California high court seems inclined to uphold bans on pot shops

SAN FRANCISCO — The California Supreme Court appeared inclined Tuesday to uphold municipal bans against medical marijuana dispensaries.

Meeting for oral arguments, the state high court considered the legality of a ban on dispensaries by the city of Riverside. Several justices noted that the state Constitution gives cities wide policing power over land use and suggested that the state's medical marijuana laws have not undercut that authority.

"The Legislature knows how to say 'Thou Shall Not Ban Dispensaries,' " Justice Ming W. Chin said. "They didn't say that."

The court's ruling, due in 90 days, will determine the fate of about 200 local bans on cannabis dispensaries. If the justices uphold the bans, more such measures are anticipated. Medical marijuana advocates said that outcome would force tens of thousands of patients to drive long distances or resort to the black market.

But the justices appeared more focused on the regulatory rights of cities than on patient access to cannabis.

Chief Justice Tani G. Cantil-Sakauye said she viewed the case as a test of the "authority historically invested in municipalities" over land use.

J. David Nick, representing a dispensary, argued that municipalities could regulate, but not prohibit, an activity the state has permitted. He said the goal of the medical marijuana laws was to provide for uniformity from county to county.

"You can pass local laws, but they have to be consistent" with the state laws intended to make medical marijuana available, Nick told the court during the televised hearing.

Justice Marvin R. Baxter seemed skeptical.

"If the Legislature wanted to prevent localities from banning the dispensaries, why didn't it say so expressly?" he asked.

Justice Goodwin Liu noted that state medical marijuana laws provided limited immunity from state sanctions, not from local rules. The laws' "language doesn't seem to get you very far," Liu told the dispensary attorney.

Some justices suggested that the Legislature might not have legal authority to prevent cities from banning dispensaries through zoning.

Justice Carol A. Corrigan noted that the California Constitution confers on local governments the right to police their borders. "It is not for the Legislature to try to retract that which it does not confer," she said.

Justice Joyce L. Kennard appeared to agree. She said municipalities had a "preexisting power" to regulate land use that is independent of the state's medical cannabis laws.

But Justice Kathryn Mickle Werdegar observed that local bans on dispensaries might thwart the intent of the medical marijuana laws. Although the Legislature has given cities the right to regulate dispensaries, it was "debatable" whether regulation means outright prohibitions, she said.

Even considering Werdegar's remarks, Los Angeles Special Assistant City Atty. Jane Usher said the court seemed headed for a unanimous decision in favor of permitting bans. Usher said Los Angeles does not plan to introduce any new regulations until voters consider three medical marijuana measures on the May ballot.

Joe Elford, chief legal counsel for a medical marijuana advocacy group, said he was disappointed that the hearing failed to elicit much concern for patients.

"I didn't really feel like the patients' voices were heard," he said. He agreed that the court was likely to give municipalities discretion to ban dispensaries but expressed hope that the ruling would otherwise affirm their legality.

"I am hopeful the court will let them know it is a discretion, not an obligation, and they can do the right thing if they chose," Elford said.

maura.dolan@latimes.com

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India Ink: The Mumbai/New York Photo Project: Meet the 'Wallas'

While much has changed in New York and Mumbai over the past 50 years, the bazaar, or the marketplace, is still the center of commercial activity for both these cities.

In both these cities, the commercial capitals of their respective nations, you can get almost anything you want, at any time, day or night – as long as you know the right person to procure it, or “walla” in India. And in both cities, sometimes these wallas drive a hard bargain. In this edition of the Mumbai/New York photo project, Nisha Sondhe documents some of these marketplaces where products and services range from the brilliant to the bizarre.

In Mumbai, the wholesale flower market in Dadar, where one can buy flowers brought in from all over Maharashtra and Gujarat, opens each morning at 4:30 and closes at 8 p.m. The market, under the overpass next to Dadar station, is a window into India’s thriving flower trade. The Chelsea flower district, a century-old institution in Manhattan, is hub for unusual flowers, exotic plants, vases and garden accessories. This market opens at 5 a.m. and is also best visited early in the day, when the produce is the freshest.

Crawford Market, established in 1869 by the first municipal commissioner of Mumbai, Arthur Crawford, is still the best place for wholesale bargains in the city.

The market, which is now called the Mahatma Jyotiba Phule Market, was in danger of being demolished a few years ago but was saved thanks to the efforts of conservationists. While the market is traditionally meant for wholesale fruit and vegetable trading, these days many stores are stocked with foreign goods like Camay soap, Kraft cheese, Fa deodorant or a pack of Pampers diapers.

Change is also under way at New York’s Chelsea Market, which specializes in gourmet food and is housed in a collection of industrial buildings that once was home to the National Biscuit Company, or Nabisco. In November, the owner of Chelsea Market, Jamestown Properties, an acquisition and management firm based in Cologne, Germany, and Atlanta, ignited public outrage when the city approved plans to add office towers to the landmark structure. Construction on the towers is scheduled to begin in 2015.

The market, which attracts approximately 120,000 visitors a week, sells products ranging from fine foods and baked goods, to books, flowers and kitchen accessories.

Dhobi Ghat, a famous open-air laundry where dhobis (washerfolk) wash and dry clothes in full view of the public, is a source of much fascination for visitors to Mumbai. Rows upon rows of concrete wash pens come together to make the world’s largest outdoor laundry.

Meanwhile, laundromats in New York, while not as visually interesting, have their own inherent drama. They are places where “irregular things happen,” according to a New York Times article, and where people “flirt, debate, gossip, argue, break up, discover love, loiter, do business and just about anything else that can be squeezed into 27-minute heavy-soil cycles.” In the older apartment buildings in New York City, personal washing equipment was often prohibited, and the city now has 2,654 self-service laundries to fulfill that need.

The act of washing clothes has inspired art as well. In 2011, a dhobi is one of the main characters in “Dhobi Ghat: Mumbai Diaries,” a 2011 movie directed by Kiran Rao, and a 1985 cable TV movie directed by Robert Altman, “Laundromat,” explored the drama that ensues when two women air out their dirty laundry.

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Eva Longoria Reveals Valentine's Day (and Upcoming Birthday!) Plans

Caught in the Act

02/05/2013 at 06:00 AM EST

Eva Longoria

Denise Truscello/WireImage

Eva Longoria already knows what she'll be doing on Valentine's Day.

The actress visited the new restaurant and nightclub, She by Morton's, in Las Vegas – in which she is a part owner – on Saturday night, and revealed what's on her agenda for the heartfelt holiday.

"Eva said she would be spending Valentine's Day with her girlfriends – like she always does," a source tells PEOPLE. But that's not the only thing on her agenda. The former Desperate Housewives star also said she's also made plans for her March birthday.

"She's taking a charity trip to South America, which she is really excited about," the source says. "She joked that you shouldn't celebrate birthdays after a certain age because we don't want to remind people how old we are!"

– Patrick Gomez

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Bullying study: It does get better for gay teens

CHICAGO (AP) — It really does get better for gay and bisexual teens when it comes to being bullied, although young gay men have it worse than their lesbian peers, according to the first long-term scientific evidence on how the problem changes over time.

The seven-year study involved more than 4,000 teens in England who were questioned yearly through 2010, until they were 19 and 20 years old. At the start, just over half of the 187 gay, lesbian and bisexual teens said they had been bullied; by 2010 that dropped to 9 percent of gay and bisexual boys and 6 percent of lesbian and bisexual girls.

The researchers said the same results likely would be found in the United States.

In both countries, a "sea change" in cultural acceptance of gays and growing intolerance for bullying occurred during the study years, which partly explains the results, said study co-author Ian Rivers, a psychologist and professor of human development at Brunel University in London.

That includes a government mandate in England that schools work to prevent bullying, and changes in the United States permitting same-sex marriage in several states.

In 2010, syndicated columnist Dan Savage launched the "It Gets Better" video project to encourage bullied gay teens. It was prompted by widely publicized suicides of young gays, and includes videos from politicians and celebrities.

"Bullying tends to decline with age regardless of sexual orientation and gender," and the study confirms that, said co-author Joseph Robinson, a researcher and assistant professor of educational psychology at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. "In absolute terms, this would suggest that yes, it gets better."

The study appears online Monday in the journal Pediatrics.

Eliza Byard, executive director of the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network, said the results mirror surveys by her anti-bullying advocacy group that show bullying is more common in U.S. middle schools than in high schools.

But the researchers said their results show the situation is more nuanced for young gay men.

In the first years of the study, gay boys and girls were almost twice as likely to be bullied as their straight peers. By the last year, bullying dropped overall and was at about the same level for lesbians and straight girls. But the difference between men got worse by ages 19 and 20, with gay young men almost four times more likely than their straight peers to be bullied.

The mixed results for young gay men may reflect the fact that masculine tendencies in girls and women are more culturally acceptable than femininity in boys and men, Robinson said.

Savage, who was not involved in the study, agreed.

"A lot of the disgust that people feel when you bring up homosexuality ... centers around gay male sexuality," Savage said. "There's more of a comfort level" around gay women, he said.

Kendall Johnson, 21, a junior theater major at the University of Illinois, said he was bullied for being gay in high school, mostly when he brought boyfriends to school dances or football games.

"One year at prom, I had a guy tell us that we were disgusting and he didn't want to see us dancing anymore," Johnson said. A football player and the president of the drama club intervened on his behalf, he recalled.

Johnson hasn't been bullied in college, but he said that's partly because he hangs out with the theater crowd and avoids the fraternity scene. Still, he agreed, that it generally gets better for gays as they mature.

"As you grow older, you become more accepting of yourself," Johnson said.

___

Online:

Pediatrics: http://www.pediatrics.org

It Gets Better: http://www.itgetsbetter.org

___

AP Medical Writer Lindsey Tanner can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/LindseyTanner

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Teacher is charged with child molestation, battery

City prosecutors Monday charged a Tarzana-area middle school teacher with more than half a dozen counts of misdemeanor child molestation in connection with the alleged sexual battery of three girls, authorities said.

Jason Leon, 32, who taught at Portola Middle School, is being held at Van Nuys Jail in lieu of $35,000 bail. He faces four counts of child molestation and three counts of battery. If convicted on all charges, Leon could face a maximum sentence of up to 51/2 years and $26,000 in fines, the Los Angeles city attorney's office said.

Leon is expected to be arraigned in Van Nuys Superior Court on Tuesday unless he posts bail, authorities said.

"Working with LAPD and the school district, this office will aggressively prosecute adults who prey upon our children," said City Atty. Carmen Trutanich. "Our schools should be one of the safest of places in the community for our children, and I will do everything within my authority to ensure their safety."

Leon was taken into custody Monday morning by LAPD officers after an eight-month investigation with L.A. Unified School Police.

The investigation began after a 13-year-old female student at Portola Middle School reported that Leon touched her inappropriately on the last day of class, June 15, 2012.

Another 13-year-old student also reported that on both June 15, 2012, and several days earlier, Leon had touched her. A third student at the school also told authorities she had been abused by Leon on several occasions in 2010, when she was 14, city prosecutors said.

Late Monday afternoon, L.A. Unified officials issued a statement saying that Leon was removed from the campus in June 2012, when the misconduct allegation first surfaced. Since then, he has been assigned to "a non-school location with no contact with students."

"At that time, parents and guardians were notified within 72 hours of his removal," school officials said. "A second notification indicating the arrest was sent" Monday.

Leon, who taught history and communications, began his L.A. Unified career in August 2006 as a probationary teacher at Portola before being permanently hired in 2007.

andrew.blankstein@latimes.com

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India Ink: Five Questions For: Author Jamil Ahmad

Jamil Ahmad is the author of “The Wandering Falcon,” a novel that delves into the lives of the tribal population living in the border region of Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran. This is the debut novel of the former Pakistani bureaucrat, now in his 80s. He has spent more than 20 years in the Balochistan and Frontier provinces in Pakistan during his service.

The novel was shortlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize in 2011 and was also a finalist for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature this year.

India Ink interviewed Mr. Ahmad during the Jaipur Literature Festival.

Why does the Jaipur Literature Festival matter to you?

When I got the invite, there was a feeling that I should make it. My family was very involved, and they felt that I should be here.

What are the occupational hazards of being a writer?

I don’t think there are any.

What is your writing ritual?

I had time on my hands. I wrote in longhand, and my wife typed it with a manual typewriter, which was a German make.

The manuscript took 40 years to publish. I started writing in 1971, finished in ’73.

The Atlantic wanted to publish a short story. One British publisher said, “Change it to nonfiction.” Another British publisher said, “Change it to the modern idiom.” Tribes don’t speak English! The tribes had their own language. Their entire language has changed now.

Then I lost track. It was sheer luck that Penguin India published my work.

How do you deal with critics?

I am not disturbed by them. I reread them. Good reviews sometimes puff you up. Some reviews in India have been far too complimentary. It is ironic that of the negative reviews, the majority came from Pakistan.

Why should we read “The Wandering Falcon”?

People should buy it if they find the cover attractive when they see it in a bookstore. It is a short book, about 200 pages. It is an easy read.

I want people to understand that tribes are not savage. Left to themselves, the tribes will adjust to changes in the periphery. There should not be attempts to socially engineer them.

(The interview has been lightly edited and condensed.)

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Estonian pleads guilty in U.S. court to Internet advertising scam

NEW YORK (Reuters) – An Estonian man pleaded guilty on Friday in U.S. federal court for his role in a massive Internet scam that targeted well-known websites such as iTunes, Netflix and The Wall Street Journal.

The scheme infected at least four million computers in more than 100 countries, including 500,000 in the United States, with malicious software, or malware, according to the indictment. It included a large number of computers at data centers located in New York, federal prosecutors said.

Valeri Aleksejev, 32, was the first of six Estonians and one Russian indicted in 2011 to enter a plea. They were indicted on five charges each of wire and computer intrusion. One of the defendants, Vladimir Tsastsin, was also charged with 22 counts of money laundering.

In U.S. District Court in Manhattan on Friday, Aleksejev pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to commit computer intrusion. He faces up to 25 years in prison, deportation and the forfeiture of $ 7 million.

The scam had several components, including a “click-hijacking fraud” in which the malware re-routed searches by users on infected computers to sites designated by the defendants, prosecutors said in the indictment. Users of infected computers trying to access Apple Inc’s iTunes website or Netflix Inc‘s movie website, for example, instead ended up at websites of unaffiliated businesses, according to the indictment.

Another component of the scam replaced legitimate advertisements on websites operated by News Corp’s The Wall Street Journal, Amazon.com Inc and others with advertisements that triggered payments for the defendants, prosecutors said.

The defendants reaped at least $ 14 million from the fraud, prosecutors said. However, Aleksejev’s lawyer, William Stampur, said in court on Friday that Aleksejev has no assets.

Estonian police arrested Aleksejev and the other Estonians in November 2011. One other Estonian, Anton Ivanov, has been extradited, and the extradition of the other four is pending, according to the U.S. Attorney’s office in Manhattan. The Russian, Andrey Taame, remains at large, according to the U.S. Attorney’s office.

Aleksejev told Magistrate Judge James Francis he assisted in blocking anti-virus software updates on infected computers. Francis asked Aleksejev if he knew what he was doing was illegal.

“I thought it was wrong,” Aleksejev said in broken English after a long pause. “But of course I didn’t know all the laws in the U.S.”

Francis set a tentative sentencing date of May 31 for Aleksejev.

The case is USA v. Tsastsin et al, U.S. District Court in Manhattan, No. 11-00878.

(Reporting by Bernard Vaughan; Editing by Dan Grebler)

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What Football Game? Beyoncé Rocks the Superdome in Leather & Lace

Stylewatch
Style News Now

02/03/2013 at 09:06 PM ET

One thing was certain going into Super Bowl XLVII: Beyoncé was going to put on a killer halftime show, and she was going to look amazing doing it. And if she practiced until her feet bled, there was no sign of it as she danced in her towering heels.

To strut out onstage during ‘Crazy In Love,’ the star wore an uncharacteristically demure belted lamé mini with wide lapels, but she quickly tore it away to reveal a leather bodysuit with a black lace skirt worn over her signature fishnets. She completed the look with thigh-highs and sexy black booties.

Destiny’s Child fans missing the trio’s epic matching outfits were given a treat when Kelly Rowland and Michelle Williams proved the rumors true, joining Beyoncé onstage for a medley that included ‘Bootylicious’ and ‘Single Ladies.’ Their costumes echoed Bey’s: Rowland wore a revealing V-neck Emilio Pucci bodysuit, while Williams was glam in a tough-girl ribbed leather mini.

And to ensure that Beyoncé’s hair was supremely whip-able (as demonstrated during ‘Baby Boy’ and ‘Halo’), stylist Kim Kimble gave her a “soft glam” look by curling it, then brushing out the curls and smoothing them with Kimble Hair Care Brazilian Nut and Acai serum. She sprayed it with L’Oréal’s classic Elnett hairspray to ensure it wouldn’t budge no matter what the superstar put it through.

Tell us: What did you think of Beyoncé’s Super Bowl outfit — and the Destiny’s Child reunion looks?

–Alex Apatoff

PHOTOS: VOTE ON MORE STAR STYLE HERE!

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Bullying study: It does get better for gay teens

CHICAGO (AP) — It really does get better for gay and bisexual teens when it comes to being bullied, although young gay men have it worse than their lesbian peers, according to the first long-term scientific evidence on how the problem changes over time.

The seven-year study involved more than 4,000 teens in England who were questioned yearly through 2010, until they were 19 and 20 years old. At the start, just over half of the 187 gay, lesbian and bisexual teens said they had been bullied; by 2010 that dropped to 9 percent of gay and bisexual boys and 6 percent of lesbian and bisexual girls.

The researchers said the same results likely would be found in the United States.

In both countries, a "sea change" in cultural acceptance of gays and growing intolerance for bullying occurred during the study years, which partly explains the results, said study co-author Ian Rivers, a psychologist and professor of human development at Brunel University in London.

That includes a government mandate in England that schools work to prevent bullying, and changes in the United States permitting same-sex marriage in several states.

In 2010, syndicated columnist Dan Savage launched the "It Gets Better" video project to encourage bullied gay teens. It was prompted by widely publicized suicides of young gays, and includes videos from politicians and celebrities.

"Bullying tends to decline with age regardless of sexual orientation and gender," and the study confirms that, said co-author Joseph Robinson, a researcher and assistant professor of educational psychology at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. "In absolute terms, this would suggest that yes, it gets better."

The study appears online Monday in the journal Pediatrics.

Eliza Byard, executive director of the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network, said the results mirror surveys by her anti-bullying advocacy group that show bullying is more common in U.S. middle schools than in high schools.

But the researchers said their results show the situation is more nuanced for young gay men.

In the first years of the study, gay boys and girls were almost twice as likely to be bullied as their straight peers. By the last year, bullying dropped overall and was at about the same level for lesbians and straight girls. But the difference between men got worse by ages 19 and 20, with gay young men almost four times more likely than their straight peers to be bullied.

The mixed results for young gay men may reflect the fact that masculine tendencies in girls and women are more culturally acceptable than femininity in boys and men, Robinson said.

Savage, who was not involved in the study, agreed.

"A lot of the disgust that people feel when you bring up homosexuality ... centers around gay male sexuality," Savage said. "There's more of a comfort level" around gay women, he said.

Kendall Johnson, 21, a junior theater major at the University of Illinois, said he was bullied for being gay in high school, mostly when he brought boyfriends to school dances or football games.

"One year at prom, I had a guy tell us that we were disgusting and he didn't want to see us dancing anymore," Johnson said. A football player and the president of the drama club intervened on his behalf, he recalled.

Johnson hasn't been bullied in college, but he said that's partly because he hangs out with the theater crowd and avoids the fraternity scene. Still, he agreed, that it generally gets better for gays as they mature.

"As you grow older, you become more accepting of yourself," Johnson said.

___

Online:

Pediatrics: http://www.pediatrics.org

It Gets Better: http://www.itgetsbetter.org

___

AP Medical Writer Lindsey Tanner can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/LindseyTanner

Read More..

Slaying casts light on Hollywood's transgender prostitutes

The last that Cassidy Vickers' street friends saw of him was about 10 p.m. on Nov. 17, 2011, outside the Donut Time shop on Santa Monica Boulevard in Hollywood.

He was waving and saying he'd be back in a bit.

A transgender prostitute whose legal name was Nathan, Cassidy had come down from the San Francisco Bay Area to work the Hollywood streets.

That night, on Lexington Avenue, 10 blocks from the doughnut shop, Vickers was shot to death by a man on a bike.

Vickers' death was part of a series of crimes by a man police are now calling the Western Bandit for his armed robberies late at night in the vicinity of Western Avenue from Hollywood to South Los Angeles. Detectives believe he has recently resurfaced, committing six more street robberies from June to October, and then two more last month.

"This is a huge concern for us, and for the safety of the public," said Lt. John Radtke of the Los Angeles Police Department. Radtke, supervisor of West Bureau homicide detectives, said a "signature aspect" of the crimes, which he declined to specify, has led investigators to believe the same man has appeared three times to commit crimes.

His victims, Radtke said, range from transgender prostitutes to people coming home from work late at night. Besides Vickers, two other victims have been transgender women, neither of whom was hurt. Detectives don't believe he's specifically targeting transgender prostitutes.

"My feeling is he's out there robbing and desperate to get his money and he takes whoever he encounters," Radtke said.

Still, the case of the Western Bandit casts light on the world of transgender streetwalkers, which has changed radically in recent years, leaving only the most vulnerable on the street at night — people like Nathan "Cassidy" Vickers.

Vickers grew up in a tidy, four-bedroom house in East Palo Alto, a working-class black and Latino town south of San Francisco.

In the years after high school, he came out as a gay man, said his mother, Mitzy Thompson, though "he had some of the 'hood in him," dressing in baggy pants, with braided hair and two fake gold front teeth.

His friends remember a funny, talkative and loyal gay man attempting to find his way in a tough town like East Palo Alto.

He left, eventually living in Las Vegas and, briefly, New York. He then returned to the Bay Area, where he worked for years cleaning rooms in hotels.

Sometime in 2010 he began going to Oakland parties in drag and from there, desperate for cash, working as a prostitute.

Cross-dressing, for Vickers, "was 90% economic; 10% because he liked the attention," said Nelee Webb, a friend and former roommate. Unemployment "took his self-esteem. He felt 'This is my last resort.' "

By early 2011, Vickers was traveling the Hollywood-Bay Area circuit that has for years been followed by many transgender prostitutes.

He remained Nathan in East Palo Alto, but became Cassidy while working Hollywood's transgender prostitute strip: Santa Monica Boulevard.

According to a report by the city attorney's office, Cassidy Vickers was arrested for soliciting prostitution, a month before he died, on nearby Lexington Avenue, which is where many transgender prostitutes hang out.

Several blocks of Lexington, just north of Santa Monica Boulevard and lined with small bungalows and crowded apartments, have been a strip for male hookers dressed as women for at least two decades. The scene reached its zenith in the mid-1990s. But it has declined in the era of Internet sites that match johns with prostitutes.

"It's a street of no return," said Elena Pupo, a Venezuelan transgender woman and advocate for the community.

Vickers had no home, no cosmetic surgery. He was, said a friend who asked not to be identified, a handsome man, "but wasn't really an attractive looking female."

He was the kind of vulnerable night denizen that the Western Bandit appears to target. Working late at night, he slept in bushes on a street between Donut Time and Lexington, or in a booth at the X-Spot adult bookstore in the strip mall behind the doughnut shop, Amber said.

The last time Amber saw Vickers, he seemed happier and more exuberant — the kind of outgoing person that Bay Area friends describe. "She felt good about herself that day," Amber said.

An hour later, Amber said, police cars descended on the Donut Time strip mall. Officers circulated a picture of Vickers asking the streetwalkers who heshe was.

More than a hundred people attended Vickers' funeral in East Palo Alto. Thompson didn't know many of them. She was startled to see a few were men with women's breasts and clothes.

Nevertheless, Thompson dressed her son's body in a man's suit — burgundy, his favorite color. His face, bewhiskered for years, was clean-shaven — the way he kept it as a woman when he died. Thompson said she learned of her son's cross-dressing only after his death, from a Facebook video he'd posted.

For police, Vickers' story is one they've seen all too often.

"It's the age-old Hollywood story," said Brett Goodkin, the Los Angeles police homicide detective called to Lexington that night. "People come to Hollywood … so they can be somebody else. In Nathan's case, he could be himself in Hollywood. That was his Hollywood dream. It ended like so many others."

sam.quinones@latimes.com

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