Fat Dad: Baking for Love

Fat Dad

Dawn Lerman writes about growing up with a fat dad.

My grandmother Beauty always told me that the way to a man’s heart was through his stomach, and by the look of pure delight on my dad’s face when he ate a piece of warm, homemade chocolate cake, or bit into a just-baked crispy cookie, I grew to believe this was true. I had no doubt that when the time came, and I liked a boy, that a batch of my gooey, rich, chocolatey brownies would cast him under a magic spell, and we would live happily ever.

But when Hank Thomas walked into Miss Seawall’s ninth grade algebra class on a rainy, September day and smiled at me with his amazing grin, long brown hair, big green eyes and Jimi Hendrix T-shirt, I was completely unprepared for the avalanche of emotions that invaded every fiber of my being. Shivers, a pounding heart, and heat overcame me when he asked if I knew the value of 1,000 to the 25th power. The only answer I could think of, as I fumbled over my words, was “love me, love me,” but I managed to blurt out “1E+75.” I wanted to come across as smart and aloof, but every time he looked at me, I started stuttering and sweating as my face turned bright red. No one had ever looked at me like that: as if he knew me, as if he knew how lost I was and how badly I needed to be loved.

Hank, who was a year older than me, was very popular and accomplished. Unlike other boys who were popular for their looks or athletic skills, Hank was smart and talented. He played piano and guitar, and composed the most beautiful classical and rock concertos that left both teachers and students in awe.

Unlike Hank, I had not quite come into my own yet. I was shy, had raggedy messy hair that I tied back into braids, and my clothes were far from stylish. My mother and sister had been on the road touring for the past year with the Broadway show “Annie.” My sister had been cast as a principal orphan, and I stayed home with my dad to attend high school. My dad was always busy with work and martini dinners that lasted late into the night. I spent most of my evenings at home alone baking and making care packages for my sister instead of coercing my parents to buy me the latest selection of Gloria Vanderbilt jeans — the rich colored bluejeans with the swan stitched on the back pocket that you had to lie on your bed to zip up. It was the icon of cool for the popular and pretty girls. I was neither, but Hank picked me to be his math partner anyway.

With every equation we solved, my love for Hank became more desperate. After several months of exchanging smiles, I decided to make Hank a batch of my chocolate brownies for Valentine’s Day — the brownies that my dad said were like his own personal nirvana. My dad named them “closet” brownies, because when I was a little girl and used to make them for the family, he said that as soon as he smelled them coming out of the oven, he could imagine dashing away with them into the closet and devouring the whole batch.

After debating for hours if I should make the brownies with walnuts or chips, or fill the centers with peanut butter or caramel, I got to work. I had made brownies hundreds of times before, but this time felt different. With each ingredient I carefully stirred into the bowl, my heart began beating harder. I felt like I was going to burst from excitement. Surely, after Hank tasted these, he would love me as much as I loved him. I was not just making him brownies. I was showing him who I was, and what mattered to me. After the brownies cooled, I sprinkled them with a touch of powdered sugar and wrapped them with foil and red tissue paper. The next day I placed them in Hank’s locker, with a note saying, “Call me.”

After seven excruciating days with no call, some smiles and the usual small talk in math class, I conjured up the nerve to ask Hank if he liked my brownies.

“The brownies were from you?” he asked. “They were delicious.”

Then Hank invited me to a party at his house the following weekend. Without hesitation, I responded that I would love to come. I pleaded with my friend Sarah to accompany me.

As the day grew closer, I made my grandmother Beauty’s homemade fudge — the chocolate fudge she made for Papa the night before he proposed to her. Stirring the milk, butter and sugar together eased my nerves. I had never been to a high school party before, and I didn’t know what to expect. Sarah advised me to ditch the braids as she styled my hair, used a violet eyeliner and lent me her favorite V-neck sweater and a pair of her best Gloria Vanderbilt jeans.

When we walked in the door, fudge in hand, Hank was nowhere to be found. Thinking I had made a mistake for coming and getting ready to leave, I felt a hand on my back. It was Hank’s. He hugged me and told me he was glad I finally arrived. When Hank put his arm around me, nothing else existed. With a little help from Cupid or the magic of Beauty’s recipes, I found love.

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Fat Dad’s ‘Closet’ Brownies

These brownies are more like fudge than cake and contain a fraction of the flour found in traditional brownie recipes. My father called them “closet” brownies, because when he smelled them coming out of the oven he could imagine hiding in the closet to eat the whole batch. I baked them in the ninth grade for a boy that I had a crush on, and they were more effective than Cupid’s arrow at winning his heart.

6 tablespoons unsalted butter, plus extra for greasing the pan
8 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped, or semisweet chocolate chips
3/4 cup brown sugar
2 eggs at room temperature, beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 cup flour
1/2 cup chopped walnuts (optional)
Fresh berries or powdered sugar for garnish (optional)

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2. Grease an 8-inch square baking dish.

3. In a double boiler, melt chocolate. Then add butter, melt and stir to blend. Remove from heat and pour into a mixing bowl. Stir in sugar, eggs and vanilla and mix well.

4. Add flour. Mix well until very smooth. Add chopped walnuts if desired. Pour batter into greased baking pan.

5. Bake for 35 minutes, or until set and barely firm in the middle. Allow to cool on a rack before removing from pan. Optional: garnish with powdered sugar, or berries, or both.

Yield: 16 brownies

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Dawn Lerman is a New York-based health and nutrition consultant and founder of Magnificent Mommies, which provides school lectures, cooking classes and workshops. Her series on growing up with a fat father appears occasionally on Well.

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Latinos crucial to Herbalife's financial health

The future of Herbalife is riding on Latinos.

The Los Angeles company estimates that Latinos account for about 60% of its U.S. sales made through its network of independent distributors. And a growing slice of those sales are coming from informal nutrition clubs run out of people's homes and strip mall shops.

It's a cultural phenomenon that got its start in Mexico and is quickly catching on among immigrants who have moved to Southern California. Budding entrepreneurs like Angel Perez, a 27-year-old from Inglewood, are forming the backbone to Herbalife's growth.

Perez runs her nutrition club out of a tiny, aging retail shop that from the outside shows no signs that she's even open for business. But behind a single glass front door, covered by a green curtain, there's a lively atmosphere inside.

Colombian singer Shakira's voice blares from overhead speakers. "Hola! Como estas?" Perez says before blending an Herbalife meal-replacement shake for a customer. She charges $4 for a protein shake, hot tea and glass of aloe vera juice — part of a weight-loss effort she said has helped her shed dozens of pounds.

But these nutrition clubs — and Herbalife's business structure — have come under intense scrutiny.

The company is in the middle of a Wall Street battle between two billionaire activist investors. On one side, hedge fund manager Bill Ackman contends the company is a pyramid scheme in which most of the independent salespeople lose money and get stuck with a product that nobody wants. Ackman said he wagered $1 billion that the company would fail, shorting an eye-popping 20% of the company's shares.

Betting against him is Carl Icahn, who dismisses pyramid scheme accusations with high praise about Herbalife's business model. Icahn disclosed this week that he bought nearly 13% of the company's shares, and was talking to executives about taking the company private.

At the heart of this battle: Herbalife's army of salespeople.

Among the biggest accusations facing the company is that it targets low-income members of minority communities, including Latinos, by making unachievable promises of vast wealth from selling its line of protein powders, vitamins, supplements and beauty products.

One of Ackman's biggest allegations is that most distributors end up with garages filled with products they cannot sell. Meanwhile, the distributors who brought them into the business get rich for recruiting them.

Herbalife, founded in 1980, has faced such criticism for decades. The debate centers on the way the company compensates its distributors, allowing them to profit from their own sales as well as sales made by distributors they've recruited — and distributors those distributors have recruited.

The company challenges the criticism, saying it's a legitimate company that sells nutritious products while offering entrepreneurs like Perez a chance to build their own businesses.

Herbalife President Des Walsh said the company does not target any specific demographic. The company's popularity among Latinos exploded in recent years, he said, when U.S. distributors imported the nutrition club concept from Mexico, which is second to the United States in Herbalife sales.

"This wasn't a company focus on the Latino community," Walsh said. "This was the Latino community in the United States seeing and hearing of the tremendous success of nutrition clubs in Mexico and then seeking to replicate that here."

Its marketing efforts do hit the Latino community. The company recently signed a 10-year, $44-million sponsorship of the Los Angeles Galaxy professional soccer team, which has a massive Latino fan base. Each year, it holds a national convention in Spanish called "Extravaganza Latina."

Before nutrition clubs started in Mexico, the only way for consumers to buy Herbalife products was in bulk containers to be used at home. A cheaper alternative is being served up at the nutrition clubs, where consumers can buy single servings and drink them in social settings, surrounded by other people with similar weight-loss goals.

This concept has taken off among Latinos, who are taught at an early age that natural remedies such as herbs and juices are a better option than U.S.-style medicine, said Alexandro Jose Gradilla, chair of the Chicano Studies Department at Cal State Fullerton. That makes Herbalife products popular among immigrants.

Selling the products for profit is also a good fit for Latinos because it allows distributors to take advantage of relationships within the close-knit immigrant community, Gradilla said.

Herbalife spokeswoman Barbara Henderson said in a statement that the company "follows all applicable laws in dealing with distributors, whether Latino or not," but she did not elaborate further.

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Oscar Pistorius remains in jail facing murder charge

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- South African athlete Oscar Pistorius, who made history last year as the first double amputee runner to compete in the Olympics using prosthetic blades, will spend the night in jail Thursday after he was charged with murder in the death of his girlfriend at his house, prosecutors said.

The National Prosecuting Authority said Pistorius would remain in custody until his hearing Friday, when police intend to oppose bail.

Reeva Steenkamp, a 30-year-old model, died after being shot several times in the head and arm in Pistorius’ house in an upscale suburb in Pretoria.

PHOTOS: Pistorius in the London Olympics

Pistorius was ushered from the home by police Thursday morning with a gray hoodie covering his head and obscuring most of his face.

South Africans were in shock about the accusation against Pistorius, who became a hero during his long battle for the right to compete in the Olympics. After a controversy on whether the blades he uses to walk and run gave him an advantage in races, Pistorius was granted the right to compete in the London 2012 Olympic Games.

South Africa has one of the world's highest rates of murder and violent crime, and many South Africans keep guns at home to guard against intruders.

The Afrikaans-language newspaper Beeld suggested that Pistorius mistook his girlfriend for a burglar and killed her accidentally.

However, a police spokeswoman, Brig. Denise Beukes, said police were “surprised” at reports the killing was accidental, adding that that version hadn’t come from police, according to the South African Press Assn.

"I confirm there had been previous incidents of a domestic nature at his place,” said Beukes, adding that police couldn’t comment on the decision to oppose bail.

Beukes said police had interviewed neighbors who heard sounds at Pistorius’ home earlier in the evening, and also at the time the incident reportedly took place.

Pistorius’ father, Henke Pistorius, said his son was sad. But the older Pistorius said he didn’t know the facts.

“I don’t know nothing. It will be extremely obnoxious and rude to speculate,” he said in a radio interview. “If anyone makes a statement, it will have to be Oscar.”

An advertisement for Nike, one of Pistorius’ major sponsors, was removed from his official website Thursday. It had shown the athlete in a green lycra athletic suit and the slogan, “I am the bullet in the chamber."

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'Melrose' actress gets 3 years for deadly NJ crash

SOMERVILLE, N.J. (AP) — A former "Melrose Place" actress who was drunk when her SUV plowed into a car and killed a woman was sentenced Thursday to three years in prison, infuriating the victim's relatives, who had hoped for the 10-year maximum.

"What a travesty!" the victim's husband, Fred Seeman, yelled after the sentence was read.

"This is not justice," the victim's 26-year-old son, Ford Seeman, told the judge before he stormed out of the courtroom.

A jury in November convicted Amy Locane-Bovenizer of vehicular homicide in the 2010 death of 60-year-old Helene Seeman in Montgomery Township.

Locane-Bovenizer will be eligible for parole after 2 1/2 years and will be credited the 81 days she has already served. She also had her license suspended for five years and will be on probation for three years after her release. She must pay several thousand dollars in fines.

Locane-Bovenizer, who didn't testify at the trial, appeared in 13 episodes of TV's "Melrose Place" and in movies including "Cry-Baby," ''School Ties" and "Secretary."

Prosecutors say she was driving with a blood-alcohol level nearly three times the legal limit when her SUV slammed into a Mercury Milan driven by Fred Seeman as he was turning into his driveway. Fred Seeman's wife, Helene, was killed, and he was seriously injured.

During the trial, the defense argued that Fred Seeman was making a slow turn, which contributed to the crash. They maintained that it was an accident, not a crime.

The defense also shifted blame to a third motorist who they say distracted the actress by honking at her and chasing her after being rear-ended. They said the chase led Locane-Bovenizer to drive 20 miles over the speed limit on a dark two-lane road.

The judge lowered the maximum sentence citing the hardship on Locane-Bovenizer's two young children. One has a serious medical and mental disability. The defense went into detail about how her sick child was deteriorating physically and psychologically since the actress' incarceration and about how a prolonged sentence would make it worse.

"I'm just glad her little girls will have their mother back soon," Locane-Bovenizer's mother, Helen Locane, said as she walked out of the courtroom.

In an emotionally charged statement, Fred Seeman told the court that the defense contention that his vehicle was turning slowly added "salt on the wound," and he said he was appalled that Locane-Bovenizer took no responsibility for killing his wife.

The actress, in turn, apologized to Seeman's family and said she did take full responsibility.

"I am truly sorry for all of the pain I have caused," she said, struggling to get through her statement, as she looked toward the family that packed one side of the courtroom while her friends and family packed the other. "My own suffering will never go away."

Judge Robert Reed said that he had no sympathy for the actress but that the children should not suffer even more because of her actions.

The Seeman family said after the sentencing that the decision was a "mockery" and only added to the suffering they've endured since the accident.

"What's one more punch in the gut?" Ford Seeman said.

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Doctor and Patient: Afraid to Speak Up to Medical Power

The slender, weather-beaten, elderly Polish immigrant had been diagnosed with lung cancer nearly a year earlier and was receiving chemotherapy as part of a clinical trial. I was a surgical consultant, called in to help control the fluid that kept accumulating in his lungs.

During one visit, he motioned for me to come closer. His voice was hoarse from a tumor that spread, and the constant hissing from his humidified oxygen mask meant I had to press my face nearly against his to understand his words.

“This is getting harder, doctor,” he rasped. “I’m not sure I’m up to anymore chemo.”

I was not the only doctor that he confided to. But what I quickly learned was that none of us was eager to broach the topic of stopping treatment with his primary cancer doctor.

That doctor was a rising superstar in the world of oncology, a brilliant physician-researcher who had helped discover treatments for other cancers and who had been recruited to lead our hospital’s then lackluster cancer center. Within a few months of the doctor’s arrival, the once sleepy department began offering a dazzling array of experimental drugs. Calls came in from outside doctors eager to send their patients in for treatment, and every patient who was seen was promptly enrolled in one of more than a dozen well-documented treatment protocols.

But now, no doctors felt comfortable suggesting anything but the most cutting-edge, aggressive treatments.

Even the No. 2 doctor in the cancer center, Robin to the chief’s cancer-battling Batman, was momentarily taken aback when I suggested we reconsider the patient’s chemotherapy plan. “I don’t want to tell him,” he said, eyes widening. He reeled off his chief’s vast accomplishments. “I mean, who am I to tell him what to do?”

We stood for a moment in silence before he pointed his index finger at me. “You tell him,” he said with a smile. “You tell him to consider stopping treatment.”

Memories of this conversation came flooding back last week when I read an essay on the problems posed by hierarchies within the medical profession.

For several decades, medical educators and sociologists have documented the existence of hierarchies and an intense awareness of rank among doctors. The bulk of studies have focused on medical education, a process often likened to military and religious training, with elder patriarchs imposing the hair shirt of shame on acolytes unable to incorporate a profession’s accepted values and behaviors. Aspiring doctors quickly learn whose opinions, experiences and voices count, and it is rarely their own. Ask a group of interns who’ve been on the wards for but a week, and they will quickly raise their hands up to the level of their heads to indicate their teachers’ status and importance, then lower them toward their feet to demonstrate their own.

It turns out that this keen awareness of ranking is not limited to students and interns. Other research has shown that fully trained physicians are acutely aware of a tacit professional hierarchy based on specialties, like primary care versus neurosurgery, or even on diseases different specialists might treat, like hemorrhoids and constipation versus heart attacks and certain cancers.

But while such professional preoccupation with privilege can make for interesting sociological fodder, the real issue, warns the author of a courageous essay published recently in The New England Journal of Medicine, is that such an overly developed sense of hierarchy comes at an unacceptable price: good patient care.

Dr. Ranjana Srivastava, a medical oncologist at the Monash Medical Centre in Melbourne, Australia, recalls a patient she helped to care for who died after an operation. Before the surgery, Dr. Srivastava had been hesitant to voice her concerns, assuming that the patient’s surgeon must be “unequivocally right, unassailable, or simply not worth antagonizing.” When she confesses her earlier uncertainty to the surgeon after the patient’s death, Dr. Srivastava learns that the surgeon had been just as loath to question her expertise and had assumed that her silence before the surgery meant she agreed with his plan to operate.

“Each of us was trying our best to help a patient, but we were also respecting the boundaries and hierarchy imposed by our professional culture,” Dr. Srivastava said. “The tragedy was that the patient died, when speaking up would have made all the difference.”

Compounding the problem is an increasing sense of self-doubt among many doctors. With rapid advances in treatment, there is often no single correct “answer” for a patient’s problem, and doctors, struggling to stay up-to-date in their own particular specialty niches, are more tentative about making suggestions that cross over to other doctors’ “turf.” Even as some clinicians attempt to compensate by organizing multidisciplinary meetings, inviting doctors from all specialties to discuss a patient’s therapeutic options, “there will inevitably be a hierarchy at those meetings of who is speaking,” Dr. Srivastava noted. “And it won’t always be the ones who know the most about the patient who will be taking the lead.”

It is the potentially disastrous repercussions for patients that make this overly developed awareness of rank and boundaries a critical issue in medicine. Recent efforts to raise safety standards and improve patient care have shown that teams are a critical ingredient for success. But simply organizing multidisciplinary lineups of clinicians isn’t enough. What is required are teams that recognize the importance of all voices and encourage active and open debate.

Since their patient’s death, Dr. Srivastava and the surgeon have worked together to discuss patient cases, articulate questions and describe their own uncertainties to each other and in patients’ notes. “We have tried to remain cognizant of the fact that we are susceptible to thinking about hierarchy,” Dr. Srivastava said. “We have tried to remember that sometimes, despite our best intentions, we do not speak up for our patients because we are fearful of the consequences.”

That was certainly true for my lung cancer patient. Like all the other doctors involved in his care, I hesitated to talk to the chief medical oncologist. I questioned my own credentials, my lack of expertise in this particular area of oncology and even my own clinical judgment. When the patient appeared to fare better, requiring less oxygen and joking and laughing more than I had ever seen in the past, I took his improvement to be yet another sign that my attempt to talk about holding back chemotherapy was surely some surgical folly.

But a couple of days later, the humidified oxygen mask came back on. And not long after that, the patient again asked for me to come close.

This time he said: “I’m tired. I want to stop the chemo.”

Just before he died, a little over a week later, he was off all treatment except for what might make him comfortable. He thanked me and the other doctors for our care, but really, we should have thanked him and apologized. Because he had pushed us out of our comfortable, well-delineated professional zones. He had prodded us to talk to one another. And he showed us how to work as a team in order to do, at last, what we should have done weeks earlier.

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Senate Democrats back Cordray renomination

WASHINGTON — Senate Democrats said Thursday that they were united in opposing Republican efforts to weaken the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and told President Obama they supported the renomination of Richard Cordray to head the agency.

"It is time to confirm Richard Cordray as CFPB director to give the American people the protections they deserve and the marketplace the certainty it needs to help strengthen our economic recovery," Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Johnson (D-S.D.) told reporters.

Johnson organized a letter signed by 52 of 53 Senate Democrats and the chamber's two independents, Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Angus King of Maine, telling Obama they backed his decision to renominate Cordray and that they oppose Republican attempts to change the bureau's structure.

The only Democrat who did not sign the letter was Mark Pryor of Arkansas. But with 54 senators backing him, Cordray would have enough votes to be confirmed if Republicans allowed a vote.

Nearly all Senate Republicans, enough to mount a successful filibuster, said this month they would block the confirmation of any nominee to head the bureau unless its structure was changed.

Republicans complained that the agency, the centerpiece of the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law, is too powerful.

They want the single-director position to be replaced by a bipartisan commission. They want the bureau's funding to be part of the congressional appropriations process instead of flowing directly from the Federal Reserve. And they want to make it easier for other banking regulators to block actions by the consumer bureau.

"Far too much power is vested in the sole CFPB director without any meaningful checks and balances," the 43 Republican senators, led by Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) wrote to Obama on Feb. 3.

The same threat, issued in 2011, led Obama to install Cordray with a controversial recess appointment a year ago, along with three members of the National Labor Relations Board.

Last month, a federal appeals court ruled that Obama's NLRB appointments violated the Constitution because the Senate had not formally adjourned. The lawsuit challenging the appointments did not include Cordray, but it is widely believed that it would affect his appointment as well.

The Obama administration is almost certain to appeal the decision to the Supreme Court.

Obama has renominated Cordray to the position; the recess appointment term expires at the end of this year.

The court decision and the renewed filibuster threat had led to speculation that Democrats might be willing to negotiate changes to the bureau's structure. But in Thursday's letter, Democrats said they did not intend to give in.

"As supporters of strong and effective consumer protection, we oppose efforts to weaken the CFPB through structural changes, including as the price for Senate approval of Director Cordray's nomination," the letter said.

Sens. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) joined Johnson in releasing the letter.

"They want to hold up his nomination for the sole purpose of trying to weaken the agency. We've now got 54 senators saying no," said Warren, who came up with the idea for the agency and helped launch it before being elected in November.

"American families deserve a strong watchdog, and Rich Cordray deserves a vote now," she said.

jim.puzzanghera@latimes.com

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Dorner manhunt: Investigators work to ID charred human remains

After what LAPD Chief Charlie Beck called "a bittersweet night," investigators Wednesday were in the process of identifying the human remains found in the charred cabin where fugitive ex-cop Christopher Dorner was believed to have been holed up after trading gunfire with officers, authorities said.

If the body is identified as Dorner’s, the standoff would end a weeklong manhunt for the ex-LAPD officer and Navy Reserve lieutenant suspected in a string of shootings following his firing by the Los Angeles Police Department several years ago. Four people have died in the case, allegedly at Dorner’s hands.

Beck said he would not consider the manhunt over until the body was identified as Dorner. Police remained on tactical alert and were conducting themselves as if nothing had changed in the case, officials said.

PHOTOS: Manhunt for ex-LAPD officer

The latest burst of gunfire came Tuesday after the suspect, attempting to flee law enforcement officials, fatally shot a San Bernardino County sheriff’s deputy and seriously injured another, officials said. He then barricaded himself in a wooden cabin outside Big Bear, not far from ski resorts in the snow-capped San Bernardino Mountains east of Los Angeles, according to police.

"This could have ended much better, it could have ended worse," said Beck as he drove to the hospital where the injured deputy was located. "I feel for the family of the deputy who lost his life."

The injured deputy is expected to survive but it is anticipated he will need several surgeries. The names of the two deputies have not been released.

TIMELINE: Manhunt for ex-LAPD officer

Just before 5 p.m., authorities smashed the cabin's windows, pumped in tear gas and called for the suspect to surrender, officials said. They got no response. Then, using a demolition vehicle, they tore down the cabin's walls one by one. When they reached the last wall, they heard a gunshot. Then the cabin burst into flames, officials said.

Last week, authorities said they had tracked Dorner to a wooded area near Big Bear Lake. They found his torched gray Nissan Titan with several weapons inside, the said, and the only trace of Dorner was a short trail of footprints in newly fallen snow.

According to a manifesto that officials say Dorner posted on Facebook, he felt the LAPD unjustly fired him several years ago, when a disciplinary panel determined that he lied in accusing his training officer of kicking a mentally ill man during an arrest. Beck has promised to review the case.

DOCUMENT: Read the manifesto

The manifesto vows "unconventional and asymmetrical warfare" against law enforcement officers and their families. "Self-preservation is no longer important to me. I do not fear death as I died long ago," it said.

On Tuesday morning, two maids entered a cabin in the 1200 block of Club View Drive and ran into a man who they said resembled the fugitive, a law enforcement official said. The cabin was not far from where Dorner's singed truck had been found and where police had been holding news conferences about the manhunt.

The man tied up the maids, and he took off in a purple Nissan parked near the cabin, the official said. About 12:20 p.m., one of the maids broke free and called police.

FULL COVERAGE: Sweeping manhunt for ex-cop

Nearly half an hour later, officers with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife spotted the stolen vehicle and called for backup, authorities said. The suspect turned down a side road in an attempt to elude the officers but crashed the vehicle, police said.

A short time later, authorities said, the suspect carjacked a light-colored pickup truck. Allan Laframboise said the truck belonged to his friend Rick Heltebrake, who works at a nearby Boy Scout camp.

Heltebrake was driving on Glass Road with his Dalmatian, Suni, when a hulking African American man stepped into the road, Laframboise said. Heltebrake stopped. The man told him to get out of the truck.

INTERACTIVE MAP: Searching for suspected shooter

"Can I take my dog?" Heltebrake asked, according to his friend.

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First lady plugs 'Beasts of the Southern Wild'

WASHINGTON (AP) — Michelle Obama on Wednesday gushed over the Oscar-nominated film "Beasts of the Southern Wild," calling it one of the "most powerful and most important" movies in a long time in a ringing endorsement delivered less than two weeks before this month's Academy Awards ceremony.

The first lady commented during a Black History Month workshop at the White House for about 80 middle- and high-school students from the District of Columbia and New Orleans. The movie was set in Louisiana.

Students saw the film, then got to question director Benh Zeitlin and actors Dwight Henry and 9-year-old Quvenzhane Wallis. Wallis stars in the mythical tale of a 6-year-old girl named Hushpuppy struggling to survive in the southern Delta with her ailing father as a storm approaches. Her world consists of a tight-knit, shantytown community on the bayou with wild animals, both real and imagined.

The film won four Oscar nominations, including for best picture, best actress and directing.

Mrs. Obama said she saw the 93-minute film over the summer with a large group of friends and family who ranged in age from 3 to 73, and they were enthralled by it.

"It's rare these days to find a movie that can so completely and utterly captivate such a broad audience and that was one of the things that struck me about this movie," she said. "It managed to be beautiful, joyful and devastatingly honest."

The first lady said "Beasts" makes viewers "think deeply about the people we love in our lives who make us who we are" and shows the strength of communities and the power they give others to overcome obstacles.

"It also tells a compelling story of poverty and devastation but also of hope and love in the midst of some great challenges," she said.

Mrs. Obama also said it was "cool" that "there are so many important lessons to learn in that little 93 minutes."

"That a director and a set of writers and producers can say so much in just 93 minutes," the first lady told the students. "And it doesn't always happen in a movie, quite frankly, but this one did it, and that's why I love this movie so much and why our team wanted to bring it here to the White House and share it with all of you."

Mrs. Obama also used the film to inspire her young audience, noting that Wallis was just 5 years old when she auditioned for the part and Henry, who runs a bakery, had never acted a day in his life.

"You all have to really be focused on preparing yourselves for the challenges and the opportunities that will lie ahead for all of you. You've got to be prepared," she said, urging them to go to school, do their homework every day and follow her husband's example by reading everything they get their hands on.

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Follow Darlene Superville on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/dsupervilleap

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Phys Ed: Getting the Right Dose of Exercise

Phys Ed

Gretchen Reynolds on the science of fitness.

Fitness Tracker

Marathon, half-marathon, 10k and 5K training plans to get you race ready.

A common concern about exercise is that if you don’t do it almost every day, you won’t achieve much health benefit. But a commendable new study suggests otherwise, showing that a fairly leisurely approach to scheduling workouts may actually be more beneficial than working out almost daily.

For the new study, published this month in Exercise & Science in Sports & Medicine, researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham gathered 72 older, sedentary women and randomly assigned them to one of three exercise groups.

One group began lifting weights once a week and performing an endurance-style workout, like jogging or bike riding, on another day.

Another group lifted weights twice a week and jogged or rode an exercise bike twice a week.

The final group, as you may have guessed, completed three weight-lifting and three endurance sessions, or six weekly workouts.

The exercise, which was supervised by researchers, was easy at first and meant to elicit changes in both muscles and endurance. Over the course of four months, the intensity and duration gradually increased, until the women were jogging moderately for 40 minutes and lifting weights for about the same amount of time.

The researchers were hoping to find out which number of weekly workouts would be, Goldilocks-like, just right for increasing the women’s fitness and overall weekly energy expenditure.

Some previous studies had suggested that working out only once or twice a week produced few gains in fitness, while exercising vigorously almost every day sometimes led people to become less physically active, over all, than those formally exercising less. Researchers theorized that the more grueling workout schedule caused the central nervous system to respond as if people were overdoing things, sending out physiological signals that, in an unconscious internal reaction, prompted them to feel tired or lethargic and stop moving so much.

To determine if either of these possibilities held true among their volunteers, the researchers in the current study tracked the women’s blood levels of cytokines, a substance related to stress that is thought to be one of the signals the nervous system uses to determine if someone is overdoing things physically. They also measured the women’s changing aerobic capacities, muscle strength, body fat, moods and, using sophisticated calorimetry techniques, energy expenditure over the course of each week.

By the end of the four-month experiment, all of the women had gained endurance and strength and shed body fat, although weight loss was not the point of the study. The scientists had not asked the women to change their eating habits.

There were, remarkably, almost no differences in fitness gains among the groups. The women working out twice a week had become as powerful and aerobically fit as those who had worked out six times a week. There were no discernible differences in cytokine levels among the groups, either.

However, the women exercising four times per week were now expending far more energy, over all, than the women in either of the other two groups. They were burning about 225 additional calories each day, beyond what they expended while exercising, compared to their calorie burning at the start of the experiment.

The twice-a-week exercisers also were using more energy each day than they had been at first, burning almost 100 calories more daily, in addition to the calories used during workouts.

But the women who had been assigned to exercise six times per week were now expending considerably less daily energy than they had been at the experiment’s start, the equivalent of almost 200 fewer calories each day, even though they were exercising so assiduously.

“We think that the women in the twice-a-week and four-times-a-week groups felt more energized and physically capable” after several months of training than they had at the start of the study, says Gary Hunter, a U.A.B. professor who led the experiment. Based on conversations with the women, he says he thinks they began opting for stairs over escalators and walking for pleasure.

The women working out six times a week, though, reacted very differently. “They complained to us that working out six times a week took too much time,” Dr. Hunter says. They did not report feeling fatigued or physically droopy. Their bodies were not producing excessive levels of cytokines, sending invisible messages to the body to slow down.

Rather, they felt pressed for time and reacted, it seems, by making choices like driving instead of walking and impatiently avoiding the stairs.

Despite the cautionary note, those who insist on working out six times per week need not feel discouraged. As long as you consciously monitor your activity level, the findings suggest, you won’t necessarily and unconsciously wind up moving less over all.

But the more fundamental finding of this study, Dr. Hunter says, is that “less may be more,” a message that most likely resonates with far more of us. The women exercising four times a week “had the greatest overall increase in energy expenditure,” he says. But those working out only twice a week “weren’t far behind.”

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New WellPoint CEO gets cool reception on Wall Street

Investors didn't give a warm welcome to the incoming chief executive of health insurance giant WellPoint Inc.

Shares of the nation's second-largest health insurer fell $3.01, or nearly 5%, to $63 in trading Wednesday, a day after the company named a veteran hospital executive to be its next CEO.

WellPoint, which runs Anthem Blue Cross in California and health plans in 13 other states, picked Joseph Swedish to lead the company through a tumultuous time in the industry as insurers prepare for drastic changes under the federal healthcare law.

Swedish, 61, has served as CEO of Trinity Health Corp., which runs 47 hospitals in 10 states. The nonprofit health system had $9 billion in revenue last year. Swedish will start his new job March 25, WellPoint said.

Citigroup healthcare analyst Carl McDonald questioned whether Swedish was a good pick when WellPoint needs better execution in its core health insurance businesses.

Swedish has had a "long and illustrious career in the nonprofit hospital world, but he's virtually unknown to investors," McDonald said. "WellPoint picked someone without a lot of managed-care background."

Jackie Ward, chair of WellPoint's board, said Swedish "is an agile leader at a time when major transformations are requiring health benefit companies to examine new ways to better serve our stakeholders."

WellPoint is the nation's second-largest health insurer, behind UnitedHealth Group Inc., and it has about 36 million customers nationwide.

The Indianapolis company had been searching for a new leader since August when Angela Braly stepped down after major shareholders expressed dissatisfaction with the company's performance.

The company's shares had slumped 30% during Braly's five years at the helm, which were marked by managerial blunders and lackluster earnings. John Cannon has served as interim CEO and will return to his previous role as general counsel.

Under Braly, the company sought to diversify through a series of deals. In December, WellPoint completed its $4.5-billion acquisition of Medicaid insurer Amerigroup Corp.

chad.terhune@latimes.com

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