18 people charged in $200-million credit card fraud

NEWARK, N.J. — Eighteen people were charged in what may be one of the nation's largest credit card fraud rings, a sprawling scam that duped credit-rating agencies and used thousands of fake identities to steal at least $200 million, federal authorities said.

The scammers used fraudulent tactics to improve fake cardholders' credit scores, which they then used to borrow money that was never repaid, investigators said Tuesday.

"In many respects the accused availed themselves of a virtual cafeteria of sophisticated frauds and schemes, whose main menu items were greed and deceit," said David Velazquez, assistant special agent in charge of the FBI's Newark field office.

Paul Fishman, the U.S. attorney in Newark, described an intricate Jersey City-based con that began in 2007 and operated in at least 28 states, Money gotten from the scheme was wired to Pakistan, India, the United Arab Emirates, Canada, Romania, China and Japan.

The group used at least 7,000 fake identities to obtain more than 25,000 credit cards, Fishman said. He said $200 million in documented losses could rise.

Participants set up more than 1,800 mailing addresses, creating fake utility bills and other documents to provide credit card companies with what appeared to be legitimate addresses. Once participants obtained the cards, they started making small charges and paying off the cards to raise their credit limits.

They then sent fake reports to credit-rating agencies, making it appear that cardholders had paid off debts. The result — sterling credit ratings and high credit limits.

Fishman said once the credit limits were raised, members would take out a loan or max out the credit card and not repay the debts.

The group also created at least 80 sham businesses that accepted credit card payments, Fishman said. The group would run the fraudulently obtained credit cards through the machines, keeping the money.

The scheme funded a lavish lifestyle for the accused, including spa treatments, electronics and millions of dollars of gold, Fishman said. In one raid, authorities found $78,000 stashed in an oven.

Three jewelry stores in Jersey City were closed Tuesday and their inventory seized, Fishman said. Thirteen defendants also were arrested Tuesday. The investigation is ongoing, Fishman said.

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Scientists identify remains as those of King Richard III

LONDON -- More than 500 years after his death in battle, scientists announced Monday that they had definitively identified a skeleton unearthed in central England last summer as that of Richard III, the medieval king portrayed by William Shakespeare as a homicidal tyrant who killed his two young nephews in order to ascend the throne.

DNA from the bones, found beneath the ruins of an old church, matches that of a living descendant of the monarch's sister, researchers said.

"Rarely have the conclusions of academic research been so eagerly awaited," Richard Buckley, the lead archaeologist on the excavation, told a phalanx of reporters Monday morning. "Beyond reasonable doubt, the individual exhumed ... is indeed Richard III, the last Plantagenet king of England."

PHOTOS: Remains of King Richard III

The dramatic announcement capped a brief hunt for Richard's remains, the progress of which has been closely charted by international media and whose success has been barely short of miraculous.

Working from old maps of Leicester, about 100 miles northwest of London, archaeologists from the local university had less than a month to dig in a small municipal parking lot -- one of the few spaces not built over in the crowded city center. The team stumbled on the ruins of the medieval priory where records say Richard was buried, then found the bones a few days later last September.

"It was an extraordinary discovery that stunned all of us," Buckley said.

The nearly intact skeleton bore obvious traces of trauma to the skull and of scoliosis, a curvature of the spine that matched contemporary descriptions of Richard's appearance. The feet were missing, almost certainly the result of later disturbance, and the hands were crossed at the wrist, which suggests that they may have been tied.

Scientists at the University of Leicester, which pioneered the practice of DNA fingerprinting, were able to extract samples from the bones and compare them to a man descended from Richard III's sister Anne. The match through the maternal line was virtually perfect.

"The DNA evidence points to these being the remains of Richard III," said Turi King, the project’s geneticist.

Richard reigned from 1483 to 1485, and occupies a unique place in England's long line of colorful rulers. He was the last English king to be killed in combat, at the Battle of Bosworth Field, by his successor, Henry VII. His death ended the Plantagenet dynasty and ushered in the long era of the Tudors, including Henry VIII and Elizabeth I.

Jo Appleby, an osteologist at the university, said the skeleton belonged to an adult male in his late 20s to late 30s; Richard III was 32 when he died. The man would have stood 5-foot-8 at full height, but the curved spine would have made him appear shorter.

The skull was riddled with wounds strongly indicative of death in battle, including two blows from bladed weapons, either of which would have been fatal, Appleby said.

Richard III is one of England's most controversial monarchs, reviled by some as a bloodthirsty despot who stopped at nothing to gain power, but revered by others who insist that he has been unfairly maligned. His supporters note that the repugnant portrait of Richard in today's popular imagination is based almost entirely on accounts from the time of the usurping Tudors, especially Shakespeare's indelible characterization of him as a "deform'd, unfinish'd" man without scruples.

Fans say Richard III was an enlightened, capable ruler whose important social reforms included the presumption of innocence for defendants and the granting of bail, which remain pillars of the legal system in Britain and the U.S.

However, what happened to Richard's two nephews, who were his rivals for the throne and who were locked up in the Tower of London as young boys, never to be seen again, remains a mystery.

ALSO:

Race to unearth a royal mystery

Bones found in hunt for King Richard III's remains

Netanyahu officially asked to put together new Israeli government

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NJ Gov. Christie, Letterman laugh about fat jokes

TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and David Letterman have shared some laughs about the many fat jokes the comedian has made about the lawmaker's ample girth.

Christie has termed his plumpness "fair game" for comedians. And during his first appearance on "Late Show with David Letterman" on Monday, the outspoken Republican and potential 2016 presidential contender read two of Letterman's jokes that he said were "some of my personal favorites."

The governor also drew loud laughs when he pulled out a doughnut and started eating it while Letterman asked him if he was bothered by the digs that have been made about his weight. Christie said he wasn't, noting that he laughs at the jokes if he finds them funny.

"Late Show" airs on CBS at 11:35 p.m. Eastern time.

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Well: Expressing the Inexpressible

When Kyle Potvin learned she had breast cancer at the age of 41, she tracked the details of her illness and treatment in a journal. But when it came to grappling with issues of mortality, fear and hope, she found that her best outlet was poetry.

How I feared chemo, afraid
It would change me.
It did.
Something dissolved inside me.
Tears began a slow drip;
I cried at the news story
Of a lost boy found in the woods …
At the surprising beauty
Of a bright leaf falling
Like the last strand of hair from my head

Ms. Potvin, now 47 and living in Derry, N.H., recently published “Sound Travels on Water” (Finishing Line Press), a collection of poems about her experience with cancer. And she has organized the Prickly Pear Poetry Project, a series of workshops for cancer patients.

“The creative process can be really healing,” Ms. Potvin said in an interview. “Loss, mortality and even hopefulness were on my mind, and I found that through writing poetry I was able to express some of those concepts in a way that helped me process what I was thinking.”

In April, the National Association for Poetry Therapy, whose members include both medical doctors and therapists, is to hold a conference in Chicago with sessions on using poetry to manage pain and to help adolescents cope with bullying. And this spring, Tasora Books will publish “The Cancer Poetry Project 2,” an anthology of poems written by patients and their loved ones.

Dr. Rafael Campo, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard, says he uses poetry in his practice, offering therapy groups and including poems with the medical forms and educational materials he gives his patients.

“It’s always striking to me how they want to talk about the poems the next time we meet and not the other stuff I give them,” he said. “It’s such a visceral mode of expression. When our bodies betray us in such a profound way, it can be all the more powerful for patients to really use the rhythms of poetry to make sense of what is happening in their bodies.”

On return visits, Dr. Campo’s patients often begin by discussing a poem he gave them — for example, “At the Cancer Clinic,” by Ted Kooser, from his collection “Delights & Shadows” (Copper Canyon Press, 2004), about a nurse holding the door for a slow-moving patient.

How patient she is in the crisp white sails
of her clothes. The sick woman
peers from under her funny knit cap
to watch each foot swing scuffing forward
and take its turn under her weight.
There is no restlessness or impatience
or anger anywhere in sight. Grace
fills the clean mold of this moment
and all the shuffling magazines grow still.

In Ms. Potvin’s case, poems related to her illness were often spurred by mundane moments, like seeing a neighbor out for a nightly walk. Here is “Tumor”:

My neighbor walks
For miles each night.
A mantra drives her, I imagine
As my boys’ chant did
The summer of my own illness:
“Push, Mommy, push.”
Urging me to wind my sore feet
Winch-like on a rented bike
To inch us home.
I couldn’t stop;
Couldn’t leave us
Miles from the end.

Karin Miller, 48, of Minneapolis, turned to poetry 15 years ago when her husband developed testicular cancer at the same time she was pregnant with their first child.

Her husband has since recovered, and Ms. Miller has reviewed thousands of poems by cancer patients and their loved ones to create the “Cancer Poetry Project” anthologies. One poem is “Hymn to a Lost Breast,” by Bonnie Maurer.

Oh let it fly
let it fling
let it flip like a pancake in the air
let it sing: what is the song
of one breast flapping?

Another is “Barn Wish” by Kim Knedler Hewett.

I sit where you can’t see me
Listening to the rustle of papers and pills in the other room,
Wondering if you can hear them.
Let’s go back to the barn, I whisper.
Let’s turn on the TV and watch the Bengals lose.
Let’s eat Bill’s Doughnuts and drink Pepsi.
Anything but this.

Ms. Miller has asked many of her poets to explain why they find poetry healing. “They say it’s the thing that lets them get to the core of how they are feeling,” she said. “It’s the simplicity of poetry, the bare bones of it, that helps them deal with their fears.”

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Have you written a poem about cancer? Please share them with us in the comments section below.

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Herbalife stock leaves investors feeling queasy

Shares of Los Angeles nutritional products company Herbalife Ltd. went on a wild ride Monday, falling 12% on news of a law enforcement investigation, only to close with a gain for the day after a regulatory agency cast doubt on such a probe.

At least one thing is clear about Herbalife: Its investors are extremely jittery.

The New York Post reported Monday that an unidentified law enforcement agency is investigating Herbalife, which has faced intense scrutiny since billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman accused it in December of operating a pyramid scheme and bet $1 billion that its shares would fall.

The Post based its story on a Federal Trade Commission letter in which the agency said it would not release some complaints about Herbalife because of an ongoing law enforcement investigation. Later in the day, the FTC said it had made a mistake and should have cited a foreign government agency, not law enforcement.

Shares of Herbalife surged after the FTC's clarification, adding 47 cents, or 1.3%, to close at $35.54.

"It's being whipped and driven by these exogenous forces," said Timothy Ramey, a D.A. Davidson & Co. analyst. "Unless you have strongly held beliefs about the company, which some people do in both directions, you're going to get influenced by this kind of stuff."

While retracting its statement about a law-enforcement probe, the FTC released more than 100 complaints it has received about Herbalife, many of them from independent distributors who ended up losing money trying to sell its products. The FTC would not say whether it was investigating.

Herbalife said in a statement that it was unaware of a criminal investigation and considered the FTC complaints insignificant.

"For a direct selling company of our size, we have had a relatively low number of complaints to the FTC," Herbalife said. "However, we take every one of them seriously and stand by our record of doing right by our distributors and all consumers of our products."

Herbalife — which sells diet, nutrition and beauty products in more than 80 countries — reported earnings of $413 million on $3.5 billion in sales in 2011. It is scheduled to release last year's results this month.

Founded in 1980, Herbalife is a so-called multi-level marketer, paying distributors commissions for their own sales as well as for those made by distributors they recruit. The only way for consumers to buy Herbalife is through independent distributors; its products are not sold in stores.

The company employs more than 1,000 people in Southern California. Its headquarters are at L.A. Live, the entertainment and business complex near Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles.

In December, Ackman made a flashy, multimedia presentation to outline his case that Herbalife is an illegal pyramid scheme. He said the company's independent distributors are paid more money for recruiting new salespeople than for selling its products.

Ackman said that 90% of Herbalife distributors make little or no money, while a select few — those at the top of the pyramid — make huge profits. The company's chief executive, Michael O. Johnson, was the highest-paid executive in the United States in 2011, raking in more than $89 million in salary, exercised stock options and other compensation, according to GMI Ratings, a corporate governance firm.

In complaints to the FTC, some distributors said they ended up losing money trying to sell Herbalife products.

"I have been suckered into a pyramid," one Herbalife distributor wrote. "I was basically going to go bankrupt if I continue."

Countering Ackman's huge short position, which pays off if the stock price falls, another billionaire investor, Carl Icahn, took an undisclosed stake in Herbalife, betting essentially that the stock would rise.

The two squared off in a profanity-filled debate broadcast live by CNBC on Jan. 25 with Icahn calling Ackman a "liar," and Icahn countering that Icahn was "not used to someone standing up to him, particularly a little guy like me."

Ramey, the analyst, said he is recommending that investors buy Herbalife shares.

"It's not a pyramid scheme. It doesn't look at all like pyramid schemes look," Ramey said. "Companies that have been judged to be pyramid schemes don't look like real companies and they don't sell real products."

That said, Ramey expects a rough road for Herbalife shares.

"It's easy for me to sleep comfortably at night," he said, "but that doesn't mean it's not going to be volatile on a day-to-day basis."

stuart.pfeifer@latimes.com

Times staff writer Andrew Tangel contributed to this report.

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Ravens win Super Bowl XLVII over the 49ers, 34-31

Ravens 34, 49ers 31 (final)

The Baltimore Ravens have defeated the San Francisco 49ers in Super Bowl XLVII.

It's the second championship for the Ravens and linebacker Ray Lewis, who is retiring after 17 seasons.

After taking a safety on their final possession, Baltimore punted to San Francisco, which was unable to set up a return and suffered its first loss in six appearances in the NFL championship game.

San Francisco never led in the game, but the 49ers still had a chance to win the game when punt returner Ted Ginn Jr. fielded the punt. A swarming Ravens defense contained him near midfield before making the tackle.

Baltimore quarterback Joe Flacco was selected the game’s most valuable player.

The championship goes to Baltimore Coach John Harbaugh over his kid brother, San Francisco Coach Jim Harbaugh.

The Times will have full coverage of the game played at the New Orleans Superdome throughout the night at latimes.com.

Ravens 34, 49ers 31 (4 seconds left)

The Baltimore Ravens are closing in on a Super Bowl title.

After moving the ball from their own 20-yard line to the Ravens’ 5, San Francisco saw Baltimore defensive back Joey Smith break up a third-down pass to Michael Crabtree.

Colin Kaepernick was then rushed heavily, forcing a throw that 49ers Coach Jim Harbaugh begged for pass interference with a Ravens defensive back and Crabtree jostling for position.

The Kaepernick pass flew beyond Crabtree with cornerback Jimmy Smith tugging on his jersey.

The Ravens went three and out on their next possession, opting to take a safety with four seconds remaining as the punter ran out of the end zone.

It’s now Baltimore 34, San Francisco 31.

Ravens 34, 49ers 29 (two-minute warning)

The San Francisco 49ers have never lost a Super Bowl, and now they find themselves in Joe Montana territory against the Cincinnati Bengals back in the day.

Taking possession at their own 20-yard line with 4:19 left in the game and trailing by five points, San Francisco quarterback Colin Kaepernick ran for a first down, then completed a 24-yard pass to receiver Michael Crabtree to the Baltimore's 40.

A Frank Gore run moved the ball to Baltimore’s seven, and it’s now the two-minute warning.

Ravens 34, 49ers 29 (4:19 left in fourth quarter)

The Baltimore Ravens have increased their lead over the San Francisco 49ers to five points with 4:19 left in regulation.

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Xbox Hoax Leads Armed Cops to Family

Members of a Florida family were shocked to be awakened in the middle of the night to find their house surrounded by police with guns drawn shouting at them to put their hands up.

Police Lt. Mike Beavers said the commotion was “very rare” for the small town of Oviedo, about 20 miles northeast of Orlando.

“This is the first time I’ve heard of it happening in our little town,” Beavers told ABCNews.com.

The frightened family did not want to be identified but recounted the ordeal to ABC News’ Orlando affiliate WFTV.

“I heard the doorbell ring,” the father of two told WFTV. “We couldn’t see anybody at the front of the door. All we saw was the rifle barrel.”

The man said he and his wife originally believed they were being robbed.

“They have rifles, they have guns, and I said, ‘Let’s get out of the house,’ so we ran down the hallway and got our two boys up,” the father said.

“We were told to freeze and put our hands over our heads,” he recalled. “They said, ‘We’re the police,’ so that was a big relief.”

What the family didn’t realize was that an Xbox hoax had led the Oviedo police to its house. The police said they were responding to a call from AT&T saying it had received online messages from a person who said he was hiding inside the house, claiming that someone had been killed there and that others were being held hostage.

But when police arrived, all they found was a very surprised and confused family.

Upon investigation, police learned that the confusion all started when an Oviedo teenager living in another house called police saying his Xbox had been hacked.

The teenager said the hackers had threatened to call in bomb threats to his home if he did not meet their demands for gaming information.

When the teenager refused, the hackers sent fake messages reporting the killing and hostage taking at the teenager’s former home. His previous address, where police showed up, was still connected to his Xbox.

The teenager did some of his own investigating, police said, and provided authorities with some possible identifying information on the hackers.

“The caller gave information to officers regarding two possible suspects, including IP addresses, Twitter and Facebook accounts and a possible name of one of the suspects,” according to the police report. “The information provided to the officers revealed that both suspects were located in different states.”

The information has been turned over to Oviedo detectives for further investigation.

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Beyonce brings electricity at Super Bowl halftime

Lights out? Blame Beyonce's electrifying performance.

If naysayers still doubted Beyonce's singing's talents — even after her national anthem performance this week at a press conference — the singer proved she is an exceptional performer at the Super Bowl halftime show.

Beyonce opened and closed the performance belting songs, and in between she danced hard and heavy — and better than most contemporary pop stars.

She set a serious tone as she emerged onstage in all black, singing lines from her R&B hit "Love on Top." The stage was dark as fire and lights burst from the sides. Then she went into her hit "Crazy In Love," bringing some feminine spirit to the Super Dome as she and her background dancers did the singer's signature booty-shaking dance. Beyonce ripped off part of her shirt and skirt. She even blew a kiss. She was ready to rock, and she did so like a pro.

Her confidence — and voice — grew as she worked the stage with and without her Destiny's Child band mates during her 13-minute set, which comes days after she admitted she sang to a pre-recorded track at President Barack Obama's inauguration less than two weeks ago.

Beyonce proved not only that she can sing, but that she can also entertain on a stage as big as the Super Bowl's. She was far better than Madonna, who sang to a backing track last year, and miles ahead of the Black Eyed Peas' disastrous set in 2011.

Beyonce was best when she finished her set with "Halo." She asked the crowd to put their hands toward her as she sang the slow groove on bended knee — and that's when she the performance hit its high note.

"Thank you for this moment," she told the crowd. "God bless y'all."

Her background singers helped out as Beyonce danced around the stage throughout most of her performance. There was a backing track to help fill in when Beyonce wasn't singing — and there were long stretches when she let it play as she performed elaborate dance moves.

She had a swarm of background dancers and band members spread throughout the stage, along with videotaped images of herself dancing that may have unintentionally played on the live-or-taped question. And the crowd got bigger when she was joined by her Destiny's Child band mates.

Kelly Rowland and Michelle Williams popped up from below the stage to sing "Bootylicious." They were in similar outfits, singing and dancing closely as they harmonized. But Rowland and Williams were barely heard when the group sang "Independent Woman," as their voices faded into the background.

They also joined in for some of "Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It)," where Beyonce's voice grew stronger. That song featured Beyonce's skilled choreography, as did "End of Time" and "Baby Boy," which featured Beyonce's all-female band, balancing out the testosterone levels on the football field.

Before the game, Alicia Keys performed a lounge-y, piano-tinged version of the national anthem that her publicist assured was live. The Grammy-winning singer played the piano as she sang "The Star Spangled Banner" in a long red dress with her eyes shut.

She followed Jennifer Hudson, who sang "America the Beautiful" with the 26-member Sandy Hook Elementary School chorus, an emotional performance that had some players on the sideline on the verge of tears.

The students wore green ribbons on their shirts in honor of the 20 first-graders and six adults who were killed in a Dec. 14 shooting rampage at the school in Newton, Conn.

The students began the song softly before Hudson, whose mother, brother and 7-year-old nephew were shot to death five years ago, jumped in with her gospel-flavored vocals. She stood still in black and white as the students moved to the left and right, singing background.

___

Follow Mesfin Fekadu on Twitter at http://twitter.com/MusicMesfi n

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Phys Ed: Helmets for Ski and Snowboard Safety

Phys Ed

Gretchen Reynolds on the science of fitness.

Recently, researchers from the department of sport science at the University of Innsbruck in Austria stood on the slopes at a local ski resort and trained a radar gun on a group of about 500 skiers and snowboarders, each of whom had completed a lengthy personality questionnaire about whether he or she tended to be cautious or a risk taker.

The researchers had asked their volunteers to wear their normal ski gear and schuss or ride down the slopes at their preferred speed. Although they hadn’t informed the volunteers, their primary aim was to determine whether wearing a helmet increased people’s willingness to take risks, in which case helmets could actually decrease safety on the slopes.

What they found was reassuring.

To many of us who hit the slopes with, in my case, literal regularity — I’m an ungainly novice snowboarder — the value of wearing a helmet can seem self-evident. It protects your head from severe injury. During the Big Air finals at the Winter X Games in Aspen, Colo., this past weekend, for instance, Halldor Helgason, a 23-year-old Icelandic snowboarder, over-rotated on a triple back flip, landed headfirst on the snow and was briefly knocked unconscious. But like the other competitors he was wearing a helmet, and didn’t fracture his skull.

Indeed, studies have concluded that helmets reduce the risk of a serious head injury by as much as 60 percent. But a surprising number of safety experts and snowsport enthusiasts remain unconvinced that helmets reduce overall injury risk.

Why? A telling 2009 survey of ski patrollers from across the country found that 77 percent did not wear helmets because they worried that the headgear could reduce their peripheral vision, hearing and response times, making them slower and clumsier. In addition, many worried that if they wore helmets, less-adept skiers and snowboarders might do likewise, feel invulnerable and engage in riskier behavior on the slopes.

In the past several years, a number of researchers have tried to resolve these concerns, for or against helmets. And in almost all instances, helmets have proved their value.

In the Innsbruck speed experiment, the researchers found that people whom the questionnaires showed to be risk takers skied and rode faster than those who were by nature cautious. No surprise.

But wearing a helmet did not increase people’s speed, as would be expected if the headgear encouraged risk taking. Cautious people were slower than risk-takers, whether they wore helmets or not; and risk-takers were fast, whether their heads were protected or bare.

Interestingly, the skiers and riders who were the most likely, in general, to wear a helmet were the most expert, the men and women with the most talent and hours on the slopes. Experience seemed to have taught them the value of a helmet.

Off the slopes, other new studies have brought skiers and snowboarders into the lab to test their reaction times and vision with and without helmets. Peripheral vision and response times are a serious safety concern in a sport where skiers and riders rapidly converge from multiple directions.

But when researchers asked snowboarders and skiers to wear caps, helmets, goggles or various combinations of each for a 2011 study and then had them sit before a computer screen and press a button when certain images popped up, they found that volunteers’ peripheral vision and reaction times were virtually unchanged when they wore a helmet, compared with wearing a hat. Goggles slightly reduced peripheral vision and increased response times. But helmets had no significant effect.

Even when researchers added music, testing snowboarders and skiers wearing Bluetooth-audio equipped helmets, response times did not increase significantly from when they wore wool caps.

So why do up to 40 percent of skiers and snowboarders still avoid helmets?

“The biggest reason, I think, is that many people never expect to fall,” said Dr. Adil H. Haider, a trauma surgeon and associate professor of surgery at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and co-author of a major new review of studies related to winter helmet use. “That attitude is especially common in people, like me, who are comfortable on blue runs but maybe not on blacks, and even more so in beginners.”

But a study published last spring detailing snowboarding injuries over the course of 18 seasons at a Vermont ski resort found that the riders at greatest risk of hurting themselves were female beginners. I sympathize.

The take-away from the growing body of science about ski helmets is in fact unequivocal, Dr. Haider said. “Helmets are safe. They don’t seem to increase risk taking. And they protect against serious, even fatal head injuries.”

The Eastern Association for the Surgery of Trauma, of which Dr. Haider is a member, has issued a recommendation that “all recreational skiers and snowboarders should wear safety helmets,” making them the first medical group to go on record advocating universal helmet use.

Perhaps even more persuasive, Dr. Haider has given helmets to all of his family members and colleagues who ski or ride. “As a trauma surgeon, I know how difficult it is to fix a brain,” he said. “So everyone I care about wears a helmet.”

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Canadian firm to build three apartment towers in downtown L.A.

A Canadian developer has started work on a $100-million luxury apartment building in downtown Los Angeles, the first of three high-rise residential complexes it plans to build in the booming neighborhood.

Onni Group of Vancouver is erecting a 32-story tower on a former parking lot at the northeast corner of Olive and 9th streets. The site is next door to a well-known 12-story office building that opened in 1926 as the headquarters of Pacific National Bank.

Onni's building, to be known as 888 Olive, will have 283 units — each with a private balcony — over street-level shops and restaurants. It will have a swimming pool and fitness center, Onni said. Completion is set for early 2015.

The wave of commercial development spreading across downtown appears similar to the transformation of urban Vancouver that took place over the last 15 years, said Apriano Meola, vice president of U.S. operations for Onni.

The company also plans to develop a second residential tower on Olive Street next door to 888 Olive and a third at 12th and Flower streets just west of Staples Center. Onni also bought the Union Lofts, a 10-story office tower turned apartment building at 8th and Hill streets that opened in 1928 as the headquarters of Union Bank.

Onni is one of Canada's largest private developers, having built more than 5,000 residences in the last decade with an additional 4,000 under construction, the company said.

$105-million Westchester complex underway

A big empty lot north of Los Angeles International Airport in Westchester is getting an upgrade: $105 million worth of apartments and shops.

Work has begun on a 260-unit complex near the southwest corner of Manchester Avenue and Rayford Drive called Playa del Oro West, Los Angeles developer Decron Properties Corp. said.

The development is the second phase of a project Decron began in 2002 with the purchase of 13 acres at Manchester and Lincoln Boulevard that included a 12-story hotel previously known as the Furama and before that as the Airport Marina Hotel.

Decron sold the hotel, now known as Custom Hotel, while developing the rest of the parcel. The first phase, completed in 2009, put 405 apartments over shops in five-story buildings with underground parking.

Decron recently secured a $67-million construction loan for the final phase of Playa del Oro, President David J. Nagel said.

"The construction of these additional 260 units completes our vision of replacing an old, tired hotel that no longer served this bedroom community with a dynamic, true mixed-use project," he said.

Upon completion in about 21 months, the total Playa del Oro complex will have 665 apartments and 110,000 square feet of shops. Retail tenants include Ralph's Fresh Fare, LA Fitness and Kinecta Federal Credit Union.

Medical provider to move headquarters

Nonprofit medical provider MemorialCare Health System will move its headquarters from Fountain Valley to Costa Mesa because it has acquired a 15-acre corporate campus near the 405 Freeway.

MemorialCare will consolidate several teams now in other Southern California offices in 180,000 square feet at 1588 South Coast Drive, real estate brokerage Newmark Grubb Knight Frank said.

Terms of the sale by a limited liability corporation were not disclosed, but real estate experts familiar with the Orange County market valued the deal at about $34 million.

The property was previously occupied by Abraxis Bioscience, which was purchased by Celgene Corp. in October 2010, broker Tim Helgeson of Newmark Grubb said. It has been mostly vacant since.

The campus, expected to be occupied in late 2013, will bring together teams from MemorialCare's corporate office, physician support locations and medical groups, including MemorialCare Medical Group, Greater Newport Physicians and Nautilus Healthcare Management Group.

The transaction was the largest headquarters purchase over the last year by an Orange County company, Helgeson said.

roger.vincent@latimes.com

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