Murder case against tennis umpire is dropped

From the beginning, the death of professional tennis umpire Lois Goodman's husband was beset by contradictions.

When Alan Goodman, 80, was found dead in April at the couple's Woodland Hills condominium, paramedics noticed a suspicious cut to the side of his head. But Los Angeles police initially agreed with Lois Goodman's account that her ailing husband had fallen down a flight of stairs.

Days later, a coroner's investigator found that the injuries were consistent with being struck by a sharp object. That ultimately led to Goodman's dramatic arrest at a luxury Manhattan hotel as she prepared for the U.S. Open tennis tournament, with authorities claiming she bludgeoned her husband with a coffee mug.

PHOTOS: Murder case against tennis umpire is dropped

On Friday, prosecutors abruptly dropped a murder charge against her. Officials would say only that prosecutors received "additional information," declining to elaborate.

But law enforcement sources told The Times that medical experts consulted by the Los Angeles County district attorney's office concluded that the death could be the result of an accident, contradicting the coroner's determination that it was a homicide.

The finding added to a long list of problems with the case, the sources said, that included a lack of a clear motive as well as other physical evidence that could help the defense. Moreover, genetic tests found none of Goodman's DNA on the piece of the coffee mug that prosecutors had alleged she used to kill her husband.

After she left the courtroom Friday a free woman, Goodman, 70, insisted she was innocent and said she wanted to get back on the professional tennis tour, where she has been a fixture for decades.

"I feel wonderful," she said, standing in the rain outside the Van Nuys courthouse, flanked by her attorneys. "I just feel I have been treated fairly now and it was just a tragic accident."

The dismissal raised questions about how the case was investigated and whether both detectives and prosecutors rushed to charge Goodman. Last year, the LAPD acknowledged detectives had wrongly arrested a man in the high-profile beating of a San Francisco Giants baseball fan outside Dodger Stadium.

One of Goodman's attorneys, Robert Sheahen, criticized the LAPD's investigation, saying crime scene evidence undercut the theory that Alan Goodman's death was a homicide.

A prominent medical expert, he said, told the defense team that Goodman was more likely to have died from heart failure, noting that his heart was four times the size of a normal heart. Blood evidence showed that an injured Goodman was downstairs at some point but was upstairs in bed by the time paramedics arrived, Sheahen said. Lois Goodman — who suffered from bad knees, a torn rotator cuff, rheumatoid arthritis and severe back pain — was in no physical condition to move her 160-pound husband, the attorney said.

"She would have needed a forklift to take the body up the stairs. It was ridiculous," Sheahen said.

The LAPD declined to comment on details of the case, but LAPD Chief Charlie Beck released a brief statement.

"I am aware that the district attorney today declared that they are not ready to proceed in the Alan Goodman homicide trial and asked the court to dismiss the case without prejudice," Beck said. "This is still considered an open case, and our Topanga-area homicide detectives will continue their investigation."

Sources told The Times that prosecutors would review any new compelling evidence in the case and determine whether to refile charges but believed that would be unlikely. The sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the case was ongoing, said there were obvious problems from the outset, noting that the coroner was never called to the crime scene. Some inside the district attorney's office, they said, had questioned the public way in which Goodman was arrested. New York police took Goodman into custody after she had finished breakfast at a Midtown Sheraton and then walked her past photographers.

Steve Meister, a defense attorney and former Los Angeles County prosecutor, said district attorney's officials deserve credit for dismissing the case when they realized they did not have enough evidence to proceed. Nevertheless, he said, the office should examine whether prosecutors could have anticipated the problems before they decided to file criminal charges.

"There needs to be a ... thoughtful, honest internal review process to figure out what went wrong here, because something clearly did," Meister said.

From the outset, Lois Goodman told police she came home and found her husband dead in bed. She said she believed he crawled there after falling down the stairs and onto a coffee cup he was carrying.

At a court hearing earlier this year, a prosecutor accused her of plotting to kill her husband by wielding the broken coffee mug like an "improvised knife." Shards from the mug were found embedded in his wounds. Prosecutors alleged that she left him to die and went off to "tennis and to get her nails done."

A search warrant executed four days after the death turned up blood throughout the home "inconsistent with accidental death," an LAPD detective wrote in the warrant affidavit. Stains on carpets, the refrigerator door, inside a linen closet and on the wall leading to the garage suggested "a mobile victim" who, police theorized, would have called for help.

They also found that Lois Goodman, married to her husband for nearly 50 years, was communicating on the Internet with another man, according to the warrant. One email described in the warrant included cryptic remarks about her "terminating a relationship" and having "alternative sleeping arrangements," though exactly what she meant remains unclear.

But Lois Goodman's supporters described her as a loving wife who cared for her aging husband. And her lawyers said she passed a lie-detector test administered by a former FBI examiner in which she denied killing her husband.

Hours after the court hearing, a bail bonds official cut off the electronic ankle bracelet that Lois Goodman was required to wear while she was out on bail.

"I didn't do anything. I would never hurt my husband," Goodman said, her eyes filling with tears. "I loved him and I was his caretaker, and he came first and I came second."

andrew.blankstein@latimes.com

jack.leonard@latimes.com

andrew.khouri@latimes.com

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Average wireless bill increased 7% in 2012 , 70% of subscribers now own smartphones

We all love our smartphones, but they are a costly addiction to support. According to Consumer Reports, American wireless subscribers saw their wireless bills increase by 7% between 2011 and 2012, and the big culprit is the continued proliferation of smartphones. Overall, 70% of wireless subscribers who took part in Consumer Reports’ survey owned smartphones this year, up from 50% in 2011. As the publication notes, “upgrading from a plain cell phone at a major carrier isn’t cheap” since “you have to buy the smart phone itself (usually $ 100 to $ 400 when signing a two-year contract) and fork over $ 70 to $ 110 a month for a plan with data service… a lot more than a basic phone plan, which generally costs $ 40 to $ 70 a month.”

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Putin aide denies Russian president has health problems

TOKYO/MOSCOW (Reuters) – Vladimir Putin is in good health, his chief of staff said on Friday after Japanese media said Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda had postponed a visit to Moscow next month because the Russian president had a health problem.

A former KGB officer who enjoys vast authority in Russia, Putin has long cultivated a tough-guy image, and health issues could damage that. His condition though has been questioned in some media since he was seen limping at a summit in September.

Three Russian government sources told Reuters late in October that Putin, who began a six-year term in May and turned 60 last month, was suffering from back trouble, but the Kremlin has dismissed talk that he had a serious back problem.

Putin’s health troubles stem from a recent judo bout, Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko said this week.

Then on Friday Japanese news agencies Kyodo and Jiji reported that Prime Minister Noda talked about the delay of a visit planned for December in a meeting with municipal officials on the northern island of Hokkaido.

“It’s about (President Putin’s) health problem. This is not something that can easily be made public,” Jiji cited one of the officials as quoting Noda as saying.

But Putin’s chief of staff Sergei Ivanov denied there was any problem.

“Please don’t worry, don’t be concerned. Everything is in order with his health,” Putin’s said in Vienna, according to state-run Russian news agency RIA.

In an interview published on Friday in the popular Russian tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda, Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said rumors about a spine problem were “strongly exaggerated”.

“He is working as he has before and intends to continue working at the same pace,” Peskov said.

“He also does not plan to give up his sports activities and for this reason, like any athlete, his back, his arm, his leg might sometimes hurt a little – this has never gotten in the way of his ability to work.”

Putin had been expected to make several foreign trips in late October or November, but they did not take place.

Putin is however due to visit Turkey on Monday and Turkmenistan on Wednesday.

Putin’s foreign policy adviser, Yuri Ushakov, made amply clear the Kremlin was displeased by the public discussion of scheduling by Japanese officials and denied that Noda’s visit had been postponed, saying no date had been set.

“It is just unethical to name the dates that were discussed. There were several: at first it was October, November, December, January … then we even shifted to February,” Ushakov said, adding that the sides eventually agreed tentatively on January.

He said the diplomatic process of agreeing dates for the visit should have been “hermetically sealed”.

Putin’s image as a fit, healthy man helped bring him popularity when he rose to power 13 years ago because of the stark contrast with his predecessor Boris Yeltsin, who was sometimes drunk in public and had heart surgery when president.

He has used activities like scuba diving and horseback riding to maintain that image.

On Friday, Putin met leaders of parliamentary factions in his Novo-Ogaryovo residence outside Moscow. He appeared in good health and was walking without any sign of a limp.

Likely to be on the agenda in talks between Russian and Japanese officials are energy cooperation and a decades-old dispute over islands north of Hokkaido known as the Southern Kurils in Russia and the Northern Territories in Japan.

(Additional reporting by Darya Korsunskaya; Writing by Tomasz Janowski and Steve Gutterman; Editing by Nick Macfie and Jon Hemming)

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Small union is causing big problems for ports

The small band of strikers that has effectively shut down the nation's busiest shipping complex forced two huge cargo ships to head for other ports Thursday and kept at least three others away, hobbling an economic powerhouse in Southern California.

The disruption is costing an estimated $1 billion a day at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, on which some 600,000 truckers, dockworkers, trading companies and others depend for their livelihoods.

"The longer it goes, the more the impacts increase," said Paul Bingham, an economist with infrastructure consulting firm CDM Smith. "Retailers will have stock outages, lost sales for products not delivered. There will be shutdowns in factories, in manufacturing when they run out of parts."

Despite the union's size — about 800 members of a unit of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union — it has managed to flex big muscles. Unlike almost anywhere else in the nation, union loyalty is strong at the country's ports. Neither the longshoremen nor the truckers are crossing the tiny union's picket lines.

The strike started at the L.A. port's largest terminal Tuesday and spread Wednesday to 10 of the two ports' 14 cargo terminals. These resemble seaside parking lots where long metal containers are loaded and unloaded with the help of giant cranes.

The union contends that the dispute is over job security and the transfer of work from higher-paid union members to lower-paid employees in other countries. The 14-employer management group says that no jobs have been outsourced and that the union wants to continue a practice called "featherbedding," or bringing in temporary workers even when there is no work.

The two sides haven't met since negotiations broke down Monday, but they were scheduled to begin talking again Thursday night. The union has worked without a contract for 21/2 years.

The clerical workers are a vital link in the supply chain. They handle the immense flow of information that accompanies each cargo ship as well as every item in the freight. One shipload of shoes, toys and other products is enough to fill five warehouses.

Logistics clerk Trinie Thompson, 41, normally spends her days working with railroad lines and trucking companies to ensure that the right containers are sent along to their proper destinations. On Thursday, she was walking the picket lines at the docks.

"We will be setting up trains to Houston, trains to Dallas, to Chicago, to the Pacific Northwest," said Thompson, who has worked for 10 years for Eagle Marine Services terminal, which is affiliated with the giant APL shipping line.

"For a typical container ship, we will have to set up multiple trains. We might be sending 200 to 300 containers to Chicago alone, and there will be paperwork for all of them."

The strike comes at a time of simmering labor unrest at other U.S. ports, underscoring the unusual power labor holds in maritime trade.

On the East Coast and Gulf Coast, another group of shipping lines and terminal operators called the United States Maritime Alliance has repeatedly failed to reach agreement on a new labor contract with the International Longshoremen's Assn. A strike that might have involved dozens of ports was avoided only after both sides agreed to extend negotiations past the September end of their current contract.

A strike also was narrowly avoided at Portland, Ore., only a few days ago in a dispute between grain shippers and union workers.

Operations at Oakland International Airport and at the Port of Oakland, the third-largest port in the state behind Los Angeles and Long Beach, were affected by a brief strike this month.

Maritime unions "have successfully organized one of the most vital links in the supply chain, and it's a tradition they nurture with all of their younger workers," said Nelson Lichtenstein, a UC Santa Barbara history professor and workplace expert. "They have a very strong ideological sense of who they are, and for now they are strong."

In Los Angeles and Long Beach, the 800 clerical workers have been able to shut down most of the ports because the 10,000-member dockworkers union is honoring the picket lines. Work continues at only four cargo terminals, where the office clerical unit has no workers.

"Longshoremen stand up when other workers need our help," said Ray Ortiz Jr., a member of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union's Coast Committee. "Sure, it's a sacrifice to give up a paycheck when you refuse to cross the picket line, but we believe it's in the long-term interest of the Los Angeles-Long Beach harbor area to retain these good local jobs."

Stephen Berry, lead negotiator for the shipping lines and cargo terminals, said the clerical workers have been offered a deal that includes "absolute job security," a raise that would take average annual pay to $195,000 from $165,000, 11 weeks' paid vacation and a generous pension increase.

At a news conference Thursday, Berry denounced the tactics by the clerical workers, calling them "irresponsible."

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Apple overcomes last hurdle, iPhone 5 cleared for sale in China as Android continues to dominate

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Stephen King and Steven Spielberg’s “Under the Dome” gets series order from CBS

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – “Under the Dome” has landed under the wing of CBS.

The network has given a 13-episode, straight-to-series order for the project, an adaptation of the Stephen King novel of the same name.

The series will premiere in summer 2013.

King will executive-produce, along with Steven Spielberg, whose Amblin Television will produce the series in association with CBS Television Studios. Neal Baer, Justin Falvey, Darryl Frank, Stacey Snider and Brian K. Vaughan are also executive-producing. Niels Arden Oplev (“The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo”) will direct the first episode.

The series will revolve around a small New England town that is suddenly and inexplicably sealed off from the rest of the world by an enormous transparent dome. The town’s inhabitants must deal with surviving the post-apocalyptic conditions while searching for answers to what this barrier is, where it came from and if and when it will go away.

“This is a great novel coming to the television screen with outstanding auspices and in-season production values to create a summer programming event,” CBS Entertainment president Nina Tassler said. “We’re excited to transport audiences ‘Under the Dome’ and into the extraordinary world that Stephen King has imagined.”

Showtime, which is owned by CBS, had previously been developing the project.

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Recipes for Health: Asian Chopped Salad With Seasoned Tofu ‘Fingers’ — Recipes for Health

Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times

I like to serve the baked seasoned tofu “fingers” warm on top of the salad. They are delicious cold, too; it is worth making up a separate batch for the refrigerator. If you have an assortment of vegetables leftover from Thanksgiving dinner, throw them in!

For the Tofu:

1/4 cup soy sauce

2 tablespoons mirin (sweet Japanese rice wine)

1 tablespoon rice vinegar

1 tablespoon minced or grated fresh ginger

1/2 teaspoon sugar

1 tablespoon Asian sesame oil

1 pound firm tofu

For the salad:

1 romaine heart, chopped

5 cups mixed chopped or diced vegetables such as:

Green or red cabbage

Celery (from the inner heart)

Red pepper

Radishes, sliced or chopped

1/4 cup dry roasted peanuts, coarsely chopped

1/4 cup chopped cilantro (more to taste)

1 serrano pepper, seeded and minced (optional)

For the dressing:

2 tablespoons fresh lime juice

1/4 cup tofu marinade, above

2 tablespoons canola or peanut oil

1/3 cup low-fat buttermilk or plain nonfat yogurt

1. Marinate the tofu: combine the soy sauce, mirin, rice vinegar, ginger and sugar in a 2-quart bowl. Whisk in the sesame oil and combine well. Drain the tofu and pat dry with paper towels. Slice into 1/3-inch thick slabs and cut the slabs in half lengthwise to get “fingers” approximately 1/3 inch thick by 3/4 inch wide. Blot each finger with paper towels. Add to the bowl with the marinade and gently toss to coat. Cover and refrigerate for 15 minutes to an hour, or for up to a day.

2. Meanwhile, heat the oven to 375 degrees and line a baking sheet with parchment. Lift the tofu out of the marinade and arrange the pieces on the parchment-covered baking sheet. Bake for 7 to 10 minutes, until the edges are just beginning to color and the marinade sets on the surface of the tofu. Remove from the heat.

3. In a large bowl, combine all of the salad ingredients. Whisk together the dressing ingredients and toss with the salad. If desired, transfer to a platter. Garnish with the tofu strips and serve.

Yield: Serves 4

Advance preparation: The chopped vegetables can be prepared up to a day ahead and refrigerated in a well covered container. The tofu marinade will keep for two days in the refrigerator. The baked seasoned tofu will keep for several days in the refrigerator.

Nutritional information per serving: 317 calories; 20 grams fat; 2 grams saturated fat; 8 grams polyunsaturated fat; 9 grams monounsaturated fat; 1 milligram cholesterol; 19 grams carbohydrates; 5 grams dietary fiber; 470 milligrams sodium (does not include salt to taste); 16 grams protein

Martha Rose Shulman is the author of “The Very Best of Recipes for Health.”

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Most Americans Face Lower Tax Burden Than in the 80s

What Is Fair?:
Taxes are still a hot topic after the presidential election. But as a country that spends more than it collects in taxes, are we asking the right taxpayers to pay the right amounts?

BELLEVILLE, Ill. — Alan Hicks divides long days between the insurance business he started in the late 1970s and the barbecue restaurant he opened with his sons three years ago. He earned more than $250,000 last year and said taxes took more than 40 percent. What’s worse, in his view, is that others — the wealthy, hiding in loopholes; the poor, living on government benefits — are not paying their fair share.

Kirsten Luce for The New York Times

"I don't have the answer of where to pull back. I want the state parks to stay open. I want, I want, I want. I want Big Bird, I think it's beautiful. What don't I want? I don't know," said Anita Thole, a safety supervisor for a utility contractor.

“It feels like the harder we work, the more they take from us,” said Mr. Hicks, 55, as he waited for a meat truck one recent afternoon. “And it seems like there’s an awful lot of people in the United States who don’t pay any taxes.”

These are common sentiments in the eastern suburbs of St. Louis, a region of fading factory towns fringed by new subdivisions. Here, as across the country, people like Mr. Hicks are pained by the conviction that they are paying ever more to finance the expansion of government.

But in fact, most Americans in 2010 paid far less in total taxes — federal, state and local — than they would have paid 30 years ago. According to an analysis by The New York Times, the combination of all income taxes, sales taxes and property taxes took a smaller share of their income than it took from households with the same inflation-adjusted income in 1980.

Households earning more than $200,000 benefited from the largest percentage declines in total taxation as a share of income. Middle-income households benefited, too. More than 85 percent of households with earnings above $25,000 paid less in total taxes than comparable households in 1980.

Lower-income households, however, saved little or nothing. Many pay no federal income taxes, but they do pay a range of other levies, like federal payroll taxes, state sales taxes and local property taxes. Only about half of taxpaying households with incomes below $25,000 paid less in 2010.

The uneven decline is a result of two trends. Congress cut federal taxation at every income level over the last 30 years. State and local taxes, meanwhile, increased for most Americans. Those taxes generally take a larger share of income from those who make less, so the increases offset more and more of the federal savings at lower levels of income.

In a half-dozen states, including Connecticut, Florida and New Jersey, the increases were large enough to offset the federal savings for most households, not just the poorer ones.

Now an era of tax cuts may be reaching its end. The federal government depends increasingly on borrowed money to pay its bills, and many state and local governments are similarly confronting the reality that they are spending more money than they collect. In Washington, debates about tax cuts have yielded to debates about who should pay more.

President Obama campaigned for re-election on a promise to take a larger share of taxable income above roughly $250,000 a year. The White House is now negotiating with Congressional Republicans, who instead want to raise some money by reducing tax deductions. Federal spending cuts also are at issue.

If a deal is not struck by year’s end, a wide range of federal tax cuts passed since 2000 will expire and taxes will rise for roughly 90 percent of Americans, according to the independent Tax Policy Center. For lower-income households, taxation would spike well above 1980 levels. Upper-income households would lose some but not all of the benefits of tax cuts over the last three decades.

Public debate over taxes has typically focused on the federal income tax, but that now accounts for less than a third of the total tax revenues collected by federal, state and local governments. To analyze the total burden, The Times created a model, in consultation with experts, which estimated total tax bills for each taxpayer in each year from 1980, when the election of President Ronald Reagan opened an era of tax cutting, up to 2010, the most recent year for which relevant data is available.

The analysis shows that the overall burden of taxation declined as a share of income in the 1980s, rose to a new peak in the 1990s and fell again in the 2000s. Tax rates at most income levels were lower in 2010 than at any point during the 1980s.

Governments still collected the same share of total income in 2010 as in 1980 — 31 cents from every dollar — because people with higher incomes pay taxes at higher rates, and household incomes rose over the last three decades, particularly at the top.

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Powerball's $580-million jackpot inspires wishes, dreamers

Don't bother telling Wednesday night's Powerball winners  that a lottery is just a tax on those who flunked math. With a winning ticket in hand, or even just the dream of one, who cares if the odds against them exceeded 175 million to 1? 

Last-minute ticket-buying pushed the jackpot to nearly $580 million, which is how much a single winner would get if he or she took the money in annual payments over 30 years.  

The winning numbers: 5-16-22-23-29, and the Powerball:  06. 

Hours after the 8 p.m. drawing, officials said winning tickets had been sold in Arizona and Missouri.

No one had won since Oct. 6, causing the jackpot to roll over 16 times. It  grows at least $10 million every time no one wins, lottery officials said. 

To play Powerball, one must pick five unique numbers from 1 through 59, and a Powerball number from 1 through 35. The odds of winning are 1 in 175,223,510. 

Powerball tickets aren't sold in California, but some feverish residents reportedly drove or flew to one of 42 participating states  to buy a chance at a fortune. The District of Columbia and the U.S. Virgin Islands also participate. 

Maybe the next time the jackpot soars, out-of-state travel won't be necessary. On Thursday, the California State Lottery Commission is expected to adopt regulations to join the Powerball lottery. If so, California retailers could start selling the $2 tickets in April.

[Updated, 10:45 p.m., Nov. 28: An earlier version of this post said the jackpot would exceed $550 million.  Late Wednesday, the Associated Press reported, Powerball officials said it would be nearly $580 million. And early Thursday EST, lottery officials said winning tickets had been sold in Arizona and Missouri.]

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Texas moves to seize polygamist Warren Jeffs' ranch compound 

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Facebook exec says company is reducing spam despite clogging your feed with brands you don’t like

Recent changes to Facebook’s (FB) Edgerank, the algorithm that’s responsible for displaying items on a user’s Newsfeed, have angered privacy groups who say the new policy will actually produce more spam than reducing it. According to Forbes’ Jeff Bercovici, Facebook’s VP of global marketing solutions Carol Everson said on Tuesday that the social network is reducing spam by using “Suggests Posts” – “non-connected page posts” that show a brand’s ads even if a user and their friends don’t “like” or support them. Bercovici argues that Facebook’s new approach to targeting brands at users contradicts its claims of reducing spam by doling out spam that users don’t connect with. 

As expected, Everson’s response to clogging the Newsfeed with brand ads that users don’t support was: “You may not be a fan of a brand, but maybe everyone in your network is talking about it, so we think you might be interested in it,” and she said there are “literally more than a thousand signals” that go into displaying “relevant” brand ads.

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