California still hasn't bought land for bullet train route

Construction of California's high-speed rail network is supposed to start in just six months, but the state hasn't acquired a single acre along the route and faces what officials are calling a challenging schedule to assemble hundreds of parcels needed in the Central Valley.

The complexity of getting federal, state and local regulatory approvals for the massive $68-billion project has already pushed back the start of construction to July from late last year. Even with that additional time, however, the state is facing a risk of not having the property to start major construction work near Fresno as now planned.

It hopes to begin making purchase offers for land in the next several weeks. But that's only the first step in a convoluted legal process that will give farmers, businesses and homeowners leverage to delay the project by weeks, if not months, and drive up sales prices, legal experts say.

One major stumbling block could be valuing agricultural land in a region where prices have been soaring, raising property owners' expectations far above what the state expects to pay.

"The reality is that they are not going to start in July," said Anthony Leones, a Bay Area attorney who has represented government agencies as well as property owners in eminent domain cases.

State high-speed rail officials say it won't be easy, but they can acquire needed property and begin the project on time.

"It is a challenge," said Jeff Morales, the rail agency's chief executive. "It is not unlike virtually any project. The difference is the scale of it."

Quickly acquiring a new rail corridor is crucial to the project, which Gov. Jerry Brown touted last week as the latest symbol of California's tradition of dreaming big and making major investments in its future.

Delays in starting construction could set in motion a chain reaction of problems that would jeopardize the politically and financially sensitive timetable for building the $6-billion first leg of the system. Under its deal with the Obama administration, which is pushing the project as an integral part of its economic and transportation agenda, the state must complete the first 130 miles of rail in the Central Valley by 2018, an aggressive schedule that would require spending about $3.6 million every day.

California voters in 2008 approved plans for a 220-mph bullet train system that would initially link the Bay Area and Southern California at a cost of $32 billion, less than half the estimated cost of the project.

If the construction schedule slips, costs could grow and leave the state without enough money to complete the entire first segment. Rail agency documents acknowledge initial construction may not get as close to Bakersfield in the southern Central Valley as planned.

In addition to property, the rail authority still needs permits from the Army Corps of Engineers and approval by the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District, two more potential choke points that Morales says can be navigated.

The land purchases are waiting on the hiring of a team of specialized contractors, but they cannot start their work until the rail agency gets approval from another branch of the state bureaucracy. About 400 parcels are needed for the first construction segment, a 29-mile stretch from Madera to Fresno.

The formal offers will start an eminent domain action, the legal process for seizing land from private owners. The owners have 30 days to consider the offer, and then the state must go through a series of steps that can add 100 more days of appeals and hearings, assuming the state can get on the court calendar, according to Robert Wilkinson, an eminent domain litigator in Fresno. If the state fails to convince a judge that a quick takeover of property is justified, formal trials could stretch on for 18 months, he added.

"I would think a lot of these are going to end up in litigation," he said. "It is a tight schedule, no question about it."

Indeed, the rail authority's formal right-of-way plan indicates it does not expect to acquire the first properties until Sept. 15, despite other documents that indicate construction would start in July. Rail officials said they padded the schedule to avoid claims for additional payments by construction contractors should land not be available by July.

Last month, the federal Government Accountability Office reported that about 100 parcels were at risk of not being available in time for construction.

That assessment was based on information the office collected last August. Susan Fleming, a GAO investigator, testified at a House hearing last month: "Not having the needed right of way could cause delays as well as add to project costs."

Morales said in a recent interview that he would not argue with the warning in the GAO report but still sees nothing that would delay the start of construction. Technically, the rail authority could meet the July target date by beginning demolition or other construction on a single piece of property, he said.

Anja Raudabaugh, executive director of the Madera County Farm Bureau, which is suing to halt the project under the California Environmental Quality Act, said the rail authority will face strong opposition to condemnation proceedings in the Central Valley. The bureau has hired a condemnation expert to help battle the land seizures.

"It is a harried mess," she said.

She noted that agricultural land prices rose rapidly last year across the nation. In the Central Valley, the average price of farmland is $28,000 per acre, while the rail authority's budget anticipates an average price of $8,000 per acre, she said.

Kole Upton, an almond farmer who leads the rail watchdog group Preserve Our Heritage, questioned the rail agency's expertise in conducting complex appraisals of agricultural land that has orchards, irrigation systems and processing facilities.

"I am not sure this thing has been well thought out by people who have a deep understanding of agriculture," Upton said. "I live on my farm, and my son lives on my farm. My dad started it after World War II. This is our heritage and our future."

Morales said he believes the agency's budget for property acquisitions is adequate and he did not want to negotiate prices publicly.

"We don't think we are wildly off," he said.

ralph.vartabedian@latimes.com

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Director Abrams to helm new Star Wars, fans say force with him

(Reuters) – Sci-fi filmmaker J.J. Abrams will direct “Star Wars: Episode VII,” Walt Disney Co said after days of speculation, giving hope to many long-suffering fans who were disappointed by the last three installments in the iconic franchise.

The announcement was greeted with celebrations on online networks by the films’ army of enthusiasts who have already watched Abrams rescue the aging “Star Trek” series with a high-grossing prequel in 2009.

Disney said late on Friday Abrams would work under the leadership of producer Kathleen Kennedy, the former president of Lucasfilm, and the script would be penned by Oscar-winning writer Michael Arndt.

“J.J. is the perfect director to helm this. Beyond having such great instincts as a filmmaker, he has an intuitive understanding of this franchise,” Kennedy said in a statement on starwars.com.

Fans were equally enthusiastic. “JJ Abrams to the rescue!!! Yes!! #starwarsVII,” wrote Jonny Radtke ‏(@JonnyRadtke) on Twitter.

“Great news about JJ Abrams directing Star Wars. Might just rescue the brand…,” added Alastair Brookshaw ‏(@albrookshaw).

Rumors that Abrams, one of Hollywood’s most successful directors and producers, would take stewardship of the films filled industry publications and online forums over the past week.

The 46-year-old made his name with TV shows “Alias” and “Lost” and earned his stripes as a director of effects-laden blockbusters with “Super 8,” “Mission: Impossible III” and another widely expected Star Trek film “Star Trek Into Darkness,” due out later this year.

The Star Wars franchise, which was created by George Lucas‘ Lucasfilms Ltd, has grossed more than $ 4.4 billion at the global box office since the first film was released in 1977, making it the third most successful movie property after the “Harry Potter” and “James Bond” series.

Star Wars characters such as Princess Leia, Luke Skywalker and the anti-hero, Darth Vader, have become a staple part of pop culture, along with the catch phrase “May the force be with you”.

The Star Wars films were acquired by Disney after they bought Lucasfilm for $ 4.05 billion in October 2012. They announced then that three new installments would be made, starting in 2015.

Lucas, 68, gave Abrams his blessing on Starwars.com, saying the director was “an ideal choice to direct the new Star Wars film and the legacy couldn’t be in better hands”.

Abrams said his new role was “an absolute honor.”

Disney had previously said Lucas would remain a creative consultant on the series.

Lucas himself said in October he had story treatments for Episodes 7, 8 and 9, which he would hand over to Kennedy, who assured him that she would adhere to his ideas.

(This version of the story was corrected to clarify that Abrams directed “Mission: Impossible III” and not “Mission Impossible – Ghost Protocol” as earlier stated in paragraph eight.)

(Editing by Andrew Heavens)

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Well: Ask Well: Squats for Aging Knees

You are already doing many things right, in terms of taking care of your aging knees. In particular, it sounds as if you are keeping your weight under control. Carrying extra pounds undoubtedly strains knees and contributes to pain and eventually arthritis.

You mention weight training, too, which is also valuable. Sturdy leg muscles, particularly those at the front and back of the thighs, stabilize the knee, says Joseph Hart, an assistant professor of kinesiology and certified athletic trainer at the University of Virginia, who often works with patients with knee pain.

An easy exercise to target those muscles is the squat. Although many of us have heard that squats harm knees, the exercise is actually “quite good for the knees, if you do the squats correctly,” Dr. Hart says. Simply stand with your legs shoulder-width apart and bend your legs until your thighs are almost, but not completely, parallel to the ground. Keep your upper body straight. Don’t bend forward, he says, since that movement can strain the knees. Try to complete 20 squats, using no weight at first. When that becomes easy, Dr. Hart suggests, hold a barbell with weights attached. Or simply clutch a full milk carton, which is my cheapskate’s squats routine.

Straight leg lifts are also useful for knee health. Sit on the floor with your back straight and one leg extended and the other bent toward your chest. In this position, lift the straight leg slightly off the ground and hold for 10 seconds. Repeat 10 to 20 times and then switch legs.

You can also find other exercises that target the knees in this video, “Increasing Knee Stability.”

Of course, before starting any exercise program, consult a physician, especially, Dr. Hart says, if your knees often ache, feel stiff or emit a strange, clicking noise, which could be symptoms of arthritis.

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J. Richard Hackman, an Expert in Team Dynamics, Dies at 72

J. Richard Hackman, a Harvard psychology professor whose fieldwork sometimes took him to the cockpit of an airliner to observe the crew in a nearly five-decade quest to determine the dynamics of teamwork and effective leadership, died on Jan. 8 in Boston. He was 72.

The cause was lung cancer, his wife, Judith Dozier Hackman, said.

Dr. Hackman, the author or co-author of 10 books on group dynamics, was the Edgar Pierce professor of social and organizational psychology at Harvard.

In one of his best-known books, “Leading Teams: Setting the Stage for Great Performances” (2002), he replaced the popular image of the powerful “I can do it all” team leader with that of someone who, as he wrote, had the subtle skills “to get a team established on a good trajectory, and then to make small adjustments along the way to help members succeed.”

The conditions for a successful team effort — among them “a compelling direction, an enabling team structure, a supportive organizational context and expert team coaching” — “are easy to remember,” Dr. Hackman wrote.

“The challenge,” he continued, “comes in developing an understanding of those conditions that is deep and nuanced enough to be useful in guiding action, and in devising strategies for creating them even in demanding or team-unfriendly organizational circumstances.”

Besides tracking the interplay of pilots, co-pilots and navigators aboard civilian and military planes, Dr. Hackman observed corporate boards, sports teams, orchestra players, telephone-line repair crews, hospital workers and restaurant kitchen staff members.

And in recent years, for his 2011 book, “Collaborative Intelligence,” he was allowed to observe interactions within the American intelligence, defense, law-enforcement and crisis-management communities.

“Although my main aspiration has been to provide guidance that will be useful to team leaders and members,” he wrote, “there are no ‘one-minute’ prescriptions here — creating, leading and serving on teams is not that simple.”

Anita Woolley, a professor of organizational behavior and theory at the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, said, “The key thing about Dr. Hackman’s work is that it stands in contrast to some of the more popular models of leadership that focused very much on style or how leaders behave, versus what they do.”

Rather than viewing pay as a prime motivator for good performance, she continued, “he focused on features of people’s jobs that made them more intrinsically satisfied: the freedom to determine how they conduct their work, having a variety of tasks, having knowledge of the ultimate outcomes of their work, knowing how their work affects or is received by other people.”

He also liked to overturn some of the received wisdom about teamwork. In a 2011 article for The Harvard Business Review, Dr. Hackman listed “Six Common Misperceptions About Teamwork.” Among them was this:

“Misperception No. 2: It’s good to mix it up. New members bring energy and fresh ideas to a team. Without them, members risk becoming complacent, inattentive to changes in the environment, and too forgiving of fellow members’ misbehavior.

“Actually: The longer members stay together as an intact group, the better they do. As unreasonable as this may seem, the research evidence is unambiguous. Whether it is a basketball team or a string quartet, teams that stay together longer play together better.”

John Richard Hackman was born in Joliet, Ill., on June 14, 1940, the only child of J. Edward and Helen Hackman. His father was an oil pipeline engineer, his mother a schoolteacher.

Dr. Hackman received a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from MacMurray College in Jacksonville, Ill., in 1962, and a doctorate in psychology from the University of Illinois in 1966. He soon joined the psychology and administrative sciences department faculties at Yale, where he taught until 1986, when he moved to the psychology and business departments at Harvard.

Besides his wife, who is an associate dean at Yale, he is survived by two daughters, Julia Beth Proffitt and Laura Dianne Codeanne, and four grandchildren.

After Dr. Hackman died, The Harvard Crimson wrote that for years he had “devoted countless hours to improving one team in particular — the Harvard women’s basketball squad, for which he volunteered as an honorary coach.”

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Venezuela prison riot leaves dozens dead

A handout photo by El Informador newspaper shows emergency crews tending an injured person at the Barquisimeto city hospital in northeast Venezuela after a prison riot that left dozens dead. (Misael Castro / EPA / January 25, 2013)

From the Associated Press

January 25, 2013, 10:31 p.m.

CARACAS, Venezuela—

Venezuelan media reported Friday that dozens were killed in a bloody prison riot, and the government said it was investigating.

Vice President Nicolas Maduro called the violence tragic early Saturday on television and said the authorities had launched an investigation.

He and other officials did not give a death toll from the riot at Uribana prison in the central city of Barquisimeto.

The newspaper Ultimas Noticias reported on its website that 54 were killed. The television channel Globovision reported about 50 killed. Both cited Ruy Medina, the director of Central Hospital in the city, who also said that dozens were hurt.

Penitentiary Service Minister Iris Varela said earlier on television that the riot broke out when groups of inmates attacked National Guard troops who were attempting to carry out an inspection.

Varela said the violence had affected a number of prisoners and officials, but said the authorities would hold off until control had been re-established at the prison to confirm the toll. She said the government decided to send troops to search the prison after receiving reports of clashes between groups of inmates during the past two days.

The death toll provided by Medina rose late Friday after he had initially reported four killed and dozens injured.

Opposition leader Henrique Capriles condemned the government's handling of the country's overcrowded and violent prisons.

“Our country's prisons are an example of the incapacity of this government and its leaders. They never solved the problem,” Capriles said on his Twitter account. “How many more deaths do there have to be in the prisons for the government to acknowledge its failure and make changes?”

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Huawei is now the world’s third largest smartphone vendor, but still far behind Samsung and Apple

Research firm IDC released the latest numbers from its Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker this week and found that a total of 482.5 million mobile phones were shipped in the fourth quarter of 2012, an increase from 473.4 million in 2011. Smartphones accounted for nearly half, or 45.5%, of all mobile phone shipments, the highest percentage ever. Samsung (005930) and Apple (AAPL) remained the two top vendors with market shares of 29% and 21.8% respectively. The report did include some surprises, however.

[More from BGR: Sony’s PS Vita: Dead again]

“The high-growth smartphone market, though dominated by Samsung and Apple, still presents ample opportunities for challengers,” said Kevin Restivo, senior research analyst with IDC. “Vendors with unique market advantages, such as lower-cost devices, can rapidly gain market share, especially in emerging markets”

[More from BGR: Unlocking your smartphone will be illegal starting next week]

The remaining top five smartphone vendors are very different now, however — they no longer include LG (006570), HTC (2498) or Motorola, all of which have been replaced by Huawei (002502), Sony (SNE) and ZTE (0763).

Huawei, a company previously known for its telecom equipment, spying scandals and low-end smartphones, is in the midst of a major transition. Rather than focusing on cheap and carrier-branded phones, the Chinese company has begun to compete with high-end manufacturers such as Samsung and Apple with its new flagship devices.

Huawei experienced unprecedented growth in the fourth quarter of 2012 with shipments increasing 89.5% year-over-year for a 4.9% market share. Close on the company’s heels are both Sony and Chinese rival ZTE with 4.5% and 4.3% shares of the market respectively.

“The fact that Huawei and ZTE now find themselves among the Top 5 smartphone vendors marks a significant shift for the global market,” noted Ramon Llamas, research manager with IDC’s Mobile Phone team. “Both companies have grown volumes by focusing on the mass market, but in recent quarters they have turned their attention toward higher-end devices. In addition, both companies have pushed the envelope in terms of industrial design with larger displays and smaller form factors, as well as innovative applications and experiences.”

This article was originally published on BGR.com

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First Steve Jobs movie gets red carpet premiere

PARK CITY, Utah (Reuters) – The first movie about Apple‘s legendary co-founder got a warm reception at its world premiere on Friday, just 15 months after Steve Jobs‘ death.

“jOBS,” starring “Two and a Half Men” actor Ashton Kutcher as the tech and computer entrepreneur who revolutionized the way people listen to music and built Apple Inc into an international powerhouse, got a red carpet roll-out at the Sundance Film Festival ahead of hitting U.S. theaters on April 19.

“jOBS” chronicles 30 defining years of the late Apple chairman, from an experimental youth to the man in charge of one of the world’s most recognized brands. It is the first of two U.S. feature films about Jobs, who died in 2011 at age 56.

“Everybody has their own opinion about Steve Jobs, and they have something invested in a different part of his story. So the challenge is to decide what part of his story to tell, and not disenfranchise anybody,” director Josh Stern told Reuters ahead of the screening.

“Hazarding a guess and venturing into too much speculation is always dangerous, especially with a character who is so well-known,” Stern added.

The film, co-starring Josh Gad and Dermot Mulroney, begins with Jobs the dreamer, the poet and the occasional drug user in college, and his initial ideas for Apple Computers, before his vision took on a life of its own.

Much of the drama is based around the early 1980s, and Jobs‘ ideologies for the Apple Lisa and Macintosh computers, which ended up performing poorly for the company and led to Jobs being fired.

Kutcher’s Jobs is seen as the rock star of the tech world, admired but misunderstood in his early days as he constantly tried to think outside of the box and bring a notion of “cool” to his brand.

The audience on Friday warmly applauded the film following the screening.

In a question-and-answer session after the screening, Kutcher took to the stage to talk about his preparations of mastering Jobs‘ posture, hand gestures and eccentricities, saying his “painstaking research” included watching more than 100 hours of footage of the Apple innovator.

Notably missing from the film are details about Jobs’ personal life – his court settlement with the mother of his first child features only in the backdrop of the 1980s, a time when he struggled to gain support from the Apple board for his visions.

Stern told the audience that he deliberately stayed away from the CEO’s personal life, saying the film was “not about getting mired in some of the soap opera” of Jobs’ life.

Kutcher, 34, told Reuters on the red carpet before the screening that he was honored to play Jobs but also terrified because of the former Apple chairman’s iconic status.

“To be playing a guy who so freshly is in people’s minds, where everywhere you go you can run into people who met him or knew him or had seen a video of him … that’s terrifying because everyone is an appropriate critic,” Kutcher told Reuters.

WRONG PERSONALITIES

Hours before the screening, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak said the movie appeared to misrepresent aspects of both his own and Jobs’ personalities and their early vision for the company.

Wozniak was commenting after seeing a brief clip of an early scene that was released online on Thursday.

“Totally wrong. … The ideas of computers affecting society did not come from Jobs,” Wozniak, who co-founded Apple with Jobs and Ronald Wayne in a California garage in 1976, told technology blog Gizmodo.com.

“The lofty talk came much further down the line,” Wozniak said in a series of emails.

“Book of Mormon” star Gad, who plays Wozniak, told Reuters on Friday’s red carpet that the filmmakers had tried to reach out to him to get his input on “jOBS,” but that Wozniak was “participating in another project about Steve Jobs.”

Wozniak is tied to a movie based on Walter Isaacson’s official biography “Steve Jobs,” being developed by screen writer Aaron Sorkin of “The West Wing” and “The Social Network” fame. No release date or casting has been announced.

Kutcher said he hoped Wozniak would look more kindly on the movie when he had seen the whole two hours.

“I hope that when he sees the film, he feels that he was portrayed accurately, that the film accurately represents who he was and how he was, and more importantly, inspires people to go and build things,” he said.

(Additional reporting By Jill Serjeant in Los Angeles; editing by Philip Barbara)

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40 Years After Roe v. Wade, Thousands March to Oppose Abortion

Drew Angerer/The New York Times

Pro-life activists made their way down Constitution Avenue toward the Supreme Court during the March for Life in Washington on Friday.

WASHINGTON — Three days after the 40th anniversary of the decision in Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court case that legalized abortion, tens of thousands of abortion opponents from around the country came to the National Mall on Friday for the annual March for Life rally, which culminated in a demonstration in front of the Supreme Court building.

On a gray morning when the temperature was well below freezing, the crowd pressed in close against the stage to hear more than a dozen speakers, who included Tony Perkins, the president of the Family Research Council; Representative Diane Black, Republican of Tennessee, who recently introduced legislation to withhold financing from Planned Parenthood, and Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky; Cardinal Seán Patrick O’Malley of Boston; and Rick Santorum, the former senator from Pennsylvania and Republican presidential candidate.

Mr. Santorum spoke of his wife’s decision not to have an abortion after they learned that their child — their daughter Bella, now 4 — had a rare genetic disorder called Trisomy 18.

“We all know that death is never better, never better,” Mr. Santorum said. “Bella is better for us, and we are better because of Bella.”

Jeanne Monahan, the president of the March for Life Education and Defense Fund, said that the march was both somber and hopeful.

“We’ve lost 55 million Americans to abortion,” she said. “At the same time, I think we’re starting to win. We’re winning in the court of public opinion, we’re winning in the states with legislation.”

Though the main event officially started at noon, the day began much earlier for the participants, with groups in matching scarves engaged in excited chatter on the subway and gaggles of schoolchildren wearing name tags around their necks. Arriving on the Mall, attendees were greeted with free signs (“Defund Planned Parenthood” and “Personhood for Everyone”) and a man barking into a megaphone, “Ireland is on the brink of legalizing abortion, which is not good.”

The march came two months after the 2012 campaign season, in which social issues like abortion largely took a back seat to the focus on the economy. But the issue did come up in Congressional races in which Republican candidates made controversial statements about rape or abortion. In Indiana, Richard E. Mourdock, a Republican candidate for the Senate, said in a debate that he believed that pregnancies resulting from rape were something that “God intended,” and in Illinois, Representative Joe Walsh said in a debate that abortion was never necessary to save the life of the mother because of “advances in science and technology.” Both men lost, hurt by a backlash from female voters.

Recent polls show that while a majority of Americans do not want Roe v. Wade to be overturned entirely, many favor some restrictions. In a Gallup poll released this week, 52 percent of those surveyed said that abortions should be legal only under certain circumstances, while 28 percent said they should be legal under all circumstances, and 18 percent said they should be illegal under all circumstances. In a Pew poll this month, 63 percent of respondents said they did not want Roe v. Wade to be overturned completely, and 29 percent said they did — views largely consistent with surveys taken over the past two decades.

“Most Americans want some restrictions on abortion,” Ms. Monahan said. “We see abortion as the human rights abuse of today.”

Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio, who spoke via a recorded video, called on the protest group, particularly the young people, to make abortion “a relic of the past.”

“Human life is not an economic or political commodity, and no government on earth has the right to treat it that way,” he said.

The crowd was dotted with large banners, many bearing the names of the attendees’ home states and churches and colleges. Gary Storey, 36, stood holding a handmade sign that read “I was adopted. Thanks Mom for my life.” Next to him stood his adoptive mother, Ellen Storey, 66, who held her own handmade sign with a picture of her six children and the words “To the mothers of our four adopted children, ‘Thank You’ for their lives.”

Mr. Storey said he was grateful for the decision by his biological mother to carry through with her pregnancy. “Beats the alternative,” he joked.

Last week, the Planned Parenthood Federation of America started a new Web site, and on Tuesday, its president, Cecile Richards, released a statement supporting abortion rights.

“Planned Parenthood understands that abortion is a deeply personal and often complex decision for a woman to consider, if and when she needs it,” she said. “A woman should have accurate information about all of her options around her pregnancy. To protect her health and the health of her family, a woman must have access to safe, legal abortion without interference from politicians, as protected by the Supreme Court for the last 40 years.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 25, 2013

A summary that appeared on the home page of NYTimes.com with an earlier version of this article misstated the day of the march. It took place on Friday, not Thursday.

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Labor Relations Board Rulings Could Be Undone

By ruling that Mr. Obama’s three recess appointments last January were illegal, the federal appeals court ruling, if upheld, would leave the board with just one member, short of the quorum needed to issue any rulings. The Obama administration could appeal the court ruling, but no announcement was made on Friday.

If the Supreme Court were to uphold Friday’s ruling, issued by the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, it would mean that the labor board did not have a quorum since last January and that all its rulings since then should be nullified.

Many Republicans and business groups applauded Friday’s ruling. They often assert that the appointments Mr. Obama made to the board have transformed it into a tool of organized labor. But many Democrats and labor unions say Mr. Obama’s appointments restored ideological balance to the board after it was tipped in favor of business interests under President George W. Bush

Mark G. Pearce, the board’s chairman, issued a statement saying the board disagreed with the ruling and suggested that other appeals courts hearing cases about the constitutionality of Mr. Obama’s appointments could reach a different conclusion.

“In the meantime, the board has important work to do,” said Mr. Pearce, whose agency oversees enforcement of the laws governing strikes and unionization drives. “We will continue to perform our statutory duties and issue decisions.”

Unless the Senate confirms future nominees to the board — Senate Republicans have blocked several of Mr. Obama’s board nominees — Mr. Pearce will be the only member left if Friday’s ruling is upheld. The board has five seats.

Representative Darrell Issa, a California Republican who is the chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, issued a statement that urged the recess appointees to “do the right thing and step down.” He added, “To avoid further damage to the economy, the N.L.R.B. must take the responsible course and cease issuing any further opinions until a constitutionally sound quorum can be established.”

The three disputed recess appointees included two Democrats, Sharon Block, deputy labor secretary, and Richard Griffin, general counsel to the operating engineers’ union; and one Republican, Terence Flynn, a counsel to a board member. Mr. Flynn resigned last May after being accused of leaking materials about the group’s deliberations. Another Republican member, Brian Hayes, stepped down when his term expired last month.

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Security boosted for Orange County gun show

As the nation debates the idea of new gun laws, the decades-old Crossroads of the West Gun Show at the Orange County Fairgrounds this weekend will be business as usual, organizers said — with the exception of increased security.

The fairgrounds, whose relationship with the Utah-based Crossroads company spans nearly 25 years, receives about $600,000 from parking, rent, food and beverages from the shows, which are held several times a year, said Jerome Hoban, chief executive of the O.C. Fair & Event Center.

"We're increasing the security because these gun shows are wildly popular, and we want to make sure it's a secure and safe event," he said. "With more people, it's more security, and that's with any event."

Gun shows are under scrutiny from local governments nationwide following the Newtown, Conn., elementary school shooting last month and after accidents at three recent gun shows left five people injured. The Glendale City Council this week took the first step toward banning gun shows and banning all firearm sales on city-owned land.

Also motivated are gun enthusiasts who fear new regulations; they are stocking up on ammunition and guns. The recent Ontario gun show, also sponsored by Crossroads, was packed.

The state-run fairgrounds has its own on-site security and contracts with the Orange County Sheriff's Department for supplemental help.

Four deputies are scheduled to patrol the show, in addition to the two at the fairgrounds' weekly Orange County Market Place, said sheriff's Sgt. Scott Baker.

"We're not foreseeing any problems," he said. "I know there is a heightened sense with all the stuff going on, but we haven't addressed it any further than that."

Having four deputies on patrol is more than have been on hand for past shows, Baker said.

"It's about as safe as you're going to be," he said. "We're not projecting any problems.... We're not going to a higher level because of the situation, or anything of that nature."

Hoban expressed confidence in security at the fairgrounds. "We don't take any event lightly," he said. "If we have the public on our facility, it's our responsibility to keep everything safe."

Sales of handguns and rifles at the show are subject to state and federal mandates, organizers said. "The rules aren't changing because it's a gun show, or you get an exemption. … The rules still apply there," Baker said.

State laws include a 10-day waiting period, valid identification and a registration fee.

"It's not the kind of event where everybody's walking out the door with firearms," Hoban said.

Bob Templeton, owner of Crossroads, said the Costa Mesa show typically draws 10,000 to 14,000 but that number could swell to 20,000 this weekend. "People are concerned about all the discussions at the national level about gun control and so forth," he said.

He said he expected 8,000 people at the recent Ontario gun show but 16,000 showed up — as did some protesters. The Costa Mesa show will have a "free-speech area" for people to voice their opinions, Baker said.

Templeton called the fairgrounds "a very local event." He said about 80% of those who attend the five shows a year live in Orange County.

Despite increased security, some have reservations.

Kevin Wilkes, a Costa Mesa resident and father of a 7-year-old girl, said the event is too close for his liking to Costa Mesa High School, Orange Coast College and parks. He alluded to the recent gun show shootings and the Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting.

"You have kids and sports fields and TeWinkle Park," he said. "It makes you stop and think … we're literally playing with a loaded gun here."

He said he supports the 2nd Amendment but would like to see an assault weapon ban, among other restrictions on gun ownership. He wants a safer environment for his family.

"I don't want to take anything away from people who collect.... I'm gathering most people are good, law-abiding citizens," Wilkes said. "It's just a few who mess it up for everybody else."

bradley.zint@latimes.com

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