
• 
  Oregon
  
• See more topics »

“With deep disappointment and sadness about this situation, I hope that the Ethics Committee will take up this matter,” Pelosi said in a statement Sunday.

Pelosi said she would send a formal request to the House Ethics Committee on Monday.

The chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee,Representative Steve Israel of New York, backed Pelosi’s decision.

“New allegations of unacceptable behavior by Congressman Wu are extremely serious and disturbing,”Israel said.

The new allegations follow other behavior problems for Wu.

He announced in February that he was undergoing psychiatric treatment after his staff complained about his erratic behavior in the run up to the November 2010 Congressional elections.

They said Wu had behaved strangely at meetings and had e-mailed pictures of himself wearing a tiger suit to staff. Several key staff members resigned following the election.

Wu, who represents the Portland area, is in his seventh two-year term in the House. TwoDemocrats have already announced they will seek Wu’s seat in the 2012 congressional election.

Politico quoted an unidentified Wu adviser late Sunday night as saying that Wu would not resign.

Former RepresentativeAnthony Weiner, a New York Democrat, resigned in June over an Internet sex scandal.

(Reporting by JoAnne Allen; editing by Doina Chiacu)

BENGHAZI (Reuters) – The U.N. envoy to Libya will discuss with rebel leaders Monday informal plans for a negotiated end to the war as Western powers ramp up diplomatic and military pressure on Muammar Gaddafi to step down.

Abdul Elah al-Khatib arrived in the eastern rebel stronghold of Benghazi Monday, rebels said, as a diplomatic push to end the conflict gathers steam.

In an apparent further sign of moves toward a political solution, a senior rebel leader was quoted as saying that Gaddafi and his family could remain in Libya provided they gave up power.

Gaddafi is clinging to power despite a four-month-old NATO air campaign and five months of fighting with rebels who have seized large swathes of the North African country.

NATO has continued to hammer Gaddafi’s forces around Libya, striking twice in central Tripoli Monday, and Britain has said there would be no let up during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan in August. But hopes have grown for a negotiated end to a war that has dragged on longer than many initially expected.

A European diplomat said last week that Khatib would try to persuade warring parties in Libya to accept an informal plan that envisages a ceasefire followed by the creation of an interim power-sharing government, but with no role for Gaddafi.

Khatib, a senior Jordanian politician, told Reuters in Amman last week that he hoped both sides would accept his ideas.

“The U.N. is exerting very serious efforts to create a political process that has two pillars; one is an agreement on a ceasefire and simultaneously an agreement on setting up a mechanism to manage the transitional period,” he said. He did not go into the details of that mechanism.

Khatib’s visit comes a day after Gaddafi’s foreign minister, Abdelati Obeidi, ended a three-day round of talks in Cairo to seek a negotiated end to the war.

Libya’s government has said is representatives are ready to hold more talks with the United States and the rebels, but that Gaddafi himself will not negotiate and will not quit.

Spokesman Moussa Ibrahim said Friday that senior Libyan officials had a “productive dialogue” with U.S. counterparts earlier this month in a rare meeting that followed U.S. recognition of the rebel government.

Complicating Gaddafi’s situation is the fact that the world court in The Hague is seeking his arrest for crimes against humanity allegedly committed by his forces. This makes it difficult for him to find refuge outside the country.

Hopes for a negotiated settlement have grown, however, since France said for the first time last week that Gaddafi could stay in Libya as long as he gives up power.

In what appeared to be a significant reverse of policy, opposition leader Mustafa Abdel Jalil said Gaddafi and his family can stay in Libya as part of a political deal to end the war provided they give up power.

“Gaddafi can stay in Libya but it will have conditions,” Jalil told the Wall Street Journal. “We will decide where he stays and who watches him. The same conditions will apply to his family.”

TOUGH FIGHT

On the cusp of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, poorly armed rebels seem unlikely to quickly unseat Gaddafi.

The rebels declared advances last week but they also suffered losses near Misrata and in fighting for Brega.

Rebels announced early last week they were on the verge of capturing the oil town of Brega, but later said that minefields had slowed their advance.

Pictures: Chicagoan wins air guitar title

Chicagoan Justin Howard rocked Metro and the panel of judges at the U.S. Air Guitar National Finals, beating nearly two dozen of the country’s top air rockers for the right to represent the United States at next month’s 16th annual Air Guitar World Championships in Oulu, Finland, where he will battle champions from more than 20 other countries.

OSLO (Reuters) – Anders Behring Breivik, who killed at least 93 people in a bomb attack and shooting rampage in Norway, arrived at an Oslo courtroom for a closed custody hearing on Monday to jeers from an angry crowd.

“Get out, get out!” shouted Alexander Roeine, 24, banging on the car he believed had brought Breivik to Oslo District Court. “Everyone here wants him dead,” he said, adding that he knew one of the dead and three survivors of Friday’s attacks.

According to his lawyer, Breivik had wanted to explain why he perpetrated modern-day Norway’s worst peace-time massacre, but a judge ruled that the hearing would be a closed session.

“We want to see him really hurt for what he did,” said Zezo Hasab, 32, among a crowd who gave Breivik a furious reception.

Norway’s first glimpse of the killer was a shaky, long-range television picture of a man with close-cropped blond hair and a red top, as he got into a police jeep after the hearing.

He appeared calm and did not try to communicate with journalists standing across the road from an underground garage where he was brought down from the courtroom.

He sat unmovingly in the back seat, with a policeman beside him, his head tilted slightly back, before being whisked away.

Prosecutors wanted Breivik detained for an initial eight weeks — normally this is in solitary confinement with no access to news, letters or visitors, except a lawyer. His custody can be extended before his trial on terrorism charges.

The judge was due to announce his decision later on Monday.

SILENCE FOR THE DEAD

Norwegians held a minute’s silence for the victims of the self-confessed killer with an anti-immigration agenda.

“In remembrance of the victims … I declare one minute’s national silence,” Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg said on the steps of Oslo University, flanked by Norway’s king and queen.

The silence stretched to five minutes as thousands more stood around a carpet of flowers outside nearby Oslo cathedral. Only squawking seagulls and a barking dog broke the silence.

Cars stopped in the streets and their drivers got out and stood motionless as traffic lights changed from red to green.

“This is a tragic event to see all these young people dying due to one man’s craziness. It is important to have this minute of silence so that all the victims and the parents of the families know that people are thinking about them,” said mechanic Sven-Erik Fredheim, 36, shortly before the silence.

Breivik planted a bomb on Friday outside Stoltenberg’s Oslo office which killed seven, then drove to the island of Utoeya and shot dead 86 at a youth camp of the ruling Labour Party.

The 32-year-old declared in a rambling 1,500-page manifesto posted online shortly before the massacre that he was on a self-appointed mission to save Europe from what he saw as the threats of Islam, immigration and multi-culturalism.

“He has been politically active and found out himself that he did not succeed with usual political tools and so resorted to violence,” Lippestad told TV2 news.

The judge’s decision to close the hearing to the public followed an outcry from Norwegians enraged at the possibility that Breivik would be allowed a public platform for his views.

SEATTLE (Reuters) – At least eight people were injured in a mass shooting at a car show in suburban Seattle on Saturday, police said.

Police were called to the low-rider show in Kent, south of Seattle, at 4:15 p.m. local time following reports of gunfire, police department spokesman Sgt. Jarod Kasner said.

• Related

• Story: Three dead in shooting at Arizona motorcycle rally

• Story: Gunman targeted wife, family in Texas birthday party massacre

• Topics
• 
  Injuries and Wounds
  
• 
  Seattle
  
• 
  Hospitals and Clinics
  
• See more topics »

“There was a car show taking place, and then a fight broke out in the parking lot,” Kasner told Reuters.

“There was gunfire and multiple people were hit,” he added.

Kasner said the suspect of suspects then fled the scene of the shooting, and remained at large.

Six men and two women were later treated for gun shot wounds at Harborview Medical Center, a hospital spokeswoman said, adding that all were in satisfactory condition.

“Patients started coming in around 5;15 p.m. suffering from gunshot wounds ranging from injuries to the legs, chest and foot,” Susan Gregg told Reuters.

“They are all in satisfactory condition … all are talking and conscious, they are not in a life-threatening condition,” she added.

Kasner said the cause of the fight was not known, and that the investigation remains open.

(Reporting by Tim Gaynor; Editing by Bill Rigby)

Pictures: Chicagoan wins air guitar title

Chicagoan Justin Howard rocked Metro and the panel of judges at the U.S. Air Guitar National Finals, beating nearly two dozen of the country’s top air rockers for the right to represent the United States at next month’s 16th annual Air Guitar World Championships in Oulu, Finland, where he will battle champions from more than 20 other countries.

Instead of the commuters typically packed into the bright blue and red “tap tap” pickup truck weaving through Haiti’s capital, a man, shrunken, dehydrated, dressed in a diaper and attached to an IV, lay on the floor.

• Topics
• 
  Diseases and Illnesses
  
• 
  Symptoms
  
• 
  Cholera
  
• See more topics »

As the ad-hoc ambulance in Port-au-Prince attested, cholera refuses to leave the country.

The bacterial disease that ravaged Haiti last fall had spread quickly to all regions, but calmed down in the dry spring months. With the rainy season now in progress, clinics across the country are again bustling with seriously ill patients.

“We are still in … an epidemic,” said Jocelyne Pierre Louis, spokeswoman for the government Ministry of Public Health.

More than 5,800 people have died since the epidemic began in October, according to the Haitian government. Many health workers believe the number is higher. Uncounted victims have died in remote areas of the country, never reaching services and never being added to government tallies.

The Health Ministry reported more than 1,000 new cholera cases a day last month.

For all the efforts to contain the disease, experts agree that the root of the problem is sanitation. Spread through contaminated water in a country with no central sewage or potable water systems, cholera remains a formidable threat.

“If we want to make cholera disappear, it will be with water and sanitation,” said Romain Gitenet, head of the Haiti mission for France-based Doctors Without Borders, which has opened cholera treatment centers across the country.

Epidemiologists with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have cited a United Nations base housing Nepalese peacekeepers in the rural town of Mirebalais as the likely source of the epidemic. Cholera is prevalent in Nepal, a South Asian country. But the U.N. maintains that a “confluence of factors” led to the outbreak.

Government programs and private nonprofit health organizations have mounted a vigorous campaign, distributing chlorine and educating people on prevention and treatment, in an attempt to slow the spread of the disease.

Health professionals say the second wave is less deadly because more people recognize cholera symptoms, vomiting and diarrhea, and know to seek treatment quickly.

Louis, the Health Ministry spokeswoman, acknowledged that programs to equip communities with cisterns of clean water or cholera clinics did not address the causes.

“The problem of sanitation can’t be dealt with between today and tomorrow,” she said.

That problem was magnified by the Jan. 12, 2010, earthquake that crumbled much of the capital. A year and a half later, thousands of Haitians remain homeless.

At the edge of Cite Soleil, a Port-au-Prince slum, a small community called Tapi Vert still lives beneath dust-coated, fraying tarps.

On the outskirts of the encampment, temporary toilets stand without doors, without walls, full of excrement and sealed off with rocks.

“We don’t have toilets. Those toilets are closed. They are full,” said Rosette Michel, a 38-year-old mother of seven. She and one of her sons, a 10-year-old, contracted cholera in the last month.

“Kids sometimes use [the toilets], but grown-ups go in the bushes,” said Jean Vital, another camp resident.

Many aid organizations and charities rushed to donate toilets to camps after the earthquake. But as time passed, many of those groups scaled down their activities, or pulled out altogether.

Supplying toilets but neglecting to empty them can be worse than not providing them in the first place, said Dr. Sasha Kramer, who runs SOIL, an organization that promotes sustainable sanitation such as composting toilets.

“The fact that the toilets have been put in and there hasn’t been any follow-up or management is one of the biggest risks for cholera,” she said. These forgotten toilets throughout the city are becoming pools of untreated human waste.

Tapi Vert residents said no one had come to empty the toilets in three months. The rainy season has made the situation more pressing.

“The rain falls and it overflows and green sludge leaks,” said Marie-Ange Dossis, another resident. “It’s not good for our health.”

Gaestel is a special correspondent.

A toddler was discovered alive Sunday afternoon after two bullet trains collided in eastern China a day earlier in a deadly incident that has intensified concerns about the country’s vaunted high-speed rail system.

• Related
• 

• 

  Story: Bullet train crashes in China; at least 35 killed

• 

  Story: 41 killed as bus catches fire in China

• 

  Story: China feeling like No. 1 with a bullet train

• GOP bill would shift bullet train money to Midwest flood relief

• See more stories »
• Topics
• 
  Railway Accidents
  
• 
  Disasters
  
• 
  Beijing (China)
  
• See more topics »

The official New China News Agency said a boy was found unconscious by firefighters inside the wreckage and taken to a hospital.

The rescue came shortly after three senior railway officials were fired in response to the collision, which killed at least 43 people and injured more than 200 in Wenzhou, a city in Zhejiang province.

The accident took place Saturday night when a train from Hangzhou stalled after being hit by lightning and was then rear-ended by a train originating from Beijing. The violent crash sent four carriages from the oncoming train tumbling 66 feet off an elevated track.

Rescuers found hundreds of terrified passengers trapped under debris.

“Please save us,” a passenger wrote on a Twitter-like blog. “The train is leaning toward one side now. And it’s totally locked. The first few carriages hit each other.”

Chinese President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao called for an “all-out effort” to rescue passengers and dispatched Vice Premier Zhang Dejiang to the scene of the accident, state media reported.

Still, anger remained high Sunday among Chinese Internet users who posted millions of comments online mourning victims — while also questioning the safety of the national high-speed rail system and calling for a thorough investigation.

“The railway minister should be required to resign his post immediately; don’t go blaming lightning for this incident, the one who should be blamed most is you!” read a comment translated into English by the website ChinaGeeks.

Many were outraged over video that was posted online Sunday showing backhoes breaking apart carriages that had fallen off the elevated tracks. Another photograph online showed what some thought were the same backhoes burying parts of the train.

Internet users suspecting a cover-up questioned how evidence could be destroyed so quickly and wondered whether the carriages had been properly inspected by rescue teams for passengers first.

Authorities have so far been unable to explain why the oncoming train did not stop in time and whether engineers anticipated vulnerabilities to lightning strikes.

The disaster will no doubt invite greater scrutiny of the already beleaguered Ministry of Railways.

The three officials who were fired Sunday included the head of the Shanghai rail bureau and the bureau’s Communist Party chief, whose jurisdiction included one of the trains.

The ministry was rocked by scandal in February when its chief, Liu Zhijun, was dismissed after allegedly taking $125 million in kickbacks tied to shoddy construction work.

Two months later, the ministry reduced maximum speeds along the network to reduce costs and as a safety precaution.

China’s high-speed rail system, the largest in the world, has attracted controversy for years because its engineering is alleged to be have been copied from European and Japanese technology and because the national track network was laid in record time.

Officials have touted the country’s rail technology as the world’s most advanced and have eyed foreign markets including California.

But the marketing campaign, so far, has not gone well. The recently opened Beijing-Shanghai line, which features newer and faster trains than those that collided in Wenzhou, has been beset by power failures and delays in recent weeks. The $32.5-billion line was meant to be a symbol of China’s engineering prowess.

The accident Saturday has struck the public as something of a national embarrassment. Chinese blogs have been noting that Japan hasn’t had a bullet train-related fatality since its service opened in 1964. High-speed rail was introduced to China in 2007.

david.pierson@latimes.com

Tommy Yang in The Times’ Beijing bureau contributed to this report.

Norwegians have always taken pride in their open, trusting society.

It’s a country where you might encounter the prime minister at the grocery store and offer a hug. Many police don’t carry guns and most government buildings are unprotected. Homicide is rare, with only a handful of gun-related deaths a year.

But as Otto Lovik stood Sunday on a muddy lakeshore overlooking Utoya Island and recalled how he rescued about 60 people fleeing Friday’s massacre by a gunman, the 56-year-old prison guard, still shaking from the experience, said his country must change.

Photos: Twin attacks stun Norwegians

“We can’t go back to being open and trusting after this,” said Lovik, who loaded his boat with so many terrified, bleeding victims that he feared it would capsize. “This is the price we must pay.”

As Norway recovers from the initial shock of the shooting rampage and earlier Oslo bombing and begins the mourning process for 93 people who were slain, many predict the nation will never be the same.

“It’s going to have a deep, long-lasting impact,” said Atle Dyregrov, director of Norway’s Center for Crisis Psychology, which has helped other countries recover from disasters such as the 2008 China earthquake and this year’s Japanese tsunami.

“Our innocence is lost,” he said. “We used to think that these things only happened in other countries, not here. Now that illusion is shattered forever.”

He predicted that Norway’s relaxed security policies and reluctance to impinge of civil rights will give way to familiar restrictions already in place in other Western nations, including limited access to government facilities and increased surveillance of suspected extremist groups. He likened the changes to Sweden’s security tightening after the 1986 assassination of Prime Minister Olof Palme.

On Sunday, however, the nation’s focus was on grieving and healing. National flags throughout the capital flew at half staff.

At the ornate Oslo Domkirken cathedral in the heart of the capital, hundreds participated in a national mourning ceremony attended by the prime minister, King Harald, Queen Sonja and some of the young people who escaped the island attack. The suspect, Anders Behring Breivik, is expected to be formally charged Monday.

“A heavy darkness is now clouding our lives,” Bishop Helga Haugland Byfuglien told tearful mourners, urging them to maintain their faith in the goodness of Norway’s people and commitment toward an open society.

In an emotional address, Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg said Norway would not be cowed. “Our answer is more democracy, more openness, more humanity, but never naivete,” he said.

Outside the cathedral, just blocks from the site of the Friday bomb blast that killed at least eight people, well-wishers laid flowers and candles in a makeshift memorial that by nightfall was spreading into the streets.

Waiting in line to enter the cathedral to pay her respects, Oslo resident Christine Arnese, a 47-year-old nurse, stood alone with tears streaming down her cheeks.

“I think this might bring us all closer together,” she said. “It’s important that we keep our country free and open.”

But as the scale of the tragedy sunk in, fears about possible future attacks were already leading some Norwegians to call on the government to bolster security. Some said that police guards who were dispatched to government facilities in the hours after the attacks should become permanent fixtures.

Others called for tougher punishments for terrorists, complaining that estimates Breivik that would face only 21 years in prison if convicted underscores the inadequacy of current law.

“We have to do more to protect ourselves,” said Julie Groseth, who works at a small market overlooking Utoya Island in the community of Hole. She said she worried about copy-cat attacks.

“Maybe that means not being as open to other countries,” she said. “This has showed us how weak Norway is in the war against terrorism. We are not prepared.”

At one of Oslo’s main mosques, many Pakistan-born immigrants expressed apprehension about how the attacks may affect Norwegian society and its tolerance of foreigners.

“When we first heard about the attacks, we all gathered together and prayed,” said mosque official Mohamed Sulieman, who moved to Norway 35 years ago. First they prayed for the victims, he said. Then they prayed that the perpetrators would not turn out to be Islamic extremists. The country has reason enough to fear retribution from overseas extremists: Its troops serve in Afghanistan, where 10 Norwegian soldiers have been killed.

Though he said they were relieved to hear authorities describe Breivik as a home-grown terrorist who acted alone, some remain concerned that any tighter security rules or rising public anxieties might nevertheless trigger a backlash against them. At times in the past, the increasing presence of immigrants and foreigners in Norway has come under criticism from conservative parties.

“We’ve never really had a problem before,” Sulieman said. “But still, it’s in the back of our minds.”

Photos: Norway attack

edmund.sanders@latimes.com

SAN ANTONIO, Texas (Reuters) – Flora Jessop never believed that Warren Steed Jeffs, the man she was taught to revere as son and heir of the “prophet, seer and revelator of God,” would ever face justice — let alone Texas justice.

She didn’t believe it when she was 13 and sexually assaulted beneath a smiling photograph of Jeffs inside the Hildale, Utah compound run by the breakaway Mormon sect where she was born to a polygamist family.

And she didn’t believe it three years later, when she was forced by leaders of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS) to marry her older cousin.

But Jeffs, 55, will stand trial in Texas starting Monday on charges of child sexual assault.

“What Warren Jeffs’ trial symbolizes to those of us from the FLDS is that this trial is going to be justice for hundreds of girls who have been in the same position,” Jessop told Reuters.

Jeffs’ breakaway brand of Mormonism, which has been condemned and outlawed by the mainstream Mormon Church, promotes marriages between older men and young girls. It also teaches that for a man to be among the select in heaven, he must have at least three wives.

The trial stems from his “ecclesiastical” or “spiritual” marriage to two girls, aged 12 and 14, at the Yearning for Zion Ranch (YFZ) in West Texas that Jeffs set up in 2002 when he took control of the sect after his father, longtime FLDS “Prophet” and insurance salesman Rulon Jeffs, died.

It was not a legal civil marriage with a license, due to the girls’ ages and the fact that at the time Jeffs was ‘married’ to several other women.

Jeffs also faces charges of bigamy, which is a felony in Texas, but won’t face trial on those counts until this fall.

That Jeffs, once one of the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives, faces a Texas trial at all is due to a tip authorities received about the YFZ compound and to the perseverance of state Attorney General Greg Abbott.

In 2008, shortly after Texas Rangers raided the ranch, seizing evidence of plural marriage and child sexual assault and taking 430 children into protective custody, Abbott vowed to prosecute Jeffs and other FLDS men “to the fullest extent of the law.”

When the Texas raid took place, Jeffs was in prison in Utah, serving a 10-year sentence for arranging the marriage of a 14-year-old girl to her older first cousin. The state of Arizona was waiting to press similar charges.

Last year, the Utah Supreme Court overturned Jeffs’ 2007 conviction on rape-related charges, citing problems with jury instructions. He was extradited to Texas, where Abbott had secured major sexual assault indictments against him.

Awaiting trial, Jeffs has hired and fired attorneys and filed motions to dismiss the judge and to move the trial.

Eric Nichols, the long-time Assistant U.S. Attorney and now Deputy Texas Attorney General who is lead prosecutor in the case, says the motions are delay tactics.

Jeffs is expected to argue that the raid was illegal because the woman who telephoned a domestic violence hotline, claiming to be a 16-year-old girl being sexually assaulted, was in fact a 33-year-old woman. The man she named as her abuser, who is an FLDS member, was not in Texas at the time.

If the raid were deemed illegal, that could exclude much of the evidence prosecutors hope to use against him at trial.

The trial could take as long as a month, with jury selection possibly taking a week. Some 700 potential jurors have been summoned.

Deric Walpole, Jeffs’ attorney, says he will ask that the trial move out of Tom Green County, due to all the publicity.

The judge who is set to hear Jeffs’ trial also heard the legal cases of the 430 seized children. Images of FLDS women in their floor-length prairie dresses gathering at the courthouse appeared in newspapers and on television programs worldwide.

Jessop, who escaped from the FLDS after her forced marriage and has become a leading critic of the group, said she hopes the jury remembers that the two young girls Jeffs is charged with sexually assaulting, who have been placed in the custody of relatives, are not the sect’s only young victims.

“This isn’t about religion,” she said. “This is about justice. It comes down to the abuse of children.”

(Editing by James B. Kelleher, Tim Gaynor and Ellen Wulfhorst)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Presidential candidate Michele Bachmann hit back at a Republican rival on Sunday, saying her experience with the conservative Tea Party movement made her uniquely qualified to trim down Washington.

Bachmann, the Minnesota representative who has emerged as a serious contender for her party’s 2012 presidential nomination, said ex-Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty was off-base to suggest she lacked the credentials to take over the White House.

“I have a lifetime record of success and action in the real world,” Bachmann said in a statement from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where she is campaigning ahead of the August 13 Iowa straw poll, which is a key test of strength for Republican presidential candidates in the early voting state.

Bachmann, a former tax lawyer who heads the Tea Party Caucus in the House of Representatives, contrasted her record opposing “irresponsible spending” in Congress with what she called Pawlenty’s tenure as governor backing bloated programs and “leaving a multi-billion-dollar budget mess in Minnesota.”

“Executive experience is not an asset if it simply means bigger and more intrusive government,” she said, in her first strong rebuke of Pawlenty’s repeated jabs at her record, a sign that their competition over Iowa is heating up.

“I have demonstrated leadership and the courage of my convictions to change Washington, stop wasteful spending, lower taxes, put Americans back to work and turn our economy around,” Bachmann said.

Alex Conant, a spokesman for the Pawlenty campaign, said on Sunday there was “very little difference” in the political views of his candidate and Bachmann but suggested that Pawlenty’s record was far more impressive.

“The difference is that when Governor Pawlenty was scoring conservative victories to cut spending, pass market-based healthcare reform, and transform a (state) supreme court from liberal to conservative, and was elected twice in a very blue (Democratic) state, Congresswoman Bachmann was giving speeches and offering failed amendments, all while struggling mightily to hold onto the most Republican House seat in the state,” Conant said.

Bachmann stands to be a frontrunner in the Iowa straw poll, which will also include Pawlenty as well as Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, Jon Huntsman, Thaddeus McCotter, Ron Paul, Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum.

Pawlenty, behind in public opinion polls and needing a high finish in the straw poll, departed from his mind-mannered approach last week and said Bachmann’s “record of accomplishment in Congress is nonexistent.”

“We’re not looking for folks who just have speech capabilities, we’re looking for people who can lead a large enterprise in a public setting and drive it to conclusion,” he said, ushering in a more aggressive tone of campaigning.

(Editing by Paul Simao)

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The New York hotel maid who accused former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn of attempting to rape her said in an interview published on Newsweek’s website on Sunday that he appeared as a “crazy man” and attacked her when she entered his room.

Nafissatou Diallo also gave the newsmagazine and ABC News permission to identify her by name.

The magazine interview marks the first time the 32-year-old Guinean immigrant to the United States has publicly spoken to the media since she shocked the world with allegations that Strauss-Kahn emerged naked from the bathroom of his luxury suite on May 14 and forced her to perform oral sex.

Until now, Reuters had kept to the practice in the United States of protecting the identity of alleged rape victims.

ABC News on Sunday also announced it would broadcast an interview with Diallo on Monday morning.

“I want justice. I want him to go to jail,” she said in excerpts from the television interview released on Sunday.

“I want him to know that there is some places you cannot use your money, you cannot use your power when you do something like this,” Diallo said.

One of Diallo’s attorneys, Douglas Wigdor, told Reuters she has come forward to let the world know she is not a “shakedown artist or a prostitute.”

“She’s being attacked … and she thought it was important to put a name and face to her account,” Wigdor said.

She also plans to file a civil lawsuit soon, which means her name would become public, he added.

ABC reported Diallo also acknowledged “mistakes” but said that should not stop prosecutors from going forward.

“I never want to be in public but I have no choice,” she told ABC News, adding “Now, I have to be in public. I have to, for myself. I have to tell the truth.”

Diallo, who Newsweek said had agreed to be photographed for next week’s edition, said she saw Strauss-Kahn appear naked in front of her when she opened the door to his suite. He was like “a crazy man to me,” she said.

“You’re beautiful,” she reported Strauss-Kahn as saying, and said he attacked her despite her protestations.

DENIES ALL CHARGES

Strauss-Kahn, 62, has repeatedly denied all the charges against him. In a statement on Sunday, his lawyers called the interview a last-ditch effort by the maid and her lawyers to extract money from the former managing director of the International Monetary Fund.

She is “the first accuser in history to conduct a media campaign to persuade a prosecutor to pursue charges against a person from whom she wants money,” lawyers Benjamin Brafman and William Taylor said.

“Her lawyers and public relations consultants have orchestrated an unprecedented number of media events and rallies to bring pressure on the prosecutors in this case after she had to admit her extraordinary efforts to mislead them.”

Her credibility was thrown into question when Manhattan prosecutors revealed Diallo told authorities numerous lies, including fabricating a story about being gang-raped in Guinea in order to gain U.S. asylum. She also changed details of her story about what happened following the purported assault.

Wigdor said Diallo has worried that prosecutors would drop the charges. “That has been a concern, but we’re all hopeful that the district attorney’s going to do the right thing,” he said.

A spokesman for Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance had no comment on the interviews, saying: “We will not discuss the facts or evidence in what remains an ongoing investigation.”

FLED AFTER RAPE

After arriving from Guinea in 2003, Diallo, who is illiterate, told Newsweek she spent years braiding hair before working at a bodega in New York City’s Bronx borough. As a maid at the Sofitel hotel, she received $25 an hour plus tips.

Diallo said her husband in Guinea died of an illness but did not provide further details. Roughly two years after being raped by two soldiers in Conakry, the Guinean capital, she fled with her daughter, now 15, to the United States, where she said she has few close friends.

Following the alleged attack, Diallo spent weeks in protective custody, holed up in a hotel with her daughter.

“She’s been in seclusion for over two months. She hasn’t been able to take a walk in the park,” her lawyer said.

French newspaper France Soir reported in a front page headline that David Koubbi, the lawyer for French writer Tristane Banon, who has accused Strauss-Kahn of a 2003 sexual assault, had met with Diallo. It added only that he “was impressed by her courage.”

(Additional reporting by Noeleen Walder in New York and JoAnne Allen in Washington; Editing by Ellen Wulfhorst and Eric Walsh)

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The sluggish pace of hiring may be hobbling the U.S. economy, but it’s not been holding back big U.S. companies’ profits thanks to growth overseas and cost controls at home. And that’s bad news for the more than 14 million Americans without jobs.

Big businesses would normally be desperate for surging job growth as it would feed into domestic demand but these aren’t normal times. Massive growth opportunities overseas, especially in China and other buoyant Asian economies, have some of the largest American companies on track for record profits, even if their businesses are mostly treading water in the U.S.

The message last week from the chief financial officer of one of the nation’s industrial giants couldn’t be clearer.

“We’ve driven all this cost out. Sales have come back, but people have not,” said Greg Hayes, chief financial officer at United Technologies Corp. “It’s the structural cost reductions that we have done over the past few years that have allowed us to see strong bottom-line results.

The company, the world’s largest maker of air conditioners and elevators, said second-quarter profit rose 19 percent, and it is doing most of its hiring in emerging markets where demand for its products is growing fastest.

It isn’t alone in seeing profits climb in the current earnings reporting season.

About 78 percent of companies in the benchmark SP 500 index that have reported second-quarter earnings have beaten Wall Street expectations. Many benefited after slashing costs when the financial crisis hit and then keeping tight control on them even as sales recovered.

Economists say the ability to do more with less has helped create a two-speed U.S. recovery. The SP 500 has doubled in value since the recession ended and per-share earnings are currently on track for a new annual record, while employment remains below the level seen in late 2008 when corporate profits troughed.

Employers added fewer jobs in June than at any time in the past nine months, and the jobless rate rose to 9.2 percent – not far below its level of 9.5 percent in June 2009 when the recession ended.

“We’ve never seen the kind of shedding of jobs that we saw in this recession. America’s corporations have never been running so efficiently,” said Ellen Zentner, senior U.S. economist at Nomura Securities in New York.

LITTLE WAGE GROWTH

What’s more, workers have never claimed such a paltry share of real national income growth. Economists at Northeastern University in Boston recently found corporate profits captured 88 percent of income growth between the second quarter of 2009 and the fourth quarter of 2010.

Workers’ take? Slightly more than 1 percent.

“The only major beneficiaries of the recovery have been corporate profits and the stock market and its shareholders,” the study concludes.

The high jobless rate is also keeping wage growth severely restrained in the U.S., which is also good for profit margins.

Recent Department of Labor data showed unit labor costs edged up 0.7 percent in the year to March, though not enough to make up a 2.9 percent decline in the prior 12-month period.

Northeastern economics professor Andrew Sum called the mismatch “historically unprecedented” and said it bodes ill for future growth, especially given many companies are sitting on their cash rather than investing it.

“Workers have no money, no purchasing power, so that’s why consumption is not moving,” he said. By sitting on profits, firms are acting like earners “who take their money and stuff it in the mattress. That’s happening across the economy.”

U.S. economic growth slowed sharply in the first quarter and was expected to remain below 2 percent in the April-June period.

Pictures: Chicagoan wins air guitar title

Chicagoan Justin Howard rocked Metro and the panel of judges at the U.S. Air Guitar National Finals, beating nearly two dozen of the country’s top air rockers for the right to represent the United States at next month’s 16th annual Air Guitar World Championships in Oulu, Finland, where he will battle champions from more than 20 other countries.

Chicago’s wettest day

A reported 6.91 inches of rain, as of about 6:50 a.m. Saturday — is the largest single-day rainfall in Chicago since records began in 1871. The previous record was 6.64 inches on Sept. 12, 2008.

WASHINGTON, July 23 (Reuters) – The storied Walter Reed Army Medical Center will retire its ceremonial flags on Wednesday, as it prepares to close its doors after more than a century of treating wounded American fighters and presidents.

Walter Reed has treated some 18,000 troops that fought in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower, who died there, and Generals John J. Pershing and Douglas MacArthur.

• Topics
• 
  Hospitals and Clinics
  
• 
  Bethesda (Montgomery, Maryland)
  
• 
  Walter Reed Army Medical Center
  
• See more topics »

The present facility, together with its current patients, will be moving to a new location in Bethesda, Maryland, throughout August, prior to shutting its doors on September 15.

But the official “casing of the colors” at the 102-year-old institution — as the ceremony to retire the hospital’s flags is known — will take place on Wednesday.

“The closing marks a transition to the next stage in the life of Walter Reed,” Walter Reed Army Medical Center Spokesman Chuck Dasey told Reuters, adding that the new joint services facility in Bethesda will be called the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.

“The name will continue on to represent the new flagship of military medicine,” he added.

Citing aging facilities and cost-saving strategies, a military base review panel decided in 2005 to close the center’s campus in Washington, D.C. and merge its operations with the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, which will cost an estimated $2 billion. The hospital will also occupy a new hospital at Fort Belvoir, Virginia.

The new facilities will have new colors.

The closure of the present facility will affect more than 5,000 workers. Many of their jobs will move to Bethesda and a new community hospital at Fort Belvoir in northern Virginia.

The U.S. State Department and the District of Columbia will assume ownership of the facility. Some of the buildings will be preserved by landmark status. Others will be torn down or converted to other uses, possibly even shops, Dasey said.

The venerable facility’s long history has not been without its low moments.

Problems at an adjunct building of Walter Reed Army Medical Center were brought to light by a Washington Post investigation published in 2007. It found recuperating soldiers were living in a dilapidated building infested with mice, mold and cockroaches.

The Washington Post reports were particularly embarrassing because former U.S. President George W. Bush and senior defense officials had repeatedly visited the wounded in the hospital to show their concern for those who served in battle.

Bush said while most of the people working at the hospital were dedicated professionals, “some of our troops at Walter Reed have experienced bureaucratic delays and living conditions that are less than they deserve.” (Reporting by Eric Johnson; Editing by James B. Kelleher and Tim Gaynor)

Chicago’s wettest day

A reported 6.91 inches of rain, as of about 6:50 a.m. Saturday — is the largest single-day rainfall in Chicago since records began in 1871. The previous record was 6.64 inches on Sept. 12, 2008.

AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) – A gunman opened fire at a family birthday party at a Texas roller skating rink late Saturday, killing five people and wounding four before turning the gun on himself, police said.

Police were called to Forum Roller World in Grand Prairie, about 20 miles west of Dallas, at 7:10 p.m., police department spokesman John Brimmer said.

• Related

• 

  Story: Early repports of the Texas roller rink shooting

• Story: At least eight wounded in Seattle-area shooting

• Topics
• 
  Injuries and Wounds
  
• 
  Texas
  
• 
  Murder
  
• See more topics »

An unidentified man had drawn a gun during an argument and opened fire, shooting five people dead and wounding four others, and then shot himself, Brimmer said.

A family group had rented the entire rink for the evening to celebrate a child’s birthday, he said. All the dead and wounded were teenagers and adults attending the gathering.

“This was a domestic situation that went south in a hurry.” Brimmer told Reuters. “The shooting lasted only seconds.”

The wounded were hospitalized but their condition was not immediately known, Brimmer said.

Killings are rare in the community of 160,000 people, the police spokesman said. “For something like this to happen is just horrible,” he said.

(Reporting by Eric Johnson; Editing by Tim Gaynor)

At least 12 people were injured, 10 with gunshot wounds, when a man opened fire at the La Raza low-rider car show in a parking lot in Kent Saturday, authorities said late Saturday night. All of the victims were in satisfactory condition.

Ten of the wounded — ranging in age from 14 to 32 — were transported or drove themselves to hospitals.  Harborview Medical Center spokeswoman Susan Greg said the eight who arrived there were in satisfactory condition.  She said one person was treated and released and most of the others were expected to be released.  She said two people were admitted to the hospital.

It began after hundreds of people had gathered in a strip mall parking lot at 23200 block of Pacific Highway South on a warm, sunny day to shop in the nearby stores and markets or to see the opening of the La Raza low-rider car show.  At about 4:15 p.m., a witness said, a fight broke out near the cars and then shooting erupted.

“Just chaos, a lot of people screaming, running away,” said witness Erica Parker, who was working at the Subway sandwich shop in the strip mall. “8 to 12 shots fired.”

Alejandro Lara was in the midst of the chaos and saw victims nearby. “I don’t know I just get down I got down when I heard boom, boom — it was crazy.”

“We panicked, so we all ran to the backroom” of a store “and just stayed in there for a while,” said Trang Tran who works at a nearby nail salon.

It wasn’t known how many people were shooting, but police believe it was the work of more than one person.  

Gang detectives were called to help investigate the shooting.

Chicago’s wettest day

A reported 6.91 inches of rain, as of about 6:50 a.m. Saturday — is the largest single-day rainfall in Chicago since records began in 1871. The previous record was 6.64 inches on Sept. 12, 2008.

CARACAS (Reuters) – President Hugo Chavez returned to Venezuela on Saturday a week after leaving for chemotherapy in Cuba, saying no malignant cells were found and that he was arriving home in better health than when he left.

News that the 56-year-old socialist leader underwent surgery in Havana last month to remove a baseball-sized cancerous tumor has called into question his fitness to run for re-election next year in the OPEC nation.

“It’s a day of joy for me, of happiness, I have no doubt, for the great majority of our people,” he said in a brief speech at the capital’s airport broadcast live by state TV.

“I have come back better than I left, thanks to God.”

He said his doctors in Venezuela found no malignant cells before he left for Havana last Saturday, and that his Cuban doctors confirmed that during “rigorous” tests on Sunday.

Chavez had said on Friday he was preparing for a second round of chemotherapy. It was not clear when he might travel back to the communist-led Caribbean island as the guest of his friend and mentor, former Cuban leaderFidel Castro.

“It is important that the Venezuelan people should not think that everything is over … it is a clear process, a hard fight,” the president said at Maiquetia Airport, flanked by his vice president and several government ministers.

“No malignant cells were found in any part of my body … The risk exists, so chemotherapy was applied to me all week in various sessions … Here I am, to continue the battle.”

He had two operations last month that he described as complicated: the first for a pelvic abscess and another to remove the tumor. He was away almost a month until returning home a day before Venezuela’s 200th independence celebration.

A former soldier whose workaholic leadership style and image of invincibility have helped him win numerous votes, Chavez is visibly weakened as he plans his re-election bid.

Parliamentary elections last September showed the South American country split down the middle between Chavez supporters and opponents. Now, a fractious opposition coalition senses a chance to unseat the convalescing leader in 2012.

At the airport on Saturday, Chavez looked tired but back to his folksy self, joking about the Venezuelan soccer team’s exit from the Copa America tournament after they had a goal ruled out for offside in Wednesday’s semi-final against Paraguay.

The team, long seen as the continent’s weakest, shocked everyone by reaching the last four of the tournament, forging a rare moment of unity in a politically polarized nation.

He said Argentine soccer star Diego Maradona, who visited him in Havana on Friday, told him the goal should have stood.

“Maradona says the goal against Paraguay was valid,” Chavez said. “For me, our Vinotinto (Venezuelan national team) were the only champions of the Copa America … heroic, historic.”

(Additional reporting by Deisy Buitrago; Editing by Doina Chiacu)

Chicago’s wettest day

A reported 6.91 inches of rain, as of about 6:50 a.m. Saturday — is the largest single-day rainfall in Chicago since records began in 1871. The previous record was 6.64 inches on Sept. 12, 2008.

SUNDVOLLEN, Norway (Reuters) – Norway mourned on Sunday 93 people killed in a shooting spree and car bombing by a Norwegian who saw his attacks as “atrocious, but necessary” to defeat liberal immigration policies and the spread of Islam.

In his first comment via a lawyer since his arrest, Anders Behring Breivik, 32, said he wanted to explain himself at a court hearing Monday about extending his custody.

“He has said that he believed the actions were atrocious, but that in his head they were necessary,” lawyer Geir Lippestad told independent TV2 news, adding that Breivik had admitted to Friday’s shootings at a Labor party youth camp and the bombing in Oslo’s government district earlier the same day.

Oslo’s acting police chief Sveinung Sponheim confirmed to reporters that Breivik would be able to speak to the court. It was not clear whether the hearing would be closed or in public.

“He has admitted to the facts of both the bombing and the shooting, although he’s not admitting criminal guilt,” Sponheim said, adding that Breivik had said he acted alone.

Police were checking this because some witness statements from the island spoke of more than one gunman, Sponheim said.

Armed police detained several people in a raid on a small house attached to a warehouse in northern Oslo, a police lawyer told Reuters. They were later released and had no link to Friday’s attacks. No explosives were found in the raid.

NATIONAL TRAGEDY

The violence, Norway’s worst since World War Two, has profoundly shocked the usually peaceful nation of 4.8 million.

King Harald and Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg were among mourners at a service in Oslo cathedral, where the premier spoke emotionally about the victims, some of whom he knew.

“This represents a national tragedy,” he declared.

Tearful people placed flowers and candles outside the cathedral.

“We have left flowers today because the tragedy that has hit Norway and the whole world has made a big impression on us and we want to show our deepest sympathy,” said Trude-Mette, 43, who works in Oslo, as she and her children wept.

Soldiers with guns and wearing bullet-proof vests blocked streets leading to the government district.

Police said Breivik surrendered to armed officers when they arrived on the small island of Utoeya in a lake about 42 km (26 miles) northwest of Oslo after he had methodically shot dead at least 85 people, mostly teenagers and young adults attending a summer camp of the youth wing of Norway’s ruling Labor Party.

About 650 people were on the island when Breivik, wearing a police uniform, opened fire. Police said it took them one hour from when they were first alerted to stop the massacre, the worst by a single gunman in modern times.

A person wounded in the shooting died in hospital, raising the death toll to 93, Norway’s NRK television said. Police say some people remain missing. Ninety-seven people were wounded.

ANTI-MUSLIM TRACT

Police chief Sponheim confirmed that Breivik had published a 1,500-page anti-Islamic manifesto Friday just hours before the attacks.

Chicago’s wettest day

A reported 6.91 inches of rain, as of about 6:50 a.m. Saturday — is the largest single-day rainfall in Chicago since records began in 1871. The previous record was 6.64 inches on Sept. 12, 2008.

Chicago’s wettest day

A reported 6.91 inches of rain, as of about 6:50 a.m. Saturday — is the largest single-day rainfall in Chicago since records began in 1871. The previous record was 6.64 inches on Sept. 12, 2008.

Chicago’s wettest day

A reported 6.91 inches of rain, as of about 6:50 a.m. Saturday — is the largest single-day rainfall in Chicago since records began in 1871. The previous record was 6.64 inches on Sept. 12, 2008.

Chicago’s wettest day

A reported 6.91 inches of rain, as of about 6:50 a.m. Saturday — is the largest single-day rainfall in Chicago since records began in 1871. The previous record was 6.64 inches on Sept. 12, 2008.

Chicago’s wettest day

A reported 6.91 inches of rain, as of about 6:50 a.m. Saturday — is the largest single-day rainfall in Chicago since records began in 1871. The previous record was 6.64 inches on Sept. 12, 2008.