City Room: Cuomo Declares Public Health Emergency Over Flu Outbreak

With the nation in the grip of a severe influenza outbreak that has seen deaths reach epidemic levels, New York State declared a public health emergency on Saturday, making access to vaccines more easily available.

There have been nearly 20,000 cases of flu reported across the state so far this season, officials said. Last season, 4,400 positive laboratory tests were reported.

“We are experiencing the worst flu season since at least 2009, and influenza activity in New York State is widespread, with cases reported in all 57 counties and all five boroughs of New York City,” Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said in a statement.

Under the order, pharmacists will be allowed to administer flu vaccinations to patients between 6 months and 18 years old, temporarily suspending a state law that prohibits pharmacists from administering immunizations to children.

While children and older people tend to be the most likely to become seriously ill from the flu, Mr. Cuomo urged all New Yorkers to get vaccinated.

On Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta said that deaths from the flu had reached epidemic levels, with at least 20 children having died nationwide. Officials cautioned that deaths from pneumonia and the flu typically reach epidemic levels for a week or two every year. The severity of the outbreak will be determined by how long the death toll remains high or if it climbs higher.

There was some evidence that caseloads may be peaking, federal officials said on Friday.

In New York City, public health officials announced on Thursday that flu-related illnesses had reached epidemic levels, and they joined the chorus of authorities urging people to get vaccinated.

“It’s a bad year,” the city’s health commissioner, Dr. Thomas A. Farley, told reporters on Thursday. “We’ve got lots of flu, it’s mainly type AH3N2, which tends to be a little more severe. So we’re seeing plenty of cases of flu and plenty of people sick with flu. Our message for any people who are listening to this is it’s still not too late to get your flu shot.”

There has been a spike in the number of people going to emergency rooms over the past two weeks with flulike symptoms – including fever, fatigue and coughing – Dr. Farley said.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Mr. Cuomo made a public display of getting shots this past week.

In a briefing with reporters on Friday, officials from the C.D.C. said that this year’s vaccine was effective in 62 percent of cases.

As officials have stepped up their efforts encouraging vaccinations, there have been scattered reports of shortages. But officials said plenty of the vaccine was available.

According to the C.D.C., makers of the flu vaccine produced about 135 million doses for this year. As of early this month, 128 million doses had been distributed. While that would not be enough for every American, only 37 percent of the population get a flu shot each year.

Federal health officials said they would be happy if that number rose to 50 percent, which would mean that there would be more than enough vaccine for anyone who wanted to be immunized.

Two other diseases – norovirus and whooping cough – are also widespread this winter and are contributing to the number of people getting sick.

The flu can resemble a cold, though the symptoms come on more rapidly and are more severe.

A version of this article appeared in print on 01/13/2013, on page A21 of the NewYork edition with the headline: New York Declares Health Emergency.

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Treasury Will Not Mint $1 Trillion Coin to Raise Debt Ceiling

WASHINGTON — The Treasury Department said Saturday that it will not mint a trillion-dollar platinum coin to head off an imminent battle with Congress over raising the government’s borrowing limit.

“Neither the Treasury Department nor the Federal Reserve believes that the law can or should be used to facilitate the production of platinum coins for the purpose of avoiding an increase in the debt limit,” Anthony Coley, a Treasury spokesman, said in a written statement.

The Obama administration has indicated that the only way for the country to avoid a cash-management crisis as soon as next month is for Congress to raise the “debt ceiling,” which is the statutory limit on government borrowing. The cap is $16.4 trillion.

“There are only two options to deal with the debt limit: Congress can pay its bills, or it can fail to act and put the nation into default,” Jay Carney, the White House press secretary, said in a statement. “Congress needs to do its job.”

In recent weeks, some Republicans have indicated that they would not agree to raise the debt limit unless Democrats agreed to make cuts to entitlement programs like Social Security.

The White House has said it would not negotiate spending cuts in exchange for Congressional authority to borrow more, and it has insisted that Congress raise the ceiling as a matter of course, to cover expenses already authorized by Congress. In broader fiscal negotiations, it has said it would not agree to spending cuts without commensurate tax increases.

The idea of minting a trillion-dollar coin drew wide if puzzling attention recently after some bloggers and economic commentators had suggested it as an alternative to involving Congress.

By virtue of an obscure law meant to apply to commemorative coins, the Treasury secretary could order the production of a high-denomination platinum coin and deposit it at the Federal Reserve, where it would count as a government asset and give the country more breathing room under its debt ceiling. Once Congress raised the debt ceiling, the Treasury secretary could then order the coin destroyed.

Mr. Carney, the press secretary, fielded questions about the theoretical tactic at a news conference last week. But the idea is now formally off the table.

The White House has also rejected the idea that it could mount a challenge to the debt ceiling itself, on the strength of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which holds that the “validity of the public debt” of the United States “shall not be questioned.”

The Washington Post earlier published a report that the Obama administration had rejected the platinum-coin idea.

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Police search for Nordstrom Rack robbers who took hostages

Los Angeles police continued to search for armed suspects who took 14 hostages at a Nordstrom Rack store in Westchester this week, brutally assaulting some of them.

Law enforcement sources said detectives were following several promising leads in tracking the suspects.

Several of the hostages -- all store employees -- were hurt in the incident. But their injuries were not life-threatening, and by Friday afternoon the victims had all been treated and released.

The gunmen apparently stormed the store about 10 p.m. Thursday, as it was closing.

Two employees hid in a restroom, authorities said. The gunmen herded the rest into another restroom on the third level, according to dispatch audio posted on the Venice 311 server. There, at least two employees were told to strip.

One woman was dragged to a separate room, where she was sexually assaulted, police said. A second woman was stabbed in the neck, police said, and a third hostage was pistol-whipped.

After officers arrived, a vehicle with tinted windows and its headlights off sped out of the parking garage. The driver wore a black hoodie and the passenger a white T-shirt, according to dispatch recordings.

"White SUV! White SUV! White Ford Explorer!" an officer barked. "High rate of speed leaving the parking lot!"

"Go pursue that vehicle!" another officer said.

They did, to no avail.

"We lost sight of that vehicle," an officer said over the radio. "We're going on the 405 north. I need other units to try Sepulveda. We don't know where vehicle is now."

The suspects had apparently escaped — though officers didn't know that at the time and waited to move into the store. They called in a SWAT team, which arrived about 1 a.m. The mall remained on lockdown — stranding at least 200 moviegoers at the cineplex.

Simeon Campbell, 26, and two of his friends had gone to the 10 p.m. showing of "A Haunted House."

"It was funny until we got out," he said.

Theater employees told them the mall had been closed off but did not explain why. Some moviegoers were escorted to the second floor, where Campbell looked out a window.

"It became real when I saw the SWAT team," he said.

Some moviegoers munched on popcorn that theater employees handed out. Others tried to nap. Campbell paced, his head throbbing and his stomach in knots.

"What if they run in here? What if they have accomplices?" he said he thought.

The wait ended sometime before 3 a.m., when some of the Nordstrom hostages called 911, described their injuries and asked for medical aid, according to dispatch recordings.

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Judge Halts California Internet Sex-Offender Law

A federal judge late Friday blocked enforcement of a California voter-approved measure that would have dramatically curtailed the online, First Amendment rights of registered sex offenders.

Proposition 35, which passed with 81 percent of the vote in November, would have required anyone who is a registered sex offender — including people with misdemeanor offenses such as indecent exposure and whose offenses were not related to activity on the internet — to turn over to law enforcement a list of all identifiers they use online as well as a list of service providers they use.

U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson of San Francisco also said the measure was overbroad.

“The challenged provisions have some nexus with the government’s legitimate purpose of combating online sex offenses and human trafficking, but the government may not regulate expression in such a manner that a substantial portion of the burden on speech does not serve to advance its goals,” he wrote.

The Californians Against Sexual Exploitation Act would also have forced sex offenders to fork over to law enforcement their e-mail addresses, user and screen names, or any other identifier they used for instant messaging, for social networking sites or online forums and in internet chat rooms.

The American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation immediately filed suit after its passage. The measure would currently affect some 75,000 sex offenders registered in California, but the law also requires those convicted of human trafficking to register as sex offenders, thus widening the pool of people affected.

The measure carries three-year prison penalties.

Henderson had tentatively blocked enforcement of the measure immediately after it passed. His decision Friday is in the form of a preliminary injunction. Next up is a trial on the lawsuit’s merits, if it gets that far.

David Kravets is a senior staff writer for Wired.com and founder of the fake news site TheYellowDailyNews.com. He's a dad of two boys and has been a reporter since the manual typewriter days.

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Simon Rattle to quit Berlin Philharmonic in 2018

BERLIN (Reuters) – Renowned British conductor Simon Rattle said on Thursday he would step down as head of the prestigious Berlin Philharmonic in 2018 when his current contract with the orchestra expires and before he turns 64.

“In 2018 I will be nearly 64 years old,” the 57-year-old said in a statement on the Philharmonic’s website. “As a Liverpool boy, it is impossible not to think of the Beatles’ question ‘Will you still need me… when I’m 64?’” he joked.

“This was not an easy decision. I love this orchestra and therefore wanted to tell them my decision as early as possible.”

Rattle, known for his youthful energy, his readiness to take risks and his mop of curly grey hair, took over the Berlin Philharmonic, one of the world’s leading orchestras, in 2002.

The first Briton to hold a post previously associated with such giants of German music as Herbert von Karajan, Rattle has sometimes upset music traditionalists in his adopted land with his love of experimentation and his unorthodox approach.

Rattle has described his sometimes turbulent relationship with the Berlin Philharmonic as “a love affair”.

Critics have accused him of lacking appropriate German gravitas in such a high-profile cultural role and of caring more about the public image of the orchestra than about the music.

But his many supporters have welcomed efforts to reach out to new audiences as well as his success in forging relations with other orchestras around the world, including Venezuela’s Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra.

“With his outstanding musicality and creativity he has filled new listeners with enthusiasm for the orchestra every day and has shaped the national and international perception of the Berliner Philharmonic as a vital cultural ambassador for Berlin,” said Martin Hoffmann, the orchestra’s general manager.

Rattle, who studied at the Royal Academy of Music in London, worked as conductor of the Birmingham Symphony Orchestra in central England for 18 years before moving to Berlin.

(Reporting by Gareth Jones; editing by Mike Collett-White)

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Former Lab Technician Denies Faulty DNA Work in Rape Cases

A former New York City laboratory technician whose work on rape cases is now being scrutinized for serious mistakes said on Friday that she had been unaware there were problems in her work and, disputing an earlier report, denied she had resigned under pressure.

The former lab technician, Serrita Mitchell, said any problems must have been someone else’s.

“My work?” Ms. Mitchell said. “No, no, no, not my work.”

Earlier, the city medical examiner’s office, where Ms. Mitchell said she was employed from 2000 to 2011, said it was reviewing 843 rape cases handled by a lab technician who might have missed critical evidence.

So far, it has finished looking over about half the cases, and found 26 in which the technician had missed biological evidence and 19 in which evidence was commingled with evidence from other cases. In seven cases where evidence was missed, the medical examiner’s office was able to extract a DNA profile, raising the possibility that detectives could have caught some suspects sooner.

The office declined to identify the technician. Documents said she quit in November 2011 after the office moved to fire her, once supervisors had begun to discover deficiencies in her work. A city official who declined to be identified said Ms. Mitchell was the technician.

However, Ms. Mitchell, reached at her home in the Bronx on Friday, said she had never been told there were problems. “It couldn’t be me because your work gets checked,” she said. “You have supervisors.”

She also said that she had resigned because of a rotator cuff injury that impeded her movement. “I loved the job so much that I stayed a little longer,” she said, explaining that she had not expected to stay with the medical examiner’s office so long. “Then it was time to leave.”

Also on Friday, the Legal Aid Society, which provides criminal defense lawyers for most of the city’s poor defendants, said it was demanding that the city turn over information about the cases under review.

If needed, Legal Aid will sue the city to gain access to identifying information about the cases, its chief lawyer, Steven Banks, said, noting that New York was one of only 14 states that did not require routine disclosure of criminal evidence before trial.

Disclosure of the faulty examination of the evidence is prompting questions about outside review of the medical examiner’s office. The City Council on Friday announced plans for an emergency oversight committee, and its members spoke with outrage about the likelihood that missed semen stains and “false negatives” might have enabled rapists to go unpunished.

“The mishandling of rape cases is making double victims of women who have already suffered an indescribably horrific event,” said Christine C. Quinn, the Council speaker.

A few more details emerged Friday about a 2001 case involving the rape of a minor in Brooklyn, in which the technician missed biological evidence, the review found. The victim accused an 18-year-old acquaintance of forcing himself on her, and he was questioned by the police but not charged, according to a law enforcement official.

Unrelated to the rape, he pleaded guilty in 2005 to third-degree robbery and served two years in prison. The DNA sample he gave in the robbery case was matched with the one belatedly developed from evidence the technician had overlooked in the 2001 rape, law enforcement officials said. He was recently indicted in the 2001 rape.

Especially alarming to defense lawyers was the possibility that DNA samples were cross-contaminated and led to false convictions, or could do so in the future.

“Up to this point,” Mr. Banks said, “they have not made information available to us, as the primary defender in New York City, to determine whether there’s an injustice that’s been done in past cases, pending cases, or allowing us to be on the lookout in future cases.” He added, “If it could happen with one analyst, how does anyone know that it stops there?”

The medical examiner’s office has said that the risk of cross-contamination was extremely low and that it does not appear that anyone was wrongly convicted in the cases that have been reviewed so far. And officials in at least two of the city’s district attorneys’ offices — for Brooklyn and Manhattan — said they had not found any erroneous convictions.

But Mr. Banks said the authorities needed to do more, and that their statements thus far were the equivalent of “trust us.”

“Given what’s happened,” he said, “that’s cold comfort.”

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Business Briefing | Retailing: Best Buy Shares Rally on Improved Holiday Sales

The Best Buy Company had better-than-expected holiday sales, setting off a gain of $2, or 16.4 percent, in its stock price, to $14.21 a share on Friday. The holiday quarter accounted for about a third of Best Buy’s revenue last year. The chain said that revenue at stores open at least a year fell 1.4 percent for the nine weeks ended Jan. 5. The company’s performance in the United States was flat. The chief executive, Hubert Joly, said in a statement that the result was better than the last several quarters. A Morningstar analyst, R. J. Hottovy, said the results showed that some of Best Buy’s initiatives, like more employee training and online price matching helped increase sales.

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Southbound 5 Freeway at Grapevine reopened

Southbound Interstate 5 at the Grapevine was reopened Friday morning about 8 a.m. but the northbound lanes remained closed because of icy road conditions, the California Highway Patrol said.

Drivers were being escorted by CHP cruisers on the southbound side of the freeway as a precaution, officials said. CHP planned to escort cars on the northbound side Friday morning, but don't know what time that will begin.

The freeway was closed at the steep Grapevine grade Thursday afternoon as a cold winter storm pounded Southern California. 

Stranded motorists jammed hotels and parking lots of food outlets off Interstate 5 in Lebec on Thursday evening, trying to determine whether to wait out the reopening or find an alternate route. Truck drivers lined up along roadsides just off the freeway, near various food outlets.

At the Best Western Hotel in Lebec, which sold out of all rooms by early Thursday evening, many who were stranded crowded around tables in the breakfast room, watching the news and hoping for updates on the reopening of Interstate 5.

Tanya Viau said she sat for two hours on the freeway before being diverted off around 4:30 p.m. The deckhand for San Francisco ferries was headed from the Sacramento area to San Diego to visit her son, who had recently graduated.

"I felt fortunate to get a room," Viau said. "I've been driving this route for 30 years and this is the first time I've ever been stranded."

Jim McCluskey hurried out of the Best Western around 6:30 a.m. to try his luck getting onto the 58 Freeway and traversing the desert to try to get south. McCluskey had been headed to Castaic and turned up at the Best Western after being diverted from the freeway Thursday afternoon. 

"I've been stuck several times in the past, I'm used to it," he said.

Floyd Osborne and Dan Tobias, who were headed from Bakersfield to Lancaster, pored over computer maps to determine alternate routes.

Truck driver Samuel Watson, 23, said he arrived in Lebec around 1:30 p.m. Thursday and ended up getting stranded. He didn’t find out about the Grapevine being closed until he was already on the road from Ripon, Calif., to Torrance.

Watson ended up sleeping in the cab of his rig loaded with hazardous materials. He had extra warm clothing, adding he was always prepared and always had something to sleep on.

He was hoping to make it back to the Stockton area by Saturday to celebrate his 24th birthday.

Truck driver Ricardo Roman set out for an eight-hour trip from Sacramento and arrived in Lebec at 4 a.m. He was headed to Santa Fe Springs and was expected to make a delivery for Kohl’s department store at 8 a.m. Friday.

He said he had been in the trucking business for eight years and had enough clothes and food to get him through the ordeal.

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Ford Wants to Teach You Some Off-Peak Electrical Tricks

LAS VEGAS — Electric vehicle owners eager to charge up in the greenest, most economical manner plug in during off-peak hours when rates are lowest. Ford wants to extend the concept of off-peak power to home appliances, further reducing an EV owner’s electric bill and CO2 footprint by allowing them to tap into the cloud and a proprietary power-tracking database.

Here at CES 2013, the automaker announced MyEnergi Lifestyle, a sweeping collaboration with appliance giant Whirlpool, smart-meter supplier Infineon, Internet-connected thermostat company Nest Labs and, for a green-energy slant, solar-tech provider SunPower. The goal is to help people understand how the “time-flexible” EV charging model can more cheaply power home appliances, and how combining an EV, connected appliances and the data they generate can help them better manage their energy consumption and avoid paying for power at high rates.

Because the electric grid experiences its heaviest loads during daytime hours when people are most active, consumers pay more for juice because utilities must produce more of it — an expensive proposition for all involved. For that reason, many utilities offer discounted rates for off-peak consumption to encourage customers to shift their energy usage patterns to nighttime or early-morning hours. Discounted rates typically apply between midnight and 5 a.m. and, according to Ford, can cost half as much.

The use of smart electrical meters in more than 40 million homes across the U.S. allows households to better take advantage of off-peak rates, said Mike Tinskey, Ford’s global director of vehicle electrification and infrastructure.

“We launched in 19 markets last year with our Focus Electric,” he says. “Of those, 16 had a timing use rate available and that’s all been driven by smart power meters.”

Appliances are getting smarter, too. Some of the most power-hungry appliances, such as a water heater and the ice maker in your freezer, can now schedule their most energy-intensive activities at night. Nest’s Internet-connected thermostat can help homeowners save energy while their away. While some of the appliances and devices within MyEnergi Lifestyle launch early this year, others are available now, Tinskey said.

“One of the key points we wanted to make is that this isn’t expensive stuff,” he said. “This is aimed at mid-America.”

The MyEnergi Lifestyle project also aims to tie these threads together and make it easier for EV owners make to manage and track of their electrical consumption using cloud-based data collected by smart appliances and meters. Users enter info such as their location and local utility rates into the database via the participants products, such as the MyFord Mobile app for the automaker’s EVs. And then they get results on the best charging times and the potential energy savings.

“When we put all these things together, we were astonished by what you can actually do,” Tinskey said.

Ford and its partners worked with researchers at Georgia Institute of Technology to create a model that calculates the electricity usage of a typical single family home for one year and the savings that could come from using off-peak electricity. It predicted a 60 percent reduction in energy costs and a 55 percent reduction in CO2 generated. That’s more than 9,000 kilograms of CO2. MyEnergi Lifestyle collaborators also announced plans to award a “typical” American family with the delivery and installation of energy-saving products from each company to create a real-world example of how the effectiveness of the program.

Researchers estimate that having every home in the U.S. implement energy-saving technologies like those promoted by MyEnergi would be the equivalent of taking every home in California, New York and Texas — around 32 million — off the grid. That’s a significant savings, but it still requires a significant initial investment on the part of the average homeowner. And it still may not be reason enough for some to buy an EV.

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Seattle bankruptcy hearing to decide Tully’s sale

SEATTLE (AP) — The auction for beleaguered coffee company Tully’s will likely conclude Friday in federal bankruptcy court, with an ownership group led by actor Patrick Dempsey in position to take over the chain. But Starbucks isn’t’ out of the running.

Dempsey — dubbed “McDreamy” in the “Grey’s Anatomy” hospital TV drama — claimed victory last week after an auction.

But a company that teamed up with Starbucks to bid for the Tully’s chain filed an objection Wednesday. AgriNurture Inc. says it’s still willing to proceed with its combined bid with Starbucks of about $ 10.6 million. The bid from Dempsey’s company, Global Baristas LLC, was for $ 9.2 million.

Tully’s has 47 shops in Washington and California with more than 500 employees. It filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in October.

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