Negotiations Break Down on Debt Agreement

Pete Souza/The White House, via NBC

President Obama spoke with David Gregory of NBC's "Meet The Press" in the Blue Room of the White House during an interview taped on Saturday.

WASHINGTON — Negotiations over a last-ditch agreement to head off large tax increases and sweeping spending cuts in the new year appeared to resume Sunday afternoon after Republican senators withdrew their demand that a deal must include a new way of calculating inflation that would lower payments to beneficiaries programs like Social Security and slow their growth.

Senate Republicans emerged from a closed-door meeting to say they agreed with Democrats that the request — which had temporarily brought talks to a standstill — was not appropriate for a quick deal to avert the tax increases and spending cuts starting Jan. 1.

To hold the line against raising taxes on high-income households while fighting for cuts to Social Security was “not a winning hand,” Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, said.

The concession could be a breakthrough, but Senate Republicans were still balking at an agreement on Sunday, adopting a new talking point that Democrats want to raise taxes just to increase spending, not to cut the deficit. That concern appears to center on a Democratic proposal to temporarily suspend across-the-board spending cuts to military and domestic programs as talks resume on a larger deficit deal.

The demand for the new way of calculating inflation, known as “chained CPI,” issued at 7:10 p.m. on Saturday, had stopped talks cold. Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, went to the Senate floor a little after 2 p.m. Sunday to say that Republicans had made their last offer and had yet to receive a reply.

“I’m concerned about the lack of urgency. I think we all know we’re running out of time,” Mr. McConnell said.

Senator Harry Reid, the majority leader, responded that “at this stage, we’re not able to make a counter offer.” He said that Mr. McConnell had negotiated in good faith but that “we’re apart on some pretty big issues.”

Mr. McConnell said he had made an emergency call to Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. to get the talks started again. The two spoke twice, and the White House dispatched the president’s chief legislative negotiator, Rob Nabors, to the Capitol to meet with Senate Democrats.

Talks foundered after Republicans dug in in an effort to get the largest deficit reduction deal in the time remaining, according to numerous Republican and Democratic officials familiar with the negotiations. Republicans told Democrats that they were willing to put off scheduled cuts in payments to health care providers who treat Medicare patients but that they wanted spending cuts elsewhere.

But it was the inflation calculation that forced Democrats from the negotiating table. President Obama has said that in a “grand bargain” on deficit reduction, he would go along with the change, which would slow the growth of programs whose outlays rise with consumer prices, and would raise more revenue by pushing people into higher tax brackets.

Democrats said that Mr. Obama and Congressional Democrats would accept that change, called “chained C.P.I.,” only as part of a larger deal that included locking in well more than $1 trillion in revenue over 10 years, along with other Republican concessions. Democrats fear that any such concessions now would only increase demands for addition concessions in the coming weeks, when talks resume on a “grand bargain” to reduce the deficit.

They point to the $1 trillion in spending cuts agreed to last year in the Budget Control Act. Democrats say those should be included in a $4 trillion “grand bargain” package, but Republicans say those cuts should not be part of future negotiations. Republicans would likely do the same if Democrats agree now to concessions on the inflation calculation, Democratic aides said Sunday.

Mr. Reid made clear that Democrats did not intend to include Social Security in any stopgap package. Doing so would make it hard for him to round up votes from his own party, and he has resisted touching Social Security.

“We’re not going to have any Social Security cuts,” Mr. Reid said on the floor.

The breakdown came after Mr. Obama appeared on the NBC program “Meet the Press” on Sunday and implored Congress to act.

“We have been talking to the Republicans ever since the election was over,” Mr. Obama said in the interview, which was taped on Saturday. “They have had trouble saying yes to a number of repeated offers. Yesterday I had another meeting with the leadership, and I suggested to them if they can’t do a comprehensive package of smart deficit reductions, let’s at minimum make sure that people’s taxes don’t go up and that two million people don’t lose their unemployment insurance.”

“And I was modestly optimistic yesterday, but we don’t yet see an agreement,” Mr. Obama said. “And now the pressure’s on Congress to produce.”

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Some Arctic seals now officially listed as threatened with extinction

First came the polar bear. Now, the federal government has added two other marine mammals to the list of creatures threatened with extinction because of vanishing sea ice in a warming Arctic.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has officially listed bearded seal and the ringed seal as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.

The reason is not inadequate supplies of fish and other food for these seals, or excessive hunting by humans. It's the loss of their sea ice habitat.

Ringed seals give birth and nurse their pups in snow caves built on ice floes. Warming temperatures bring less snow and more rain, causing these snow caves to collapse and leaving pups vulnerable to freezing to death.

Bearded seals, with thick whiskers that help them find crabs, clams, cod and other bottom-dwelling prey, also give birth and nurse their pups on pack ice over shallow waters near food sources.

This September, the Arctic sea ice receded to record low levels, a troubling trend for sea ice-dependent animals.

"Sea ice is projected to shrink both in extent and duration, with bearded seals finding inadequate ice even if they move North," NOAA Fisheries said in announcing that two distinct populations of bearded seals and four subspecies of ringed seals qualified as threatened with extinction.

A team of federal scientists, said Jon Kurland, protected resources director for NOAA Fisheries’ Alaska region, "concluded that a significant decrease in sea ice is probable later this century and that these changes will likely cause these seal populations to decline.”

Unlike the fight over the polar bear listing, the fate of the seals garnered little attention. NOAA's Fisheries, the agency in charge of protecting most marine mammals, finalized the listing just before Christmas. It was timed to meet a court-ordered deadline that stemmed from a petition by the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity.

It's part of the center's broader campaign to push the federal government to designate Arctic sea ice as critical habitat and then take steps to protect it. The only known way to do that is to reduce emissions of planet-warming carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses.

ken.weiss@latimes.com

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Facebook Shares Fall Briefly Amid Report of Instagram Quitters

The fallout from Instagram’s terms of service change that wasn’t actually changed continued Friday. Facebook, which owns the popular social media app, saw its stock price fall 3 percent amid a report that the TOS flap cost Instagram 25 percent of its users.

Whether that number is accurate — Instagram insists it isn’t — was almost beside the point as Facebook saw shares fall to $25.22 before gaining almost all of it back a few hours later. It is further evidence that Instagram completely blew it by ticking everybody off with the idea that it would license user photos to advertisers without telling, or paying, users. Instagram insists the whole thing was due to confusion over the rewritten terms, then made the point moot by reverting to advertising rules set out in the TOS published in April, 2010.

Friday’s dust-up started when AppData — a research firm that tracks user numbers for iOS, Android and Facebook apps — said Instagram had lost 25 percent of its users since attempting to change its terms of service. According to AppData’s numbers, Instragram has about 16.4 million active daily users last week, but only 12.4 million as of Thursday. It appears that the New York Post broke the story; it was followed by a dozen or so tech blogs. Wall Street got wind of it, and Facebook’s stock price started falling even as Instagram insisted the report was bogus.

“This data is inaccurate,” an Instagram spokeswoman told Wired by email. “We continue to see strong and steady growth in both registered and active users of Instagram.” She declined, however, to quantify “strong and steady growth” and would not provide actual user numbers.

Investors appear to have gotten the message, because Facebook shares had rebounded to $26.03, just three cents less than Thursday’s closing price, by mid-afternoon Friday.

AppData, widely cited my major tech publications (and many mainstream news outlets too) as an authority on such matters, also reported user drops for Pinterest, FarmVille, and a number of other popular apps. But while AppData’s findings are generally considered accurate, they don’t appear to paint a full picture in this case. AppData’s metrics come from Instagram users who have linked the app to their Facebook accounts. According to a report from Marketing Land, only about 20 to 30 percent Instagram users have done this. While AppData indeed did record a drop in Instagram’s active users over the last week, it did so by measuring a slice of Instagram users, not the entire pie.

Although Instagram denies there’s been a decline in users, its refusal to offer specifics makes you wonder just what’s happened during the past week since we already know some users jumped ship.

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Matt Damon tackles “fracking” issue in the “Promised Land”

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The hot-button topic of “fracking” has finally made its way to Hollywood in the new movie “Promised Land,” out in U.S. theaters on Friday, with actors Matt Damon and John Krasinski teaming up to further the debate on the energy drilling technique.

The film explores the social impact of hydraulic fracturing drilling technique, or “fracking,” which has sparked nation-wide environmental and political battles over its impact on drinking water, U.S. energy use, seismic activity and other areas.

“Promised Land” will see Damon, 42, reunite with director Gus Van Sant for the third time, following their success with 1997 film “Good Will Hunting and 2002′s “Gerry.”

In their latest film, Damon plays a corporate salesman who goes to a rural U.S. town to buy or lease land on behalf of a gas company looking to drill for oil. He soon faces opposition from a slick environmentalist, played by Krasinski.

In real life, Damon hasn’t shied away from getting involved in political and social issues, working with charities and organizations to eradicate AIDS in developing countries, bringing attention to atrocities in Sudan’s Darfur region, providing safe drinking water and stopping trees from being chopped and used for junk mail.

Yet “Promised Land,” which Damon also co-wrote and produced, doesn’t take a noticeable stance on “fracking.” The actor would not publicly state his own views, telling Reuters that he didn’t think his opinion had “any bearing” on the film.

“The point is that the movie should start a conversation. It’s certainly not a pro-fracking movie, but we didn’t want to tell people what to think,” Damon said.

The actor said he and Krasinski never set out to make a socially conscious film, and “fracking” was added in later, as a backdrop to the story.

“It wasn’t that we said we wanted to make a movie about ‘fracking’ as much as we wanted to make a movie about American identity, about real people. We wanted to make a movie about the country today, where we came from, where we are and where we are headed,” Damon said.

“‘Fracking’ was perfect because the stakes are so incredibly high and people are so divided. It asks all the questions about short-term thinking versus long-term thinking.”

Hydraulic fracturing entails pumping water laced with chemicals and sand at high pressure into shale rock formations to break them up and unleash hydrocarbons. Critics worry that “fracking” fluids or hydrocarbons can still leak into water tables from wells, or above ground.

FROM ‘ADJUSTMENT BUREAU’ TO ‘PROMISED LAND’

At first glance, the pairing of Damon with Krasinski may not come across as the perfect fit, as Damon has primarily been associated with longtime friend and collaborator Ben Affleck, both of whom won Oscars for writing “Good Will Hunting.”

Damon later become a colleague and friend to a number of key Hollywood players, including George Clooney and Brad Pitt, with whom he co-starred in the “Ocean’s Eleven” franchise.

Krasinski, 33, is best known for playing sardonic Jim Halpert on NBC’s long-running television series, “The Office,” and has had occasional supporting roles in films such as 2008′s “Leatherheads.”

Damon and Krasinski came together after meeting through Krasinski’s wife, Emily Blunt, who co-starred with Damon in the 2011 film “The Adjustment Bureau.” Damon said he and his wife started double-dating with Krasinski and Blunt, through which their collaboration on “Promised Land” came about.

The duo’s busy work schedules forced them to moonlight on weekends to make “Promised Land.”

“John showed up at my house every Saturday at breakfast and we would write all day until dinner,” Damon said. “Then we’d do it again on Sunday. I have four kids so he would come to me.”

But Damon’s determination to make the film his feature directorial debut fell through when his acting schedule changed, making it impossible to direct “Promised Land,” so he turned to Van Sant.

“My first inclination was to send the script to somebody I’d worked with before,” he said. “Gus seemed like the most obvious choice and I realized later that I’d never written anything that anyone else had directed, except Gus. I have a real comfort level with him.”

Damon said he has not given up on his dream of directing movies and has his eye on a project at movie studio Warner Bros., which has a deal with Damon and Affleck’s joint production company, Pearl Street Films.

With Affleck’s third directorial effort “Argo” becoming an awards contender, Damon joked that the film’s success can only be a good thing for his own budding directing career.

“I now happen to be partnered with the hottest director in Hollywood!” he said, laughing.

(Reporting By Zorianna Kit, Editing by Piya Sinha-Roy and Paul Simao)

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Surgery Returns to NYU Langone Medical Center

Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

Senator Charles E. Schumer spoke at a news conference Thursday about the reopening of NYU Langone Medical Center.

NYU Langone Medical Center opened its doors to surgical patients on Thursday, almost two months after Hurricane Sandy overflowed the banks of the East River and forced the evacuation of hundreds of patients.

While the medical center had been treating many outpatients, it had farmed out surgery to other hospitals, which created scheduling problems that forced many patients to have their operations on nights and weekends, when staffing is traditionally low. Some patients and doctors had to postpone not just elective but also necessary operations for lack of space at other hospitals.

The medical center’s Tisch Hospital, its major hospital for inpatient services, between 30th and 34th Streets on First Avenue, had been closed since the hurricane knocked out power and forced the evacuation of more than 300 patients, some on sleds brought down darkened flights of stairs.

“I think it’s a little bit of a miracle on 34th Street that this happened so quickly,” Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York said Thursday.

Mr. Schumer credited the medical center’s leadership and esprit de corps, and also a tour of the damaged hospital on Nov. 9 by the administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, W. Craig Fugate, whom he and others escorted through watery basement hallways.

“Every time I talk to Fugate there are a lot of questions, but one is, ‘How are you doing at NYU?’ ” the senator said.

The reopening of Tisch to surgery patients and associated services, like intensive care, some types of radiology and recovery room anesthesia, was part of a phased restoration that will continue. Besides providing an essential service, surgery is among the more lucrative of hospital services.

The hospital’s emergency department is expected to delay its reopening for about 11 months, in part to accommodate an expansion in capacity to 65,000 patient visits a year, from 43,000, said Dr. Andrew W. Brotman, its senior vice president and vice dean for clinical affairs and strategy.

In the meantime, NYU Langone is setting up an urgent care center with 31 bays and an observation unit, which will be able to treat some emergency patients. It will initially not accept ambulances, but might be able to later, Dr. Brotman said. Nearby Bellevue Hospital Center, which was also evacuated, opened its emergency department to noncritical injuries on Monday.

Labor and delivery, the cancer floor, epilepsy treatment and pediatrics and neurology beyond surgery are expected to open in mid-January, Langone officials said. While some radiology equipment, which was in the basement, has been restored, other equipment — including a Gamma Knife, a device using radiation to treat brain tumors — is not back.

The flooded basement is still being worked on, and electrical gear has temporarily been moved upstairs. Mr. Schumer, a Democrat, said that a $60 billion bill to pay for hurricane losses and recovery in New York and New Jersey was nearing a vote, and that he was optimistic it would pass in the Senate with bipartisan support. But the measure’s fate in the Republican-controlled House is far less certain.

The bill includes $1.2 billion for damage and lost revenue at NYU Langone, including some money from the National Institutes of Health to restore research projects. It would also cover Long Beach Medical Center in Nassau County, Bellevue, Coney Island Hospital and the Veterans Affairs hospital in Manhattan.

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USC football: Matt Barkley will not play in Sun Bowl

Matt Barkley winces in pain after being sacked during USC's loss to UCLA. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times / December 27, 2012)

By Gary Klein

December 27, 2012, 11:25 a.m.

Lane Kiffin finally made it official Thursday, announcing USC quarterback Matt Barkley will not play in the Sun Bowl.

Redshirt freshman Max Wittek will start for the Trojans on Monday against Georgia Tech.

Barkley suffered a shoulder sprain on Nov. 17 against UCLA and has not practiced since, but Kiffin had said the senior would be evaluated once the Trojans arrived in El Paso, Texas. Barkley did not practice Wednesday or Thursday, except to perform some conditioning drills.

“Matt really wanted to play in the game and he was very close to being able to play and unfortunately for him our doctors have decided against it,” Kiffin said. “It’s nothing long term....  We ran out of time.”

 TIMELINE: College football 2012-13 bowl schedule

Barkley passed for 36 touchdowns, with 15 interceptions, in 11 games this season.

"I've worked as hard as I could to get back for this game and nature's not allowing it and doctor's aren't allowing it, which is the most important thing--they're looking out for my best interest," Barkley said. "I trust their judgment."

Barkley finishes his career with 64.1% completion percentage and 12,327 passing yards. Barkley passed for a Pac-12 Conference record 116 touchdowns, with 48  interceptions.

This will be the second start for Wittek, who played in the Trojans’ loss to Notre Dame in the regular-season finale.

ALSO:

David Beckham has plenty of options next year

Tim Tebow snubbed again; Mark Sanchez to start Sunday for Jets

Mayors of Stanford, Wisconsin hometowns announce Rose Bowl wager

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No One Uses Smart TV Internet Because It Sucks

People aren’t using their internet-connected smart TVs for anything beyond, well, watching TV. It turns out, nobody wants to tweet from their TV. Or read books. Or do whatever it is people do on LinkedIn. Worse, more than 40 percent of the people who buy a connected TV aren’t even using it for its ostensible primary purpose: getting online video onto the biggest screen in your home. What gives?

We didn’t need a report to tell us this, but NPD provided one just the same. The report finds fewer than 15 percent of smart-TV owners are listening to music, surfing the internet or shopping on their TVs.

I think I can explain all of this with a single thesis: Smart TVs are the literal, biblical devil. (That may be overly broad. Perhaps they are merely demonic.) But the bottom line is that smart TVs typically have baffling interfaces that make the act of simply finding and watching your favorite stuff more difficult, not less.

There are two things to mull over here. The first is why apps haven’t taken off. The other is why more people who buy a TV capable of showing online video aren’t watching online video. Although related, they have different explanations.

If you’ve ever used an Internet-connected TV, it’s pretty obvious why apps for Twitter and Facebook and reading books or shopping haven’t taken off: It’s a lousy user experience. Sitting 10 or 15 feet from your screen and trying to interact with it is a tricky thing to do. Even if your TV has a keyboard (doubtful) and you’ve got perfect vision (most people do not) and you’re a great typist (ha!) working with text from that distance isn’t easy. The mere act of firing up those apps can be a chore compared to the ease of doing so on a mobile device. It’s a far better, more intuitive experience to use the second screen — like your tablet or phone — while you’re in front of the TV. Which is exactly what people are doing.

But why aren’t more people using their smart TVs to watch online video? NPD attributes this in part to all the other connected devices we have — Rokus and Apple TVs and Xboxes and TiVos — that offer the same services. That’s certainly part of it. But the real answer lies in its conclusion: Smart TVs are just too complicated. They have terrible user interfaces that differ wildly from device to device. It’s not always clear what content is even available — for example, after more than two years on the market, you still can’t watch Hulu Plus on your Google TV. At least, not without resorting to trickery.

The bottom line is smart TVs are dumb. They give us too many options for apps most people will never use, and they do so at the expense of making it simple to find the shows and movies we want to watch, no matter where they are, be it online or on the air. As NPD puts it in the conclusion to its report, “OEMs and retailers need to focus less on new innovation in this space and more on simplification of the user experience and messaging if they want to drive additional, and new, behaviors on the TV.” Which is a more polite way of saying, clean up your horrible interface, Samsung. (And Sony and LG and, well, everyone.)

We turn to TV to relax and unwind and enjoy ourselves at the end of the day. Our TVs should be easy and pleasant to use. But instead, all too often, it’s the most complicated device in the home.

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“Rescue Me” singer Fontella Bass dies aged 72

(Reuters) – American soul singer Fontella Bass, who topped the R&B chart in 1965 with the song “Rescue Me,” died in St. Louis. She was 72.

Bass died in hospice care on Wednesday night from complications of a heart attack she suffered three weeks ago, her daughter, Neuka Mitchell, told Reuters. Bass had also suffered from strokes in recent years.

“She’s going to be missed,” Mitchell said. “Her big personality. Her love for family. Her big, giving heart and her cooking.”

She was known as the “queen of soul food” to her family, Mitchell said.

Bass was born into a singing family in St. Louis. Her mother, Martha Bass, was a singer in the Clara Ward Singers gospel group. Her brother, the late R&B singer David Peaston, scored a handful of hits in the 1980s and 1990s.

Bass first achieved success dueting with Bobby McClure in 1965 on songs such as “Don’t Mess Up A Good Thing” and “You’ll Miss Me (When I’m Gone),” both of which were hits on the pop and R&B charts.

Bass’ biggest hit came with “Rescue Me,” which shot up the Billboard pop charts in the fall of 1965, becoming one of the most popular soul hits of all time.

“It held a special place in her heart,” Mitchell said of the song. “She sang it every time she performed.”

The song has been covered and sampled numerous times over the years, including by pop stars Linda Ronstadt and Cher, and more recently in 2000 by UK group Nu Generation, who remixed the song into a dance track.

Nu Generation’s remix, “In Your Arms (Rescue Me)” hit the top 10 of the UK singles chart.

Bass had moderate success in later years with a gospel album in the 1990s, but was unable to emulate the popularity set by “Rescue Me.”

She was married to jazz trumpeter and composer Lester Bowie. The two spent time living in Europe in the late 1960s and early 1970s before moving back to the United States.

Funeral arrangements for Bass have not been finalized. The singer is survived by her four children.

(Reporting by Eric Kelsey and Piya Sinha-Roy; Editing by Doina Chiacu)

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New York’s Mental Health System Thrashed by Services Lost to Storm

Marcus Yam for The New York Times

Dr. Richard Rosenthal, physician in chief of behavioral services for Continuum hospitals, at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital Center.

When a young woman in the grip of paranoid delusions threatened a neighbor with a meat cleaver one Saturday last month, the police took her by ambulance to the nearest psychiatric emergency room. Or rather, they took her to Beth Israel Medical Center, the only comprehensive psychiatric E.R. functioning in Lower Manhattan since Hurricane Sandy shrank and strained New York’s mental health resources.

The case was one of 9,548 “emotionally disturbed person” calls that the Police Department answered in November, and one of the 2,848 that resulted in transportation to a hospital, a small increase over a year earlier.

But the woman was discharged within hours, to the shock of the mental health professionals who had called the police. It took four more days, and strong protests from her psychiatrist and caseworkers, to get her admitted for two weeks of inpatient treatment, said Tony Lee, who works for Community Access, a nonprofit agency that provides supportive housing to people with mental illness, managing the Lower East Side apartment building where she lives.

Psychiatric hospital admission is always a judgment call. But in the city, according to hospital records and interviews with psychiatrists and veteran advocates of community care, the odds of securing mental health treatment in a crisis have worsened significantly since the hurricane. The storm’s surge knocked out several of the city’s largest psychiatric hospitals, disrupted outpatient services and flooded scores of coastal nursing homes and “adult homes” where many mentally ill people had found housing of last resort.

One of the most affected hospitals, Beth Israel, recorded a 69 percent spike in psychiatric emergency room cases last month, with its inpatient slots overflowing. Instead of admitting more than one out of three such cases, as it did in November 2011, it admitted only one out of four of the 691 emergency arrivals this November, records show. Capacity was so overtaxed that ambulances had to be diverted to other hospitals 15 times in the month, almost double the rate last year, in periods typically lasting for eight hours, officials said.

Dr. Richard Rosenthal, physician in chief of behavioral services for Continuum Health Partners, Beth Israel’s parent organization, said he was proud of how much Continuum’s hospitals had done to handle psychiatric overflow since storm damage shuttered Bellevue Hospital Center, the city’s flagship public hospital; NYU Langone Medical Center; and the Veterans Affairs Hospital. But these days, he said, as he walks on Amsterdam Avenue between Continuum’s Roosevelt hospital on West 59th Street and its St. Luke’s hospital on West 114th Street, he notices more mentally ill people in the streets than he has seen in years.

“When you have the most vulnerable folks, all you need is one chink in the system and you lose them,” Dr. Rosenthal said. “Whether they lost their housing, or the outpatient services they usually go to were closed and they were lost to follow-up, they have become disconnected, with predictable results.”

Similar patterns are playing out in Brooklyn, where Maimonides Medical Center has been overwhelmed with mental health emergencies from the Coney Island vicinity since Coney Island Hospital, one of the city’s largest acute care psychiatric hospitals, suspended operations, hospital officials said.

“Triage has reached a different level: You have to get sicker to get in,” said Dr. Andrew Kolodny, the chairman of psychiatry at Maimonides, citing a 56 percent increase in psychiatric emergency room visits there from Oct. 26 to Dec. 7, compared with the same period last year, and a 24 percent rise in admissions. The increase in admissions was possible only with emergency permission from the state to exceed licensed limits.

“Not only is there decreased capacity, because Bellevue and Coney Island are off line,” Dr. Kolodny added, “but there’s increased demand because the storm or the loss of their residence has been a stressor for mental illness.”

The storm battered a mental health system that still relies heavily on private nursing homes and substandard adult homes to house people with mental illness. Such institutions have a sordid history of neglect and exploitation, and the courts have repeatedly found that their overuse by the state isolated thousands of people in violation of the Americans With Disabilities Act.

Plans are under way to increase supportive housing — dwellings where mentally ill people can live relatively independently, with support services. But even before Hurricane Sandy, the expansion fell far short of demand.

The storm underscored the fragility of the system. Many disabled evacuees who were sent first to makeshift school shelters lost access to the psychiatric medications that kept their symptoms at bay, Dr. Kolodny said. Even those lucky enough to have the drugs they need are at greater risk of relapse as they experience crowded living conditions. “If they’re now sleeping in a gym with 100 people, that can tip them over the edge and start making them really paranoid,” he said.

On Staten Island, where the chief of psychiatry at Richmond University Medical Center says psychiatric resources have been stretched to the limit, clergy members report that mentally ill people transferred to a large adult home in New Brighton from one that was washed away in Far Rockaway, Queens, are now showing up at church rectories, begging for socks and underwear.

“It’s heartbreaking, because they just found us by chance,” said Margaret Moschetto, a missionary at the Church of Assumption-St. Paul in New Brighton. “They were just walking around the neighborhood. They really didn’t know where they were.”

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Toyota to pay at least $1.2 billion to settle sudden-acceleration lawsuit

By Times staff

December 26, 2012, 2:06 p.m.

Toyota Motor Corp. has agreed to pay between $1.2 billion and $1.4 billion to settle a class-action lawsuit filed in 2010 over allegations of unintended acceleration in some of its vehicles.

The settlement would require Toyota to install a brake-override system in an estimated 3.25 million vehicles and pay car owners compensation for the alleged reduced value of the vehicles.

According to plaintiff attorneys, the estimated value of the settlement makes it the largest of its kind.

Comments are filtered for language and registration is required. The Times makes no guarantee of comments' factual accuracy. Readers may report inappropriate comments by clicking the Report Abuse link next to a comment. Here are the full legal terms you agree to by using this comment form.

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var eso = $(this),
message,
/* Store the width and height of the shareTip and the offset of the element for our calculations */
height = eso.height(),
width = eso.width(),
offset = eso.offset(),
link;


link = eso.children('a').attr('href');
message = escape( eso.find('img').attr('alt') ) || eso.attr(settings.message_attr);

if (link.search('http://') === -1){
link = 'http://www.latimes.com' + link;
}
link = encodeURIComponent(link);

/* If it's at the top of the page, the shareTip will pop under the element */
if (offset.top

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