Actress Jenna Fischer buys former Casey Stengel estate

























































































Hot Property


The Glendale estate built for baseball legend Casey Stengel was completed in 1925.
(Chris Cragnotti)































































The former Casey Stengel estate, built for the baseball legend in 1925, is a hit with actress Jenna Fischer. The "Office" star recently bought the Glendale property for $1.9 million.

The Mediterranean-style house of about 4,600 square feet sits on close to an acre with a pool house, a swimming pool, a tennis court and an orchard. The main house features a formal foyer, a living room with a barrel ceiling, two sitting rooms, five bedrooms and five bathrooms. There is a separate maid's quarters off the garage.

Fischer, 38, has played receptionist Pam Beesley on the sitcom since 2005. She will star in the film "Kiss Me," due out next year.





Stengel was a Major League Baseball outfielder who went on to manage the Brooklyn Dodgers, the Boston Braves, the New York Yankees and the New York Mets before retiring in 1965. The Baseball Hall of Famer lived at the Glendale house until his death in 1975 at 85.

The property came on the market in June at $2.41 million.

Gerri Cragnotti of G&C Properties was the listing agent. Lou Woolf of Rodeo Realty represented the buyer.

lauren.beale@latimes.com

On Twitter @LATHotProperty



































































































































































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3 killed, 4 wounded in Tulare County shooting









Three people were fatally shot and four others wounded, including two young children, Saturday night on the Tule River Reservation in Tulare County, authorities said.

The suspect, who fled with his two young daughters, was later shot by sheriff’s deputies and taken into custody, according to the Tulare County Sheriff’s Department. The two girls, who were among those shot, were rescued.

The incident began about 7:45 p.m. when the Sheriff’s Department received a 911 call about shots fired in the 100 block of Chimney Road of the Tule River Indian Reservation about 60 miles northeast of Bakersfield, according to a Sheriff’s Department statement.

In a trailer on the property, deputies discovered an adult male and an adult female who had been fatally shot, authorities said. A male juvenile who suffered a gunshot wound was transported to a hospital. 

At a shed on the property, deputies found another male victim who had been fatally shot, authorities said.

The suspect, identified as Hector Celaya, 31, of the Tule River Indian Reservation, fled the scene in a Jeep Cherokee with his two daughters, Alyssa, 8, and Linea, 5, authorities said. An Amber Alert was issued around 11 p.m.

Detectives used Celaya’s cellphone to locate him.

A deputy spotted the vehicle and after failing to make a traffic stop, a slow-speed pursuit began, authorities said.

The suspect eventually stopped and fired his weapon at deputies, who returned fire and struck the suspect twice, seriously wounding him, authorities said.

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Amazon’s Android Appstore explodes, downloads increase 500% over last year






Amazon’s (AMZN) Appstore is on fire. While the marketplace may not boost as many apps as Google’s (GOOG) Play Store, it has seen substantial growth in the past year. In fact, the company announced on Thursday that its Appstore has seen downloads increase more than 500% since last year. Amazon also revealed that the number of developers utilizing in-app purchasing doubled in the third quarter and that 23 of the top 25 grossing apps now incorporate the technology.


“Amazon offers the best end-to-end solution for app and game developers,” said Aaron Rubenson, Director of Amazon Appstore for Android. “Developers can use Amazon Web Services’ building blocks as the infrastructure for their games. To enhance customer engagement, they can add features like GameCircle’s Leaderboards, Achievements, Friends, and Whispersync. Amazon’s In-App Purchasing allows developers to generate additional income. Finally, since discovery can be a major challenge for app developers, we’re providing more and more ways to help developers reach customers on Amazon, Kindle Fire devices, and in our Appstore. We’re working hard to make lives easier for developers, and to give them more ways to grow their business.”






The success of Amazon’s Appstore is directly related to the success of its Kindle Fire line of tablets. Unlike most Android devices, the Kindle Fire does not include access to Google Play and instead must rely solely on Amazon’s offering for content and applications.


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Plane believed to carry singer found in Mexico


MONTERREY, Mexico (AP) — Authorities in Mexico say the wreckage of a small plane believed to be carrying singing superstar Jenni Rivera has been found and there are no apparent survivors.


Transportation and communication minister Gerardo Ruiz Esparza tells Mexican television that the plane was found in Nuevo Leon state without survivors.


The minister said that "everything points toward it being the plane" that carried the Mexican-American singer and six others.


The U.S.-registered Learjet 25 went missing early Sunday after taking off from the city of Monterrey.


Jorge Domene, spokesman for Nuevo Leon's government, said the plane left Monterrey about 3:30 a.m. after a concert there and aviation authorities lost contact with the craft about 10 minutes later. It had been scheduled to arrive in Toluca, outside Mexico City, about an hour later.


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A Breakthrough Against Leukemia Using Altered T-Cells





PHILIPSBURG, Pa. — Emma Whitehead has been bounding around the house lately, practicing somersaults and rugby-style tumbles that make her parents wince.




It is hard to believe, but last spring Emma, then 6, was near death from leukemia. She had relapsed twice after chemotherapy, and doctors had run out of options.


Desperate to save her, her parents sought an experimental treatment at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, one that had never before been tried in a child, or in anyone with the type of leukemia Emma had. The experiment, in April, used a disabled form of the AIDS virus to reprogram Emma’s immune system genetically to kill cancer cells.


The treatment very nearly killed her. But she emerged from it cancer-free, and seven months later is still in complete remission. She is the first child and one of the first humans ever in whom new techniques have achieved a long-sought goal — giving a patient’s own immune system the lasting ability to fight cancer.


Emma had been ill with acute lymphoblastic leukemia since 2010, when she was 5, her parents, Kari and Tom, said. She is their only child.


She is among just a dozen patients with advanced leukemia to have received the experimental treatment, which was developed at the University of Pennsylvania. Similar approaches are also being tried at other centers, including the National Cancer Institute and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York.


“Our goal is to have a cure, but we can’t say that word,” said Dr. Carl June, who leads the research team at the University of Pennsylvania. He hopes the new treatment will eventually replace bone-marrow transplantation, an even more arduous, risky and expensive procedure that is now the last hope when other treatments fail in leukemia and related diseases.


Three adults with chronic leukemia treated at the University of Pennsylvania have also had complete remissions, with no signs of disease; two of them have been well for more than two years, said Dr. David Porter. Four adults improved but did not have full remissions, and one was treated too recently to evaluate. A child improved and then relapsed. In two adults, the treatment did not work at all. The Pennsylvania researchers are presenting their results on Sunday and Monday in Atlanta at a meeting of the American Society of Hematology.


Despite the mixed results, cancer experts not involved with the research say it has tremendous promise, because even in this early phase of testing it has worked in seemingly hopeless cases.


“I think this is a major breakthrough,” said Dr. Ivan Borrello, a cancer expert and associate professor of medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.


Dr. John Wagner, director of pediatric blood and marrow transplantation at the University of Minnesota, called the Pennsylvania results “phenomenal,” and said they were “what we’ve all been working and hoping for but not seeing to this extent.”


A major drug company, Novartis, is betting on the Penn team, and has committed $20 million to building a research center on the Penn campus to bring the treatment to market.


HervĂ© Hoppenot, president of Novartis Oncology, called the research “fantastic” and said it had the potential — if the early results hold up — to revolutionize the treatment of leukemia and related blood cancers. Researchers say the same approach, reprogramming the patient’s immune system, may also be used eventually against tumors like breast and prostate cancer.


To perform the treatment, doctors remove millions of the patient’s T-cells — a type of white blood cell — and insert new genes that enable the T-cells to kill cancer cells. The new genes program the T-cells to attack B-cells, a normal part of the immune system that turns malignant in leukemia.


The altered T-cells — called chimeric antigen receptor cells — are then dripped back into the patient’s veins, and if all goes well they multiply like crazy and start destroying the cancer.


The T-cells home in on a protein called CD-19 that is found on the surface of most B-cells, whether they are healthy or malignant.


A sign that the treatment is working is that the patient becomes terribly ill, with raging fevers and chills — a reaction that oncologists call “shake and bake,” Dr. June said. Its medical name is cytokine-release syndrome, or cytokine storm, referring to the natural chemicals that pour out of cells in the immune system as they are being activated, causing fevers and other symptoms. The storm can also flood the lungs and cause perilous drops in blood pressure — effects that nearly killed Emma.


Steroids sometimes ease the reaction, but did not help Emma. Her temperature hit 105. She wound up on a ventilator, unconscious and swollen almost beyond recognition, surrounded by friends and family who had come to say goodbye.


But at the eleventh hour, a battery of blood tests gave the researchers a clue as to what might help save Emma: Her level of one of the cytokines, interleukin-6 or IL-6, had shot up a thousandfold. Doctors had never seen such a spike before and thought it might be what was making her so sick. Dr. June knew that a drug could lower IL-6 — his daughter takes it, for rheumatoid arthritis. It had never been used for a crisis like Emma’s, but there was little to lose. Her oncologist, Dr. Stephan A. Grupp, ordered the drug. The response, he said, was “amazing.”


Within hours, Emma began to stabilize. She woke up a week later, on May 2, the day she turned 7; the intensive-care staff sang “Happy Birthday.”


Since then, the research team has used the same drug, tocilizumab, in several other patients.


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Jenni Rivera aboard plane missing in Mexico




































































































































A small plane carrying Mexican American singer Jenni Rivera is missing and believed to have crashed in northern Mexico early Sunday.


The Associated Press reported the plane, a Learjet, left Monterrey about 3:30 a.m. after a concert by Rivera. The pilot lost contact with air traffic contollers about 10 minutes after its departure. It was scheduled to arrive in Toluca, near Mexico City, about an hour later.


An NBCUniversal spokeswoman confirmed that Rivera was aboard the plane. Seven people, including the pilots and crew, were believed to be on the plane.








PHOTOS: Jenni Rivera missing


The Long Beach native's career has been soaring. The 43-year-old singer is best known for her interpretations of regional Mexican music, norteno and banda. She also is one of NBCUniversal's brightest bilingual television stars.


Her reality show on the Telemundo cable channel, mun2, "I Love Jenni," has been one of the channel's highest rated shows. The program is in its second year.


ABC television network was reportedly considering casting Rivera as a star of a prime-time sitcom in development about a strong-willed single Latina mother.


The AP said that a search for the plane was launched early Sunday.


[Updated 3:37 p.m.: Mexican transportation officials have reported the wreckage of the plane has been located and no one survived the crash. The Times will have more on the crash shortly.]


ALSO:


Los Angeles bands swing into old school music revival


Live Review: Bloc Party at the Palladium


It's girl power on "Jenni Rivera Presents Chiquis and Raq-C"





















































































































































































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James Cameron Relives Voyage to Ocean’s Deepest Spot












SAN FRANCISCO — The first thing James Cameron saw 7 miles below the sea was man-made: tracks from a remotely operated vehicle.


“When I got to the bottom, I saw skid marks from the ROV,” Cameron said yesterday (Dec. 4) here at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union, referring to a 2009 survey by the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute. Scientific results of the film director’s expedition to the Mariana Trench were presented at the meeting this week, and Cameron and the researchers described the highlights to a packed crowd.












Cameron reported a new, corrected depth for his landing — 35,803 feet (10,912 meters) — which beats by five feet (1.5 m) the record set by U.S. Navy Lt. Don Walsh and Jacques Piccard in 1960 at the same spot. However, “because the error [calculating the depth] on Don’s dive is much greater, we’re just going to have to call it a tie,” Cameron said.


Deepsea Challenger


Cameron’s Deepsea Challenger expedition made dives to the New Britain Trench and the Mariana Trench in the southwestern Pacific Ocean between Jan. 31 and April 3, with one manned dive by Cameron to the Mariana’s Challenger Deep, the deepest spot in any ocean.


Unusual, never-before-seen species were snared and brought back to the surface. A bizarre microbial mat community was discovered living on altered rocks in the Sirena Deep, another deep pool 6.77 miles (10.9 kilometers) below the surface.


Changes in temperature and salinity starting at 26,200 feet (8 km) deep hint at an unknown current coming into the Challenger Deep, said Doug Bartlett, a microbiology professor at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego.


The filmmaker journeyed inside a high-tech lime-green machine — a steel sphere encased in foam — dubbed the Deepsea Challenger. The expedition traveled with two unmanned seafloor “landers” — large contraptions hoisted over the side of a ship and dropped to the seafloor. Once on the bottom, bait attached to the lander lured seafloor creatures to the craft, and a suite of instruments took samples, photographs and data. [Images: James Cameron's Historic Deep-Sea Dive]


The two contraptions working together proved to be a very good system, Cameron said. “We could rendezvous on the bottom and see the results of that bait running for six to eight hours, and that’s how Doug could find a new species of giant arthropod,” Cameron said.


Challenging journey


The March 26 dive proved to be a physical and mental challenge for Cameron. “I did yoga for six months so I could contort myself into the sphere,” he said.


As he sank through the water, Cameron said he “burned though my whole checklist,” designed to distract him during the long hours of the dive. “I still had 3,000 meters left to go with pretty much nothing left to do but sit quietly and think about the pressure building up around the hull,” he said.


The sub touched down gently, and Cameron immediately took a sample of the seafloor, as planned. This was a good contingency, because the sub’s hydraulic fluid line then burst, leaving him unable to collect more samples.


To his surprise, the sub’s voice communications worked perfectly. “We actually expected they wouldn’t, and I would have to default to texting,” he said. “Texting while driving is not a good thing, especially if you’re using two hands to operate seven joysticks and you’re 7 miles down.”


Cameron first drove the sub about 200 meters, finding the seafloor elevation stayed the same. In fact, Challenger Deep turned out to be remarkably flat, and the sub was easy to drive. “The vehicle was quite nimble, the sub’s yaw rate was very good,” he said. (Yaw describes the left-to-right rotation of a craft.)


A quick return


After about three hours, some of the submersible’s batteries had low charge readings, the steering was problematic, and it was time to return to the surface. The mission should have lasted five to six hours. “I hate this. I hated having to go back,” Cameron recalled thinking.


The trip to the top was mercifully short at 73 minutes. The submersible covered nearly 7 miles in a little over an hour — slow in a car, but like riding a missile for a human in a metal ball. Cameron said the surface trip is when he noticed the aches and pains from the cramped sub. “That’s when your butt is really sore, and when you notice how much it hurts.” [Infographic: James Cameron's Mariana Trench Dive]


The sub now sits in a barn in Santa Barbara, waiting for Cameron or another group with enough money to send it back to the deep ocean. He declined to say how much it cost to build and mount the expedition.


“I would love for the sub to dive again,” he said. “I personally feel that we just barely got started before we had to turn back and there’s just so much out there.”


“And if not, at the very least, the technical innovations can be incorporated into other vehicle platforms,” Cameron added. “As far as I’m concerned, it’s an open source situation.”


Reach Becky Oskin at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @beckyoskin. Follow OurAmazingPlanet on Twitter @OAPlanet. We’re also on Facebook and Google+.


Copyright 2012 OurAmazingPlanet, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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Rolling Stones hit NY for 50th anniversary gig


NEW YORK (AP) — "Time Waits for No One," the Rolling Stones sang in 1974, but lately it's seemed like that grizzled quartet does indeed have some sort of exemption from the ravages of time.


At an average age of 68-plus years, the British rockers are clearly in fighting form, sounding tight, focused and truly ready for the spotlight at a rapturously received pair of London concerts last month.


On Saturday, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Ronnie Wood and Charlie Watts hit New York for the first of three U.S. shows on their "50 and Counting" mini-tour, marking a mind-boggling half-century since the band first began playing its unique brand of blues-tinged rock.


And the three shows — Saturday's at the new Barclays Center in Brooklyn, then two in Newark, N.J., on Dec. 13 and 15 — aren't the only big dates on the agenda. Next week the Stones join a veritable who's who of British rock royalty and U.S. superstars at the blockbuster 12-12-12 Sandy benefit concert at Madison Square Garden. Also scheduled to perform: Paul McCartney, the Who, Eric Clapton, Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band, Alicia Keys, Kanye West, Eddie Vedder, Billy Joel, Roger Waters and Chris Martin.


The Stones' three U.S. shows promise to have their own special guests, too. Mary J. Blige will be at the Brooklyn gig, as well as guitarist Gary Clark Jr., the band has announced. (Blige performed a searing "Gimme Shelter" with frontman Jagger in London.) Rumors are swirling of huge names at the Dec. 15 show, which also will be on pay-per-view.


In a flurry of anniversary activity, the band also released a hits compilation last month with two new songs, "Doom and Gloom" and "One More Shot," and HBO premiered a new documentary on their formative years, "Crossfire Hurricane."


The Stones formed in London in 1962 to play Chicago blues, led at the time by the late Brian Jones and pianist Ian Stewart, along with Jagger and Richards, who'd met on a train platform a year earlier. Bassist Bill Wyman and drummer Charlie Watts were quick additions.


Wyman, who left the band in 1992, was a guest at the London shows last month, as was Mick Taylor, the celebrated former Stones guitarist who left in 1974 — to be replaced by Wood, the newest Stone and the youngster at 65.


The inevitable questions have been swirling about the next step for the Stones: another huge global tour, on the scale of their last one, "A Bigger Bang," which earned more than $550 million between 2005 and 2007? Something a bit smaller? Or is this mini-tour, in the words of their new song, really "One Last Shot"?


The Stones won't say. But in an interview last month, they made clear they felt the 50th anniversary was something to be marked.


"I thought it would be kind of churlish not to do something," Jagger told The Associated Press. "Otherwise, the BBC would have done a rather dull film about the Rolling Stones."


__


Associated Press writer David Bauder contributed to this report.


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New Taxes to Take Effect to Fund Health Care Law





WASHINGTON — For more than a year, politicians have been fighting over whether to raise taxes on high-income people. They rarely mention that affluent Americans will soon be hit with new taxes adopted as part of the 2010 health care law.




The new levies, which take effect in January, include an increase in the payroll tax on wages and a tax on investment income, including interest, dividends and capital gains. The Obama administration proposed rules to enforce both last week.


Affluent people are much more likely than low-income people to have health insurance, and now they will, in effect, help pay for coverage for many lower-income families. Among the most affluent fifth of households, those affected will see tax increases averaging $6,000 next year, economists estimate.


To help finance Medicare, employees and employers each now pay a hospital insurance tax equal to 1.45 percent on all wages. Starting in January, the health care law will require workers to pay an additional tax equal to 0.9 percent of any wages over $200,000 for single taxpayers and $250,000 for married couples filing jointly.


The new taxes on wages and investment income are expected to raise $318 billion over 10 years, or about half of all the new revenue collected under the health care law.


Ruth M. Wimer, a tax lawyer at McDermott Will & Emery, said the taxes came with “a shockingly inequitable marriage penalty.” If a single man and a single woman each earn $200,000, she said, neither would owe any additional Medicare payroll tax. But, she said, if they are married, they would owe $1,350. The extra tax is 0.9 percent of their earnings over the $250,000 threshold.


Since the creation of Social Security in the 1930s, payroll taxes have been levied on the wages of each worker as an individual. The new Medicare payroll is different. It will be imposed on the combined earnings of a married couple.


Employers are required to withhold Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes from wages paid to employees. But employers do not necessarily know how much a worker’s spouse earns and may not withhold enough to cover a couple’s Medicare tax liability. Indeed, the new rules say employers may disregard a spouse’s earnings in calculating how much to withhold.


Workers may thus owe more than the amounts withheld by their employers and may have to make up the difference when they file tax returns in April 2014. If they expect to owe additional tax, the government says, they should make estimated tax payments, starting in April 2013, or ask their employers to increase the amount withheld from each paycheck.


In the Affordable Care Act, the new tax on investment income is called an “unearned income Medicare contribution.” However, the law does not provide for the money to be deposited in a specific trust fund. It is added to the government’s general tax revenues and can be used for education, law enforcement, farm subsidies or other purposes.


Donald B. Marron Jr., the director of the Tax Policy Center, a joint venture of the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution, said the burden of this tax would be borne by the most affluent taxpayers, with about 85 percent of the revenue coming from 1 percent of taxpayers. By contrast, the biggest potential beneficiaries of the law include people with modest incomes who will receive Medicaid coverage or federal subsidies to buy private insurance.


Wealthy people and their tax advisers are already looking for ways to minimize the impact of the investment tax — for example, by selling stocks and bonds this year to avoid the higher tax rates in 2013.


The new 3.8 percent tax applies to the net investment income of certain high-income taxpayers, those with modified adjusted gross incomes above $200,000 for single taxpayers and $250,000 for couples filing jointly.


David J. Kautter, the director of the Kogod Tax Center at American University, offered this example. In 2013, John earns $160,000, and his wife, Jane, earns $200,000. They have some investments, earn $5,000 in dividends and sell some long-held stock for a gain of $40,000, so their investment income is $45,000. They owe 3.8 percent of that amount, or $1,710, in the new investment tax. And they owe $990 in additional payroll tax.


The new tax on unearned income would come on top of other tax increases that might occur automatically next year if President Obama and Congress cannot reach an agreement in talks on the federal deficit and debt. If Congress does nothing, the tax rate on long-term capital gains, now 15 percent, will rise to 20 percent in January. Dividends will be treated as ordinary income and taxed at a maximum rate of 39.6 percent, up from the current 15 percent rate for most dividends.


Under another provision of the health care law, consumers may find it more difficult to obtain a tax break for medical expenses.


Taxpayers now can take an itemized deduction for unreimbursed medical expenses, to the extent that they exceed 7.5 percent of adjusted gross income. The health care law will increase the threshold for most taxpayers to 10 percent next year. The increase is delayed to 2017 for people 65 and older.


In addition, workers face a new $2,500 limit on the amount they can contribute to flexible spending accounts used to pay medical expenses. Such accounts can benefit workers by allowing them to pay out-of-pocket expenses with pretax money.


Taken together, this provision and the change in the medical expense deduction are expected to raise more than $40 billion of revenue over 10 years.


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Supreme Court to rule on California's Prop. 8 ban on gay marriage

Justices will rule for the first time on same-sex marriage by deciding the constitutionality of Prop. 8.









The Supreme Court announced Friday it will rule for the first time on same-sex marriage by deciding the constitutionality of California’s Proposition 8, the voter initiative that limited marriage to a man and a woman.


The justices also said they would decide whether legally married gay couples have a right to equal benefits under federal law.


The California case raises the broad question of whether gays and lesbians have an equal right to marry.








FULL COVERAGE: The battle over gay marriage 


If the justices had turned down the appeal from the defenders of Prop. 8, it would have allowed gay marriages to resume in California, but without setting a national precedent.


Now, the high court has agreed to decide whether a state’s ban on same-sex marriages violates the U.S. Constitution. The court’s intervention came just one month after voters in three states — Maine, Maryland and Washington — approved gay marriages. This brought the total to nine states having legalized same-sex marriages. 


But the justices also left themselves a way out. They said they would consider whether the defenders of Prop. 8 had legal standing to bring their appeal.


The justices made the announcement after meeting behind closed doors. They did not say which justices voted to hear the appeals.


Last year, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals struck down Prop. 8, but it did so on a narrow basis. Judge Stephen Reinhardt reasoned that the voter initiative was unconstitutional because it took away from gays and lesbians a right to marry that they had won before the state Supreme Court.


The justices now will have at least three options before them: They could reverse the 9th Circuit and uphold Prop. 8, thereby making it clear that the definition of marriage will be left to the discretion of each state and its voters.


They could rule broadly that denying gays and lesbians the fundamental right to marry violates the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection of the laws. Such a decision would open the door to gay marriages nationwide.


Or as a third option, they could follow the approach set by the 9th Circuit and strike down Prop. 8 in a way that limits the ruling to California only.


In the other gay-marriage cases, the court will decide the constitutionality of part of the Defense of Marriage Act  that denies federal benefits to legally married couples. Judges in New England, New York and California have ruled this provision unconstitutional.


The justices are expected to hear arguments in the two sets of gay marriage cases in March and issue decisions by late June.


FULL COVERAGE: The battle over gay marriage 


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david.savage@latimes.com





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