'Forever Marilyn' Monroe statue in Palm Springs to be dismantled

After a two-year stay, Marilyn Monroe is saying farewell to Palm Springs.

"Forever Marilyn," the three-story-tall sculpture by artist Seward Johnson, will be dismantled this week so that the leggy tourist attraction can be shipped to its next location, the Grounds for Sculpture in central New Jersey.

But there is already talk of bringing the blond bombshell back to Palm Springs -- permanently. Some local leaders believe the artwork embodies the city's glamorous history, and they want to purchase it.

"We are determined to bring Marilyn back to us 'forever.'  It is where she belongs," said 
Aftab Dada, chairman of PS Resorts, a local tourism organization that helped to pay for the sculpture's visit.

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He is working with the city on the possible acquisition of the artwork, he said. The Sculpture Foundation, the Santa Monica organization that owns the piece, said it is considering selling the work.

The Grounds for Sculpture is hosting a retrospective of Johnson's art beginning May 4. The exhibition will feature 150 works by the artist -- including "Forever Marilyn" -- that will be on view in three indoor galleries as well as outdoors on the 42-acre campus.

The official de-installation of "Forever Marilyn" in Palm Springs is scheduled to begin Monday, but "the most visually exciting moments will be on Tuesday," said Paula Stoeke, director and curator of the Sculpture Foundation.

In 2000, Johnson -- a member of the Johnson & Johnson family -- gifted his lifetime body of work to the foundation. The original loan to Palm Springs was for one year, but the sculpture's stay was extended.

The Monroe sculpture, which is made of stainless steel and aluminum and weighs 17 tons, will be shipped to New Jersey on a flatbed truck. Travelers on the highway will be able to see her because the head and torso will be upright, Stoeke said. The artwork is expected to arrive in New Jersey around April 7.

"Forever Marilyn" was unveiled to the public in 2011 on Chicago's Michigan Avenue. The 26-foot-tall sculpture, which depicts Monroe in her famous pose from the 1955 Billy Wilder movie "The Seven-Year Itch," moved to Palm Springs in May 2012. 

The sculpture is downtown at the corner of Palm Canyon Drive and Tahquitz Canyon Way. In recent days, throngs of tourists and locals have crowded the sculpture to say their goodbyes.

On Thursday, Palm Springs Mayor Steve Pougnet spoke at an evening ceremony honoring the artwork. Actress Carol Channing was among the attendees.

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Stocks rise sharply as quarter ends

Stocks rose broadly in late-morning trading Monday as the market headed for its fifth straight quarterly gain. Dow member Johnson & Johnson rose on news that it was selling a diagnostics business. 

KEEPING SCORE: The Standard & Poor's 500 index rose 12 points, or 0.7 percent, to 1,870 as of 11:15 a.m. Eastern. The Dow Jones industrial average rose 104 points, or 0.6 percent, to 16,424. The Nasdaq composite rose 43 points, or 1 percent, to 4,199. 

BROAD GAINS: Twenty-eight of the 30 members stocks in the Dow average rose. Microsoft continued to rise after its Office for iPad software was released last week to highly positive reviews. Microsoft rose 82 cents, or 2 percent, to $41.12. Visa rose $2.85, or 1.4 percent, to $215.00. 

HEALTHCARE DEAL: Johnson & Johnson accepted an offer of about $4 billion from the private equity firm Carlyle Group to buy its Ortho-Clinical Diagnostics business. J&J said the deal for the blood-testing unit should close by mid-year. J&J rose 97 cents, or 1 percent, to $98.43. 

QUARTER END: Trading is expected to be heavier and more volatile Monday as investors close out their first-quarter positions. At the end of each quarter, fund managers will often sell their worst-performing stocks and buy the best-performing stocks in an effort to make their portfolios look better when investors get their quarterly statements. The phenomenon has the Wall Street nickname of "window dressing." If the stock market closes higher Monday, it would be the fifth-straight quarterly rise for the S&P 500. 

"There's a lot of re-allocation going on today," said J.J. Kinahan, chief strategist with TD Ameritrade. 

YELLEN: In a speech, Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen said Monday that she thinks the struggling U.S. job market will continue to need the help of low interest rates "for some time." Her remarks come after investors had grown anxious that the Fed might raise short-term rates starting in mid-2015. Yellen has previously suggested that the Fed could start raising short-term rates six months after it halts its bond purchases, which most economists expect by year's end. 

OTHER MARKETS: Bond prices fell. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note edged up to 2.75 percent from 2.72 percent late Friday. The price of crude oil slipped 14 cents to $101.52. Gold dropped $5.20 to $1,289.20 an ounce. 

 

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India: Pre-election poll shows support for opposition leader Modi

MUMBAI, India – One week before elections that will determine a new prime minister, Indians are deeply dissatisfied with the direction of their country and overwhelmingly want a change in leadership in New Delhi, according to a survey released Monday.

The Pew Research Center found that Indians favor the main opposition group, the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, to the ruling Indian National Congress by a ratio of more than 3 to 1. The BJP's strong showing rests on the perception that it would do a better job combating the country's range of woes including corruption, unemployment, inflation and political deadlock, the survey said.

The findings bolster the sense of inevitability that is beginning to envelop Narendra Modi, the BJP's prime ministerial candidate who currently leads the influential western state of Gujarat. Although Modi has long faced accusations that he did not intervene to stop deadly anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat in 2002, he has recast himself as a clean, business-friendly politician whose state has posted impressive economic growth.

Nearly eight in 10 Indians surveyed held a favorable view of Modi, while only 50% felt the same way about his rival, Congress Party standard-bearer Rahul Gandhi, scion of the Jawaharlal Nehru-Indira Gandhi dynasty that has led India for most of its history since independence in 1947. This and other polls suggest the Congress Party may suffer its worst-ever showing in the parliamentary elections that begin April 7 and run into mid-May.

Dogged by corruption scandals and flagging economic growth, the Congress Party has relied on support from rural Indians, whom it has boosted with food subsidies and entitlement schemes. But in a troubling sign for the party, more than half of those Pew surveyed said that the BJP would do a better job than Congress in aiding the poor.

If Modi comes to power in India, the world's 10th largest economy, it would create some uncomfortable questions for the United States, which until recently had observed an official boycott of the firebrand leader and had denied him a visa due to his alleged role in the 2002 violence.

In February, the U.S. ambassador to New Delhi, Nancy Powell, broke the chill by requesting a meeting with Modi in his home state. State Department officials described the encounter as cordial, but many within the U.S. government still regard Modi with suspicion.

U.S. business leaders, including companies such as Ford and General Motors, which have built plants in Gujarat, are said to be broadly supportive of a Modi prime ministership. Ultimately, his supporters say, a stronger Indian economy is in the United States' best interest.

Seven of 10 Indians surveyed said they were dissatisfied with the way things are going in their country, although a strong majority, 62%, said they expected the economy to improve over the next year. Young Indians, having come of age over the past decade in which the country doubled per capita income, are more optimistic about their economic prospects than those 50 and older, Pew found.

The survey also found that despite a recent rupture in bilateral relations following the arrest and strip-search of an Indian diplomat in Manhattan, 56% of Indians view the United States favorably – a number comparable to pro-U.S. sentiments Pew recorded in Great Britain and Germany.

A plurality of those surveyed held an unfavorable view of China, India's Asian rival, with nearly two-thirds saying that China's growing military might was a problem for India.

Pew, a Washington-based public opinion research center, surveyed 2,464 Indian adults in December and January in 15 of the country's 17 most populous states.

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Malaysia plane: Confronting searchers is an ocean full of garbage

shashank.bengali@latimes.com

Twitter: @SBengali

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Malaysia plane: Search goes on in ocean's stirred 'teacup' of garbage

BEIJING — The search and rescue teams working off the west coast of Australia seeking the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 discovered what oceanographers have been warning: Even the most far-flung stretches of ocean are full of garbage.

For the first time since the search focused on the southern Indian Ocean 10 days ago, the skies were clear enough and the waves calm, allowing ships to retrieve the "suspicious items" spotted by planes and on satellite imagery.

But examined on board, none of it proved to be debris from the missing plane, just the ordinary garbage swirling around in the ocean.

"A number of objects were retrieved by HMAS Success and Haixun 01 yesterday," reported the Australian Maritime Safety Authority in a news release Sunday. "The objects have been described as fishing equipment and other flotsam."

[Updated at 8:38 a.m. PDT on March 31: A cluster of orange objects spotted by a search plane on Sunday drew the same results, the Associated Press reported the following day: It was just fishing equipment.]

Using a fresh analysis of flight data, investigators on Friday moved the search location in the southern Indian Ocean 680 miles to the northeast — waters where the currents are weaker but where there is more debris, according to an Australian oceanographer.

It is an oddity in one of the most remote places on the planet, far from any islands, shipping lanes or flight paths.

"You have garbage from Australia, from Indonesia, from India," said Erik van Sebille, an oceanographer at the University of New South Wales in Sydney. "There are small vortexes that are mixing up the debris like stirring a teacup."

Science writer Marc Lallanilla has referred to the search for Flight 370 as a "needle in a garbage patch."

"In addition to foul weather, administrative bungling and the vastness of the search area, the search for MH 370 has been compounded by one other factor: the incredible amount of garbage already floating in the search area — and in oceans worldwide," Lallanilla wrote on the website livescience.com.

The complicating factor underscored the difficulty the search teams face in trying to find out what happened to the Boeing 777 and its 239 passengers and crew. The plane disappeared March 8 during a flight to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur, the Malaysian capital.

Australian authorities said Sunday that a naval support ship, the Ocean Shield, will depart from Perth on Monday with a "black box detector" supplied by the U.S. Navy. The Towed Pinger Locator 25 carries a device that should be able to detect the so-called black boxes of the plane in waters as deep as 20,000 feet. The boxes record pilots' conversations and flight data.

The search team is in a race against time because black boxes' batteries last only 30 to 45 days.

The odds are stacked against finding them in time without a trail of debris to guide searchers. Investigators for now are merely surmising that the plane crashed into the Indian Ocean, based on an analysis of the flight's path according to engine data transmitted via satellite.

The best-known precedent is the case of Air France Flight 447, which went into the Atlantic on a flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris in 2009. It took two years to find the body of the aircraft and the black boxes in the ocean depths, though pieces of debris were found on the surface within five days of the crash.

The lack of confirmed debris has prevented families from achieving any kind of closure over the deaths of their relatives. Chinese families, in particular, have rejected the assertion of the Malaysian government that the plane crashed with no survivors.

"We want evidence, truth and dignity," read banners that Chinese relatives held up Sunday during an impromptu demonstration at a hotel in Kuala Lumpur.

Malaysia Airlines said Sunday that it will fly families of passengers to Perth and will set up a family assistance center to provide counseling and logistical support, but will do so "only once it has been authoritatively confirmed that the physical wreckage found is that of MH 370."

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott told reporters Monday that the search would continue.

"Now until we locate some actual wreckage from the aircraft and then do the regression analysis that might tell us where the aircraft went into the ocean, we'll be operating on guesstimates," Abbott told reporters at the Pearce air force base near Perth.

barbara.demick@latimes.com

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Michael Jackson album 'Xscape' to feature unreleased recordings

A new album will once again offer fans a glimpse as to what music lies inside the Michael Jackson vaults. On May 13, Sony's Epic Records will release "Xscape," a collection of eight, previously unreleased Jackson songs. 

The album was executive produced by Epic Records Chairman/CEO L.A. Reid, who, according to a Sony press release, curated the album and decided on its final tracklist. A host of recognizable producers worked on the Jackson songs, including the project's lead producer, Timbaland.

The final eight songs were chosen after apparently combing through four decades of material. All the songs on "Xscape" feature completed Jackson vocals, according to the release, but they were retooled. Reid, in the statement, prefers the word "contemporizing," noting that producers did not treat the material as sacrosanct.  

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"Michael left behind some musical performances that we take great pride in presenting through the vision of music producers that he either worked directly with or expressed strong desire to work with. We are extremely proud and honored to present this music to the world," Reid said in the statement.

Those who prefer to hear the material as Jackson, who died in 2009, left it on the cutting room floor can pay extra for the deluxe edition of "Xscape," which will also include the eight songs in the original form. The albums will be available for preorder starting Tuesday, and a full tracklist has not yet been revealed.

The title track was said to be written by Jackson and producer Rodney Jerkins, who worked with Jackson on his 2001 album "Invincible." "It is," according to the announcement, "the one track on the album that was 'contemporized' by the producer who recorded it originally in the studio with Michael." 

Other producers on the album include the Stargate team (Rihanna), Timbaland pal Jerome "J-Roc" Harmon (Beyoncé) and veteran industry executive John McClain. Epic in 2010 released the posthumous Jackson collection "Michael," an album that featured the "Hold My Hand" duet with Akon.

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Controversy marks start to Myanmar's first census in three decades

TAUNGGYI, Myanmar — Wearing a white T-shirt emblazoned with the national census logo, Tin Naing counted off the ethnic groups living in just one section of this regional capital in eastern Myanmar.

"Bamar, Shan, Pa'o, Intha — maybe 10 altogether," said the bespectacled schoolteacher, who was overseeing 40 census-takers who had been out since dawn Sunday at the start of a 12-day nationwide exercise to count how many people live in this once-ostracized Southeast Asian country.

Documenting Myanmar's array of ethnicities is but one of the challenges facing the country's first census in three decades, with critics saying it could spark civil strife by asking delicate questions about identity and religion. Adding to the controversy, on the eve of the census the Myanmar government reneged on a pledge to allow a stateless Muslim minority to list themselves on the survey.

The government says the census is needed to buttress hopes for continued economic growth as Myanmar transitions out of five decades of military rule and heads toward elections in 18 months. Myanmar President Thein Sein said citizens should see providing census information as "a national duty" since accurate data are needed to underpin economic development in what remains one of Asia's poorest countries.

"We cannot do proper planning in health, in education, in the economy, unless we have a census," said Aung Tun Thet, an economics advisor to the president.

No one knows exactly how many people live in the majority Buddhist nation, with estimates ranging from 48 million to 60 million. Asked on the eve of the census to project the country's population, Aung Tun Thet said in an interview, "Your guess is good as mine."

An army of 100,000 mostly young schoolteachers will go door-to-door until April 10 in an undertaking that will cost about $74 million, most of it financed by foreign donors.

In the Kyaungyi Su quarter of Taunggyi, the regional capital of eastern Myanmar's Shan state, Tin Naing said he expected the census to pass without incident, despite the town's mixed population and disagreements about how some groups are categorized.

"We hope it will all go smoothly, though it will be a lot of work," he said.

Ethnicity and religion are deeply divisive propositions in Myanmar, one of Asia's most diverse countries. The military junta that ruled for a half-century elevated Bamar, or Burman, ethnic identity above tens of smaller groups, and fought often brutal wars in restive minority areas.

An ethnic rebel group, the Kachin Independence Army, said it would not allow the census to take place in areas it controls, near the Chinese border, where the rebels have been waging a low-level war with the Myanmar army since 2011. Activists said that as much as 35% of Kachin state would be left out of the census.

Burmans, the majority group from which Myanmar's old name, Burma, is derived, make up perhaps 60% of the population, with the remainder made up of groups such as the Kachin, Kayin, Mon, Rakhine and Shan. Most live in far-flung regions closer to India or China or Thailand than to Yangon, the country's main city.

For many minority representatives, the census categorizations are messy and antiquated, drawing on a disputed list of 135 "national races" used in previous citizenship regulations.

"Some categories of people have been left out, some have been included several times under different names," said Khon Ja, an activist from Kachin State, a mostly Christian region in northern Myanmar. "My group is listed four times under different names, even using a geographic location as a tribe name."

Most controversially, the name of a long oppressed Muslim minority, the Rohingya, has been left off the census form, prompting some Muslims to say they would self-identify themselves as Rohingya under the "other" category. That drew anger from majority Buddhists in coastal Rakhine state — from which most Rohingya hail — and triggered attacks against aid workers accused of favoring the Rohingya.

The medical charity Doctors Without Borders was banned from Rakhine in February after it treated Rohingya villagers who were allegedly injured in attacks by Buddhists. The attacks were reportedly carried out to avenge the murder of a Myanmar policeman that Buddhists blamed on Rohingya.

The effectively stateless Rohingya — whom the Myanmar government regards as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh — are widely described as one of the most persecuted minorities in the world, with hundreds of thousands living in apartheid-like conditions and over 130,000 left homeless by communal fighting.

Aid agencies working in Sittwe, the Rakhine regional capital, were driven from the town last week in rioting said to have been sparked by a foreign aid worker's alleged desecration of a Buddhist flag. The violence came a few days after a visit to the town by Wirathu, a Buddhist supremacist monk from central Myanmar who is accused of fomenting anti-Muslim violence in the past.

The Myanmar government set up an inquiry into the riots, but by Saturday it appeared to have caved in to pressure from Rakhine Buddhists. "If a household wants to identify themselves as 'Rohingya,' we will not register it," said government spokesman Ye Htut.

Roughneen is a Times special correspondent. Times staff writer Shashank Bengali contributed to this report from Mumbai, India.

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A treasure trove of silent American movies found in Amsterdam

Long-missing comedy shorts such as 1927's "Mickey's Circus," featuring a 6-year-old Mickey Rooney in his first starring role, 1917's "Neptune's Naughty Daughter"; 1925's "Fifty Million Years Ago," an animated introduction to the theory of evolution; and a 1924 industrial short, "The Last Word in Chickens," are among the American silent films recently found at the EYE Filmmusem in Amsterdam.

EYE and the San Francisco-based National Film Preservation Foundation have partnered to repatriate and preserve these films -- the majority either don't exist in the U.S. or only in inferior prints.

The announcement was to be made Sunday in Amsterdam at EYE Museum with a public screening of the first film saved from the project "Koko's Queen," a 1926  "Out of the Inkwell" cartoon, which had been available in the U.S. only in substandard video copies.

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Annette Melville, director of the National Film Preservation Foundation, said EYE came to them after learning of NFPF's partnership four years ago with the New Zealand Film Archive, which repatriated nitrate prints of nearly 200 silent U.S. films, including a missing 1927 John Ford comedy, "Upstream." The following year, the NFPF and the New Zealand archive also identified the 30-minute portion of the 1923 British film "The White Shadow," which is considered to be the earliest feature film in which Alfred Hitchcock had a credit.

"We had so much on our plate," said Melville. "We took responsibility for funding the preservation of a good number of the 176 films. We didn't want to bite off more than we could chew. There are a lot of resources involved in bringing the films back and preserving them. Most of this work is funded through grants."

With support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the NFPF last year sent researcher Leslie Lewis to Amsterdam, where she spent two months examining more than 200,000 feet of highly combustible 35mm nitrate film. A veritable Sherlock Holmes of celluloid, Lewis also was one of two nitrate experts dispatched to identify the films in the New Zealand Archive.

"There's a good reason these films haven't been preserved," said Melville, noting that credit sequences on many of the titles had decayed over the years. "Many of them haven't been identified because the way films sit on their reels, sometimes the credits are most exposed to the atmosphere."

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Then there was the language problem. In the instances in which credits did survive or the film had intertitles, they were generally in Dutch.

"There was a lot of detective work going on," said Melville.

Working with research teams at the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C., Lewis would take photos of scenes from the films, as well as copies of intertitles and then send  them off to experts for identification.

"We would look up the stuff and send information back the next morning," said Melville, adding that this is the first large-scale repatriation project involving the translation of intertitles back into English.

Not only does the EYE collection feature shorts, animated films, dramas, serials and westerns, there is also a cache of nonfiction films, including footage from a 1920 Chicago rodeo; 1923's "The Crystal Ascension," which chronicles an exploration of Mt. Hood; 1917's "The Dairy Industry and the Canning of Milk" and 1925's "Uncommon Clay," a survey of America's art pottery heritage.

"After World War I, many of the film companies in Europe had taken a big hit, and the U.S. government supported the film industry by helping to send over films overseas," said Melville. They sent short comedies and features, but they solicited big business to send over films about what they do."

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Twenty-six of the short films, thought to be the best surviving source material on these titles reported anywhere, have been shipped for preservation at Colorlab in Rockville, Md., under the guidance of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Library of Congress.

The Oregon Historical Society has joined the effort to restore "The Crystal Ascension." And just last week the NFPF received a $260,000 grant from the National Endowment of the Humanities to fund the preservation and Web presentation of the nonfiction films.

There are more titles that the NFPF wants to repatriate, including two feature films, 1924's "The Reckless Age," a comedy with Reginald Denny, and the 1922 melodrama "For the Defense," with ZaSu Pitts.

When the restoration work is done, the American archives will have custody of new digital scans, 35mm masters, prints and access copies. EYE will receive new prints and digital copies. And the NFPF plans to post copies of the film for streaming on their website.

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Ukraine is big deal, but not the biggest deal for the U.S.

WASHINGTON — In speeches and remarks last week in Europe, President Obama made it clear that he considers Russia's annexation of Crimea a very big deal. But he also defined what it's not: an overwhelming national security threat, such as the U.S.-Soviet rivalry in the Cold War, that would trump all other foreign policy priorities.

In appearances before European Union leaders, Obama called for a sustained effort to isolate Russia to discourage further encroachment on its neighbors, but emphasized that Russia is not the West's top geopolitical challenge.

The president's approach to the Ukraine crisis has sparked a debate among foreign policy experts, including current and former advisors, on how aggressively to counter Russia's resurgent ambitions.

One group, which includes Obama's former ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul, and his former Defense secretary, Robert M. Gates, urges a more confrontational approach. McFaul calls for the U.S. to end a "drift of disengagement" from world affairs and to "lead the free world in a new struggle." Gates wants to roll back last year's defense cuts.

At the other end of the spectrum is Anne-Marie Slaughter, the State Department's planning chief in Obama's first term. She warns that an overreaction could serve "military and defense interests too well" and that, in sharpening East-West tension, become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Obama, in his visit to Europe last week, showed that he's straddling the middle, at least for now.

Russia, he said, is a declining "regional power" whose armed seizure of Crimea exposes its weakness, as it has lost influence in Ukraine and other former Soviet states.

He called for a modest increase in U.S. military rotations into Eastern Europe but no interruption in his administration's plans to shrink defense spending.

Obama threatened to aim sanctions at whole sectors of the Russian economy, such as energy, banking or arms sales, a step that could inflict grave damage. But that would happen only if Russia seized territory in eastern Ukraine or took other steps to escalate the situation, he said.

The Ukraine crisis "worries them — it's keeping them awake at night," said Julianne Smith, a White House foreign policy advisor in Obama's first term. "But this is not going to be an all-consuming foreign policy priority."

Though Ukraine is on the "top 10 list" of priorities, along with Iran's nuclear program and China's territorial disputes with its neighbors, "there's a scale here," she said. "Compared to some other things on the list, this still isn't as threatening to core U.S. security interests."

Asked whether the Russian move would force an end to the administration's long-desired foreign policy "pivot to Asia," deputy national security advisor Ben Rhodes pointed out that Obama has scheduled two trips to East Asia this year and promised that they would not be canceled because of turmoil in Europe.

"We've got a significant agenda in Asia that we're going to continue to pursue that's not going to be impacted by what we're doing in Europe," Rhodes said.

Nevertheless, aware that his presidency will be judged on his handling of this crisis, Obama has sought to show that he intends to continue America's role as the leader of the U.S.-European security alliance. He continues to play the leading role in seeking a resolution, talking Friday with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who agreed that their top diplomats should meet. Secretary of State John F. Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov plan a session Sunday evening in Paris.

Yet he also gave heavy emphasis to how much of the onus is on Europe — to spend more to support the NATO alliance, to impose economic sanctions on Russia, and to play a central role in guiding and paying for the rebuilding of the bankrupt government of Ukraine.

"If we've got collective defense, everybody's got to chip in," Obama Wednesday said in Brussels.

Smith predicted that much of the new U.S. effort on Russia would be aimed at getting Europe to do more to combat the threat from Russia, rather than adding on to what the United States has already been doing.

But many experts in Washington are now calling for the administration to rethink its planned 2015 defense budget cuts of $500 billion in view of the possible need to strengthen U.S. forces in Europe, which have shrunk 85% since the Cold War's end in 1989.

Gates, Obama's former secretary of Defense, is urging the administration to restore the budget to the 2014 level. And R. Nicholas Burns, a former top diplomat in both Democratic and Republican administrations, citing in particular the dwindling U.S. Army presence in Europe, said, "We should completely redraw that budget."

But Obama's defense officials, under heavy pressure to reduce spending, say they won't rethink the numbers unless the situation in Ukraine becomes far more dire.

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Spanish journalists freed after six months in captivity in Syria

AMMAN, Jordan -- Two Spanish journalists taken hostage in Syria more than six months ago have been freed, their newspaper said.

Javier Espinoza, a staff writer at Spain's El Mundo daily newspaper, and Ricardo Garcia Vilanova, a photographer, were handed over to authorities in Turkey on Sunday after having been abducted last September.

The pair had been captured by the extremist splinter group the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, as they were leaving Syria after a two-week reporting trip, according to the El Mundo website. The paper did not divulge details of the release.

"I'm Javier Espinosa. Writer down this phone number and call me back now. We're fine. Both of us, Ricardo and me," Espinosa said in his first communication with El Mundo's newsroom in 194 days, according to the newspaper's website.

The kidnapping had occurred near the Tal Al-Abyadh checkpoint in the province of Raqaa, an ISIS stronghold. Espinosa, 49, and Vilanova, 42, were being escorted at the time by four fighters from the Free Syrian Army, who were to have provided protection.

The fighters were released 12 days later, but no demands were made in exchange for the release of the Spaniards, the paper reported.

Although journalists were initially welcomed by Syrians eager to highlight their struggle against the government, the emergence of extremist groups such as ISIS and the often violent jockeying for power among different factions brought to prominence the phenomenon of journalist kidnappings. Syria was also the deadliest country for journalists in 2012 and 2013, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

With their disappearance, the pair, both veterans of several conflicts who had made numerous trips into the ravaged northern region of Syria, joined 60 other foreign and Syrian correspondents who had been taken hostage during the three-year civil war between forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad and armed opposition rebels. The conflict has left an estimated 140,000 dead and millions more homeless.

Marc Marginedas, another Spanish journalist kidnapped at the same time as Espinosa and Vilanova, was released earlier this month. El Mundo's website hailed the freedom of all three.

"Some believe in luck, others in miracles," it said.

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Bulos is a special correspondent.

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Egypt schedules presidential election for late May

CAIRO — Egypt's election commission said Sunday that the first round of voting for a new president would be held May 26 and 27 and that any runoff would conclude within a month of that.

Originally, the polling was to have taken place by mid-April. But the odds-on favorite, Abdel Fattah Sisi, took his time declaring his candidacy. He finally did so last week.

Sisi, who stepped down as defense minister in order to run, led a coup against elected Islamist President Mohamed Morsi in July. He is expected to win easily, although recent polls have suggested that the cult of personality that sprang up after he toppled Morsi may be fading somewhat.

The former field marshal, who resigned his military commission when he declared his candidacy, has painted a gloomy picture of prospects in the coming months, warning that difficult economic times and a growing Islamist insurgency would cause continuing hardship for Egyptians.

Underscoring that, suspected militants in the Sinai peninsula attacked a military personnel carrier on Sunday, killing at least one soldier and injuring several policemen, state media reported.

Sisi's candidacy presents some awkwardness for the Obama administration, which declined to describe his removal of Morsi as a coup because that would have triggered an aid cutoff. The former military man's candidacy suggests that he might have engineered Morsi's ouster with his own ascent in mind.

The interim government that assumed power when Morsi was deposed has taken a strikingly authoritarian stance, outlawing most public protests, killing hundreds of demonstrators and jailing thousands of opponents. Most of those incarcerated are suspected members of the Muslim Brotherhood, Morsi's movement, but in recent months the authorities have also moved against secular opponents, including academics and journalists.

Three journalists working with the international broadcaster Al Jazeera English are due back in court this week. The trio, two of whom hold foreign passports, have been jailed since Dec. 29.

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laura.king@latimes.com

Twitter: @laurakingLAT

Hassan is a special correspondent.

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Tesla to install high-strength battery shields to reduce fire risk

Though Tesla Motors Inc. is carefully refusing to use the word "recall," it has announced plans to reinforce the undercarriage of about 16,000 cars with high-strength shields to reduce the risk of damage from a crash starting a fire.

Elon Musk, the electric car company's chief executive, outlined the retrofit Friday morning, at the same time the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration announced that it has signed off on the changes and was closing a probe into two fires that occurred in Tesla Model S sports sedans.

Both fires started after road debris penetrated the undercarriage battery packs that power the Tesla.

Although functionally the two announcements work as a recall, Tesla has fought regulators over the use of the word, not wanting to be linked to the giant recalls that have plagued traditional automakers such as Toyota Motor Corp. and General Motors Co.

[Updated, 9:18 a.m. PDT March 28: "This is the definition of an automotive recall," said Karl Brauer, an analyst at auto information company Kelley Blue Book. "It involves a change in vehicle design going forward, as well as a retrofit to existing cars that requires bringing the Model S to a Tesla service center."

Tesla contends that its action is not technically a recall because federal regulators did not find a "safety-related defect trend" and it is making the fixes voluntarily rather than being ordered by the NHTSA.]

Musk noted that the fires occurred under unusual circumstances. In one accident in Tennessee, a trailer hitch ball from another vehicle punched into the battery pack. The other case was in Washington and was more severe, a result of unidentified road debris penetrating the battery case.

"In both incidents, the struck objects penetrated the aluminum pan at the forward area of the battery, damaging the lithium ion cells of the high voltage battery," the NHTSA said in its report.

The information display in the cars told the drivers that battery performance had suddenly decreased and asked them to park, the agency said.

"In both cases, smoke appeared shortly after the vehicle stopped and a fire developed in the high voltage battery," the NHTSA said. "Thermal runaway occurred in the high voltage battery cells. The fires destroyed the vehicles but did not result in injuries."

Last November, Tesla updated the software on its cars to raise the ride height.

The Palo Alto automaker's testing demonstrated that fix would likely prevent accidents such as the trailer hitch ball penetrating the batter casing, the NHTSA said. But it wasn't clear if that change would reduce the risk of accidents such as the Washington incident, the safety agency said.

Earlier this month, the automaker started making its cars with what Musk called a "triple underbody shield."

He said Tesla will make the same changes, free of charge, to existing cars on request or as part of a normally scheduled service.

"We felt it was important to bring this risk down to virtually zero to give Model S owners complete peace of mind," Musk said.

Tesla will install a rounded, hollow aluminum bar designed to either deflect objects entirely or absorb the impact and force debris upward into a plastic aerodynamic casing or the front trunk liner forward of the battery pack. Such an impact would cause no significant structural damage and leave the car drivable, Musk said.

The automaker also will add a titanium plate to protect sensitive front underbody components from being damaged. Finally, it will install a third shield: a shallow-angle, solid aluminum extrusion to further absorb impact energy and allow the car to ramp up and go over an object that won't compress and is immovable.

"Tesla's revision of vehicle ride height and addition of increased underbody protection should reduce both the frequency of underbody strikes and the resultant fire risk," the NHTSA said.

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Debris spotted from aircraft could be from missing Malaysian plane

BEIJING – Aircraft flying off the coast of Australia on Friday reported their first sightings of debris that could have come from the long-missing Malaysia Airlines flight 370.

Although satellite imagery has captured possible debris, it was the first time in 10 days of air searches that anything of interest had been spotted and raised hopes that the often bumbling and misdirected multinational search might actually be honing in on its elusive target.

Earlier in the day, Australia acknowledged that the search teams appeared to have been looking in the wrong place and moved the search area 680 miles to the northeast.

"Five aircraft spotted multiple objects of various colors during Friday's search,'' the Australian Maritime Safety Authority said in a statement late Friday.

"Photographic imagery of the objects was captured and will be assessed overnight. The objects cannot be verified or discounted as being from MH370 until they are relocated and recovered by ships."

The agency said a New Zealand Air Force P-3 Orion had spotted a number of objects that were white and light-colored, while Australian planes had also seen "blue/grey rectangular objects" as well as some colorful floating objects in another area about 327 miles away.

A Chinese Maritime Administration patrol ship, Haixun 01, will attempt to retrieve the objects Saturday for closer inspection, the agency said.

The search location was changed after a new analysis of radar data from the South China Sea and Malacca Strait suggested the plane was moving faster than previously thought, and probably did not travel as far.

"It indicated that the aircraft was travelling faster than previously estimated, resulting in increased fuel usage and reducing the possible distance the aircraft travelled south into the Indian Ocean,'' the Australian agency said earlier Friday.

The new search area is about 1,250 miles west of Perth, Australia, roughly 300 miles closer to land, allowing planes to spend more time over water searching. Weather conditions and currents are also less rugged there.

"This is the normal business of search and rescue,'' said John Young, head of the maritime agency at a press conference on Friday in Canberra. "Refined analysis takes you to a different place. I don't call the original work a waste of time.''

Flight 370 disappeared on March 8 during a red-eye flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. The plane carried 239 passengers and crew. Investigators now believe the flight made virtually a 180-degree turn shortly after takeoff, heading southwest into the Indian Ocean. The pilots of the flights as well as passengers are under investigation in the still-unexplained rerouting of the plane.

Because of the three weeks that have elapsed, investigators believe the wreckage may have drifted over a wide swath of the South Indian Ocean.

"This is an extraordinarily difficult search, and an agonizing wait for family and friends of the passengers and crew," Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said Friday. "We owe it to them to follow every credible lead and to keep the public informed of significant new developments. That is what we are doing."

The Australians said that 10 aircraft and five ships participated in Friday's search.

The U.S. Navy said it was sending a second P8 Poseidon maritime surveillance aircraft to help in the mission. Other aircraft are provided by Australia, China, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea.

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barbara.demick@latimes.com

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'Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.' exclusive video spotlights Deathlok

Tuesday's episode of "Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." finds Agent Phil Coulson's team on the hunt for the Clairvoyant, their nefarious enemy of several episodes now, and Hero Complex readers get an exclusive sneak peek at the episode.

Titled "End of the Beginning," the episode reunites Clark Gregg's Coulson and his team with Agents John Garrett (Bill Paxton) and Antoine Triplett (B.J. Britt) as they attempt to track down and discover the identity of the mysterious Clairvoyant. But Deathlok (J. August Richards) threatens to stand in their way.

In the clip (watch it below), Garrett and Triplett are settling into what's supposed to be a safe house when Deathlok bursts in.

The episode, which airs Tuesday, was written by Paul Zbyszewski and directed by Bobby Roth. In addition to series regulars Gregg, Ming-Na Wen, Brett Dalton, Chloe Bennet, Iain De Caestecker and Elizabeth Henstridge, the episode also features guest stars Saffron Burrows as Victoria Hand, Titus Welliver as Agent Felix Blake, Maximiliano Hernandez as Agent Jasper Sitwell and Brad Dourif as Thomas Nash.

"End of the Beginning" comes days before the April 4 opening of "Captain America: The Winter Soldier." The show's producers have hinted repeatedly at a connection between the events of that movie and the subsequent episode, titled "Turn, Turn, Turn," which airs April 8. After all, Cap works with S.H.I.E.L.D., and several Marvel movie presences, including Samuel L. Jackson's Nick Fury and Jaimie Alexander's Asgardian Lady Sif, have made cameos in the TV series.

For more insight into the rest of the season, check out our recap of the show's presentation at PaleyFest last weekend.

– Noelene Clark and Blake Hennon | @LATHeroComplex

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Obama hopes to bridge gaps on visit to Saudi Arabia

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia -- President Obama jetted across the Mediterranean Sea on Friday on a diplomatic mission to try to bridge the gaps between the U.S. and its longtime ally, Saudi Arabia.

Obama landed in the capital, arriving from Rome where he capped off the European stretch of his week-long trip overseas. The president was greeted by Prince Khalid bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud, the governor of Riyadh, and a line of Saudi soldiers before boarding a helicopter bound for a desert camp, the setting for a meeting with the ailing King Abdullah and dinner with the royal family.

Since leaving Washington on Sunday, Obama's agenda on his trip abroad has largely been overtaken by the crisis of the moment: the dispute over Russia's annexation of Crimea from Ukraine. But his last stop is a reminder of the trouble elsewhere that has confounded Obama and his foreign policy team. Iran, Syria, Egypt and the Middle East peace process top the list of items for discussion.

On each topic, Obama's broad goal is to try to shore up a relationship that for decades had been a bedrock of U.S. policy in the region. But that relationship has shown signs of fracture as Saudi Arabia has drifted away from American influence and begun more openly pursuing its own path.

In Egypt, the Saudis have backed and financed a military-led government as it led a crackdown on the opposition Muslim Brotherhood, as well as journalists and political activists.

The U.S. will urge the Saudis to use their sway to try to get Cairo to cool it.

"Our point on Egypt is going to be that we have a shared interest in stability. The United States wants to have a strong relationship with Egypt, but that stability ultimately is going to be best served by Egypt following through on its commitment to transition to free and fair elections and democratic governance," deputy national security advisor Ben Rhodes said on Air Force One on the way to Riyadh.

Similarly, in Syria, the Saudis have broken with the U.S. in sending money and weapons to various opposition groups, including jihadists, in its attempt topple President Bashar Assad.

The Saudis have largely failed to persuade the U.S. to set aside worries about weapons falling into dangerous hands and ramp up its military assistance.

Obama comes with no new promises of assistance to announce on that front, Rhodes said. He argued that the two countries have improved their coordination on sending assistance, making sure that their contributions are complementary.

kathleen.hennessey@latimes.com

Twitter: @khennessey

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CinemaCon 2014: MediaMation also bringing '4-D' cinemas to Southern California

The market for "4-D" cinema is heating up in Southern California.

Torrance-based MediaMation Inc., known for its motion-effects technology used in theme parks such as Legoland, is venturing into the local exhibition business, with plans to open "4-D" theaters  in Oxnard and several other California locations.

MediaMation said the Oxnard theater, the Plaza Cinema 14, is set to open this summer and will be the first of several new X4D theaters that it will install for Santa Rosa Entertainment, which operates more than 100 digital screens in Northern and Southern California.

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These high-tech theaters will consist of 100 seats and will be powered by the company's patented technology that uses air pneumatics to control the motion of the seats synchronized to the action on the screen. In addition to moving seats, the theaters also use such effects as air, water blasts, leg and neck ticklers, wind, fog and scents to create a more realistic moviegoing experience.

As with 3-D, consumers will pay a surcharge for the experience, although MediaMation said it had not yet set ticket prices for the new venues.

The company, which already has "4-D" theaters in Mexico and Columbia, also said it plans to install similar theaters in Oman operated by Oman Arab Cinema Co.

"We are very excited about our first U.S.-based X4D cinema theater," Dan Jamele, chief technology officer of MediaMation, said in a statement.  "As a U.S.-based manufacturer, we wanted to find a partner whose theaters represented a very 'middle America' and younger demographic. We feel the Oxnard location is a perfect fit for us and the Santa Rosa group."

The announcement comes days after South Korean conglomerate CJ Group announced it would open the nation's first "4-D" theater at AEG's Regal L.A. Live multiplex. Canadian-based D-Box technologies also supplies motion seats at some local venues.

"X4D technology is a new form of traditional cinema entertainment that couples an extreme experience with value for our guests," said Neil Pearlmutter, vice president of Santa Rosa Entertainment group. "We're proud to be a leader in our industry and offer this new, cutting edge technology."

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Solid, unspectacular 'Divergent' may be what young-adult genre needs

When it comes to young-adult films properties, it's been a case of haves and have-nots. Billion-dollar juggernauts rise above the penny-eking whimperers, phenomena that take over the world match with one-and-done entries that fade faster than Syracuse in a postseason basketball tournament.

"Twilight" and "The Hunger Games" rode big book sales to hot openings: $70 million for "Twilight" at an earlier stage of the genre and $152 million for "Hunger Games" as the genre was arguably reaching a peak in 2012. "Hunger Games" topped $400 million in U.S. box office.

Conversely, "Beautiful Creatures," "Warm Bodies" and "The Mortal Instruments," among a bunch of others, were duds that couldn't even gross $70 million over their lifetimes.

Those numbers led some pundits to question the future of the YA genre and wonder how dependable of a category it was in the first place. The most enduring and reliable film genres — Western, horror — became that way by churning out for-the-base but still decent-sized hits, garnering ticket buyers even when a new movie didn't become the exceptional massive phenomenon.

This weekend saw the opening of "Divergent," the dystopian Shailene Woodley picture that has already committed to two sequels. And for perhaps the first time in the recent history of the YA category, we have something that has eluded it: a mid-range hit.

The numbers for "Divergent," the first adaptation of Veronica Roth's bestselling YA series, come in at $56 million. It's a figure that isn't mind-blowing but hardly disappointing — a solid if not spectacular opening on its way to what will likely be a solid if not spectacular total.

For comparison's sake, "Twilight" grossed $192 million and "Warm Bodies" took in $66 million. " Based on its opening weekend, "Divergent" should end up at around $135 million — more or less right in the middle. (It's too soon to say what the international totals will be.)

Why did "Divergent" work in the way that it did?  It's a bestselling book with a time-tested premise, following in "The Hunger Games" footsteps of unwavering young heroines in a dystopian world out to destroy them.

Why it didn't work may, interestingly, lie with the same reason. Its premise is a little too time-tested.  "It would have helped if we had never seen nor read any of these Chosen One allegories; 'Divergent' might have had a mark of specialness," wrote Grantland's Wesley Morris, saying that the film was "laying groundwork we've been over" and was "to 'The Hunger Games' as Mr. Pibb is to Dr Pepper — respectable, but deeply desperate."

All on point. But something becomes a true movie category instead of a bubble when it can occupy the middle ground. "Divergent" won't change the world, even its own dystopian one. But it does suggest that, like the characters the genre regularly churns out, YA has come of age.

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‘X-Men’: Days of Future Past’: New trailer for Bryan Singer’s mutant epic

The new trailer for "X-Men: Days of Future Past" is out, showcasing the epic scale of Bryan Singer's mutant saga that's set to arrive in theaters May 23.

A familiar sonorous voice-over opens the clip, pondering what events have led the mutants to the futuristic wasteland seen in the accompanying images. "So many dark battles waged over the years and yet, none of them like this. Are we destined to destroy each other? Or can we change who we are and unite? Is the future truly set?"

"Days of Future Past" picks up after Matthew Vaughn's 2011 prequel "X-Men: First Class," which chronicled the mutant superheroes' origins as young people in the 1960s, discovering and learning to manipulate their powers. The new film, adapted from one of the beloved comic book story lines conceived by Chris Claremont, stars actors from "First Class" and the original "X-Men" trilogy, which launched in 2000 with Singer's original "X-Men" and arguably ushered in the new golden age of comic book films.

Halle Berry as Storm in "X-Men: Days of Future Past." (Fox)

"Future Past's" expansive cast includes James McAvoy playing the younger Xavier, with Michael Fassbender and Ian McKellen playing Magneto. Also featured are Jennifer Lawrence as Mystique, Nicholas Hoult as Beast, Ellen Page as Kitty Pryde, Halle Berry as Storm and Evan Peters as Quicksilver.

For audiences unfamiliar with the comic story line, the trailer helps explain the movie's high-concept premise: to prevent a future in which robots called Sentinels wish to drive the mutants into extinction, Wolverine's consciousness must be projected back in time into the body of his younger self in order to unite friends-turned-adversaries Xavier and Magneto and prevent the events that will trigger the dystopia.

"Game of Thrones" star Peter Dinklage joins the ensemble as Bolivar Trask, the mastermind who initially creates the Sentinels.

Are you excited to see Bryan Singer return as a director to the franchise with "X-Men: Days of Future Past"? What do you think of the new trailer? Leave your thoughts in the comments section below.

– Gina McIntyre

Follow us on Twitter: @LATHeroComplex

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'The Simpsons': A lesson in art forgery, with Max von Sydow

"The Simpsons" on Fox took a trip into the art market on Sunday's new episode titled "The War of Art," which included a lesson in forgery delivered by actor Max von Sydow.

Sunday's episode echoed a number of real-life art stories, including the case of Wolfgang Beltracchi, the convicted art forger who was recently profiled on "60 Minutes," as well as the case of a Pierre-Auguste Renoir landscape painting that was purchased at a flea market for $7.

When Homer and Marge realize that the painting they purchased for $20 from the Van Houtens' yard sale is actually a valuable masterpiece  -- the artist is the fictional Johan Oldenvelt -- they conspire to keep the truth from their neighbors and to cash in on the painting, which could be worth $100,000.

But an auction at "Gavelby's" goes awry, forcing the Simpsons to authenticate the painting, which leads them to the island where Kirk Van Houten bought the work of art off the wall of a restaurant. There, they meet a career art forger (Von Sydow), who informs them that he created the Oldenvelt painting along with many others.

"Beauty is beauty, whether it hangs on the walls of an art gallery or on a freshman's wall at Cal State Fullerton," he tells the Simpsons.

The real-life Beltracchi case involved sophisticated art forgeries perpetrated over decades. The German art forger specialized in imitating the styles of contemporary artists including Max Ernst, Fernand Leger and Andre Derain. Beltracchi and his partner were arrested in 2010 and convicted and sentenced to jail the following year.

Since his release, Beltracchi has been interviewed by a number of journalists, including Bob Simon of "60 Minutes" on CBS. The art forger has also published books, including an autobiography.

"The Simpsons" episode also echoes a number of real-life flea-market art discoveries, including the case of the $7 Renoir. After the new owner attempted to sell it, the Baltimore Museum of Art claimed that the Renoir was stolen from its premises in 1951. 

In January, a court in Virginia decided in favor of the museum. The Renoir painting, titled "Paysage Bords de Seine," is on view at the museum. Reported estimates had put the painting's value as high as $100,000.

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Yemeni militants attack elite paratroopers, killing 20

SANA, Yemen -- Militants believed linked to Al Qaeda staged a deadly dawn strike Monday on a remote checkpoint in eastern Yemen, killing 20 elite paramilitary troops and wounding eight others in the latest blow to government forces at the hands of Islamist extremists.

The Interior Ministry confirmed the fatalities in the checkpoint raid outside the city of al-Raidah in restive Hadhramout province and said several senior security officials had been suspended in response. Witnesses and officials said that most of the slain special forces troops were asleep when the surprise attack took place and that the assailants escaped.

Although there was no immediate claim of responsibility, the Interior Ministry blamed a group known as Ansar al-Shrya'a, loosely affiliated with Al Qaeda in the Arabian peninsula, as the Yemen franchise is known. Officials and analysts said the strike bore the hallmarks of Al Qaeda, whose offshoots in Yemen are considered among the organization's most dangerous.

Impoverished Yemen, strategically located close to key oil-shipping routes, has fallen into increasing turmoil in the wake of the 2011 uprising that drove out its strongman president, Ali Abdullah Saleh. A concerted campaign of U.S. drone strikes aimed at militant figures has stirred popular anger, with outrage fueled by ever-mounting reports of civilian casualties alongside intended targets.

Monday's raid was a carefully planned and complex operation, involving attackers who arrived in four vehicles and were armed with both light and heavy weapons. The attackers initially killed two soldiers standing guard about 5:30 a.m., then swiftly broke into the checkpoint's barracks, catching the troops inside unawares. Five of the wounded were in critical condition, officials said.

As in many such strikes on military installations, the attackers' methods suggested familiarity with routines of the soldiers deployed there, perhaps from inside knowledge that had been passed on to the militants. Reinforcements and helicopters rushed to the scene, but the attackers had already gotten away, and choppers were used to ferry away the dead.

"The operation was a massacre-like," said analyst Saeed Obaid Jamhi, who studies Al Qaeda. He predicted that security personnel and installations could continue to come under attack to avenge perceived government acquiescence to the U.S. drone strikes. He also said jihadist ranks were being swelled by battle-hardened veterans of the war in Syria, some of them Yemeni and some from elsewhere in the region.

In 2012, Yemen's U.S.-backed military managed to push Al Qaeda-affiliated militants from key strongholds in the south, but the extremists have since rallied. Assassinations targeting security and intelligence figures have become commonplace, and another occurred Monday in the capital, Sana.

In a sign of public sentiment surrounding the drone strikes, which have been sharply criticized by human rights groups, hundreds of people last week turned out for the funeral of a boy who had suffered a mental breakdown after witnessing at close range the carnage left by a 2012 drone strike in Hadhramout's port city of Shiher.

Adding to the challenges facing the weak central government, sectarian clashes in northern Yemen -- one of several hot spots for infighting that plagues much of the country -- killed 12 people on Sunday in the city of Amran.

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Ali is a special correspondent. Times staff writer Laura King in Cairo contributed to this report.

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GWAR front man Dave Brockie, a.k.a. Oderus Urungus, found dead at 50

Dave Brockie, the founder and lead singer of darkly satirical heavy metal band GWAR, was found dead Sunday in his Richmond, Va., home.

A police spokeswoman said that foul play is not suspected and that an autopsy will be performed to determine the cause of death.

Brockie, who was 50, performed as the character Oderus Urungus in the group that used elaborate costumes to create stage personas of alien demon musicians. The band members often referred to themselves as the "Scumdogs of the Universe."

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"Dave was one of the funniest, smartest, most creative and energetic persons I've known," former GWAR bassist Mike Bishop told Richmond's Style Weekly publication. "He was brash sometimes, always crass, irreverent. He was hilarious in every way. But he was also deeply intelligent and interested in life, history, politics and art."

"His penchant for scatological humors belied a lucid wit," Bishop said. "He was a criminally underrated lyricist and hard rock vocalist, one of the best, ever. A great front man, a great painter, writer, he was also a hell of a bass guitarist. I loved him. He was capable of great empathy and had a real sense of justice."

The band formed in Richmond in 1984 and this year is marking its 30th anniversary.

In 2011, the group lost another band member, lead guitarist Cory Smoot, aka Flattus Maximus, who died at 34 of a heart attack caused by coronary heart disease.

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Drying up the delta: 19th century policies underlie today's crises

HAMILTON CITY, Calif. — A shallow inland sea spreads across more than 160 square miles, speckled with egrets poking for crayfish among jewel-green rice shoots.

The flooded fields could be mistaken for the rice paddies of Vietnam or southern China, but this is Northern California at the onset of severe drought.

The scene is a testament to the inequities of California's system of water rights, a hierarchy of haves as old as the state.

Thanks to seniority, powerful Central Valley irrigation districts that most Californians have never heard of are at the head of the line for vast amounts of water, even at the expense of the environment and the rest of the state.

The list of the water-rich includes the Glenn-Colusa, Oakdale, South San Joaquin and Turlock districts. The average amount of Sacramento River water that Glenn-Colusa growers annually pump, for example, is enough to supply Los Angeles and San Francisco for a year.

In 2013, when government water projects slashed allocations to many San Joaquin Valley growers and the urban Southland because of dry conditions, the district drew its usual supply.

And although Glenn-Colusa and other senior diverters in the Sacramento Valley face unprecedented cuts this year because of the continuing drought, they have been promised 40% of their normal deliveries. Most growers supplied by the Central Valley's big irrigation project will probably get nothing.

Senior rights holders have in fact dodged years of delivery cuts triggered by the ecological collapse of California's water hub, the sprawling delta of the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers that lies more than 100 miles downstream of Glenn-Colusa's giant pumps.

The delta's native fish are hovering on the brink of extinction. Its waters are tainted by farm and urban runoff and infested with invasive species. Most problematic, biologists say, is the chronic shortage of what defines the delta: fresh water.

Year in and year out, so much is diverted by farms and cities upstream in the Sacramento and San Joaquin river basins and pumped from the delta itself that the average volume of flows out to San Francisco Bay is about half what it once was.

But blame for the delta's downward spiral falls mostly on the pumping by the junior state and federal water projects that send supplies hundreds of miles south to San Joaquin Valley agribusiness and the urban Southland.

To protect endangered fish species, those southbound water shipments have been subject to escalating restrictions, triggering an endless cycle of lawsuits and proposals to stem the delta's decline. The most recent is a $25-billion state plan to restore habitat and replumb the delta with the construction of two huge water tunnels.

At the same time, the impact on the delta of the massive upstream diversions has essentially been ignored. Regulators don't even know the total quantity that irrigators and cities suck from the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers and their tributaries.

Diverters with the greatest seniority "just stick a pipe in the river and out it goes," said UC Berkeley geography professor emeritus Richard Walker, an expert on California agribusiness. "They've never been touched."

::

As president of the Glenn-Colusa Irrigation District, Don Bransford is guardian of some of the oldest — and most abundant — water rights in the Central Valley.

They underpin a way of life that in its daily rhythms hasn't changed much since Bransford's grandparents migrated to the Sacramento Valley from Missouri in the 1920s.

Old barns,19th century cemeteries and small towns dot a landscape that lives off the river curling through it, nourishing expansive fields of rice and regiments of gracefully arching walnut trees.

"Nothing is better for me than to wake up with the sun rising, and to look horizon to horizon and look at the beauty out here," said Bransford, 66, who planted his first rice crop more than three decades ago.

Glenn-Colusa's five-story pump station stands on an oxbow bend of the Sacramento River some 80 miles north of the capital, not far from where Will S. Green on Dec.18, 1883, nailed a notice to an oak tree on the west bank.

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Drying up the delta: 19th century policies underlie today's crises

HAMILTON CITY, Calif. — A shallow inland sea spreads across more than 160 square miles, speckled with egrets poking for crayfish among jewel-green rice shoots.

The flooded fields could be mistaken for the rice paddies of Vietnam or southern China, but this is Northern California at the onset of severe drought.

The scene is a testament to the inequities of California's system of water rights, a hierarchy of haves as old as the state.

Thanks to seniority, powerful Central Valley irrigation districts that most Californians have never heard of are at the head of the line for vast amounts of water, even at the expense of the environment and the rest of the state.

The list of the water-rich includes the Glenn-Colusa, Oakdale, South San Joaquin and Turlock districts. The average amount of Sacramento River water that Glenn-Colusa growers annually pump, for example, is enough to supply Los Angeles and San Francisco for a year.

In 2013, when government water projects slashed allocations to many San Joaquin Valley growers and the urban Southland because of dry conditions, the district drew its usual supply.

And although Glenn-Colusa and other senior diverters in the Sacramento Valley face unprecedented cuts this year because of the continuing drought, they have been promised 40% of their normal deliveries. Most growers supplied by the Central Valley's big irrigation project will probably get nothing.

Senior rights holders have in fact dodged years of delivery cuts triggered by the ecological collapse of California's water hub, the sprawling delta of the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers that lies more than 100 miles downstream of Glenn-Colusa's giant pumps.

The delta's native fish are hovering on the brink of extinction. Its waters are tainted by farm and urban runoff and infested with invasive species. Most problematic, biologists say, is the chronic shortage of what defines the delta: fresh water.

Year in and year out, so much is diverted by farms and cities upstream in the Sacramento and San Joaquin river basins and pumped from the delta itself that the average volume of flows out to San Francisco Bay is about half what it once was.

But blame for the delta's downward spiral falls mostly on the pumping by the junior state and federal water projects that send supplies hundreds of miles south to San Joaquin Valley agribusiness and the urban Southland.

To protect endangered fish species, those southbound water shipments have been subject to escalating restrictions, triggering an endless cycle of lawsuits and proposals to stem the delta's decline. The most recent is a $25-billion state plan to restore habitat and replumb the delta with the construction of two huge water tunnels.

At the same time, the impact on the delta of the massive upstream diversions has essentially been ignored. Regulators don't even know the total quantity that irrigators and cities suck from the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers and their tributaries.

Diverters with the greatest seniority "just stick a pipe in the river and out it goes," said UC Berkeley geography professor emeritus Richard Walker, an expert on California agribusiness. "They've never been touched."

::

As president of the Glenn-Colusa Irrigation District, Don Bransford is guardian of some of the oldest — and most abundant — water rights in the Central Valley.

They underpin a way of life that in its daily rhythms hasn't changed much since Bransford's grandparents migrated to the Sacramento Valley from Missouri in the 1920s.

Old barns,19th century cemeteries and small towns dot a landscape that lives off the river curling through it, nourishing expansive fields of rice and regiments of gracefully arching walnut trees.

"Nothing is better for me than to wake up with the sun rising, and to look horizon to horizon and look at the beauty out here," said Bransford, 66, who planted his first rice crop more than three decades ago.

Glenn-Colusa's five-story pump station stands on an oxbow bend of the Sacramento River some 80 miles north of the capital, not far from where Will S. Green on Dec.18, 1883, nailed a notice to an oak tree on the west bank.

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Artists Drew Struzan and Bob Peak: Hollywood's poster boys

Artists Drew Struzan and the late Bob Peak may not be household names, but their movie posters have graced the walls of museums and galleries as well as countless homes and college dorm rooms.

Struzan's more than 150 posters include ones for "Blade Runner," "E.T: The Extra-Terrestrial," the "Star Wars" franchise since the 1978 re-release poster, the four "Indiana Jones" films, the "Back to the Future" trilogy, "Hellboy," "Pan's Labyrinth," "The Shawshank Redemption" and the AMC series "The Walking Dead."

Over the years he's been a favorite of directors George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Frank Darabont and Guillermo del Toro.

PHOTOS: Movie artwork of Drew Struzan and Bob Peak

Peak, who died in 1992, created the movie posters for more than 100 films, including "My Fair Lady,"  "Funny Girl," the first five "Star Trek" movies, "Superman" and "Apocalypse Now."

A selection of their movie work as well as examples of their fine art are on exhibition at the Forest Lawn Museum at Forest Lawn-Glendale. "Drew & Bob: The Masters of Movie Art: The Illustrations of Fine Art of Drew Struzan and Bob Peak" continues free through May 26.

Joan Adan, the director of the museum, had previously met Struzan when she included some of his paintings of animals for an exhibition. She became acquainted with Peak's art through a conversation with his son, Tom Peak.

"I thought the combination of the two great masters would be really wonderful, and they have never exhibited before," Adan said.

Struzan was a struggling artist with a wife and young daughter when he began designing covers for albums. After a few years, he was approached by a movie studio about bringing his artistry to film posters. His first film poster was for the long-forgotten 1975 George Segal comedy "The Black Bird."

PHOTOS: Behind-the-scenes Classic Hollywood

He got his first break when he was hired by Lucas to do the re-release poster for the 1977 blockbuster "Star Wars."

"George [Lucas] wanted to be an illustrator," Struzan said. "He loves paintings. He wants to use illustrations because they reach the heart, whereas photographs just don't do it for him. Frank Darabont is a collector of my work, so whenever he has a movie he wants me to do the poster. I have worked with Steven Spielberg since 'E.T.' We are the same age [both were born in 1946], and we have gotten along the whole time. That's part of it, being at the right place at the right time."

Creating the posters is a collaborative effort, Struzan said. For Spielberg's "Hook," he read the script, visited the set and "worked with Steven on the whole idea."

In the case of Del Toro, the filmmaker came to Struzan's house to discuss ideas for "Hellboy."

"He was ready to tell me his concept," Struzan recalled. "I said, 'Let me show me you mine first.' So I did this little sketch. It took about 30 seconds and he goes, 'Perfect, do it.' All the work we did together was that one little meeting in my studio."

Before he began illustrating posters, Peak was "reinventing advertising in the '50s and '60s. His work was so colorful," according to his son.

Struzan and Universal monsters | Struzan, San Witwer and Syfy's 'Being HUman'

His innovations came to the attention of Hollywood. After designing a poster for a 1959 Russian film, Peak was hired to illustrate the poster for 1961 Oscar-winning best film "West Side Story.

Tom Peak recalled his father telling him about his visits to the set of 1964 Oscar-wining best picture winner "My Fair Lady" with Audrey Hepburn and Rex Harrison.

"Rex Harrison had a pretty big ego, and he was supposed to be the center of the movie [poster]," said Peak, who wrote "The Art of Bob Peak."

"My dad went back to the studio and ended up putting Audrey Hepburn in the middle and Rex Harrison was over her shoulder. He made sure though that he put a hat on him so at least his head was bigger than hers."

susan.king@latimes.com

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'Infamous: Second Son' review: Art is a weapon

Sony's new superhero fantasy "Infamous: Second Son" opens not with a bang, but with the hissing sound of a spray paint can. As a work of comic-book-inspired fiction, this PlayStation 4 video game aims high, asking right from the start if art can be weaponized.

If sulfur bombs and pink and blue lasers count as art, then the answer is yes.

Conflicted antihero Delsin Rowe, whom "Infamous" players will control, is a rabble-rousing Banksy wannabe who discovers his hands can conjure smoke and set the world ablaze. His stenciled graffiti art pokes fun at a police state set in a Seattle of the future.

Fear brought on by the emergence of humans with superpowers has crippled a nation, turning the Pacific Northwest into a society where segregation and surveillance have run amok. Rowe is thrust into the role of unlikely liberator.

If that setting sounds more than a little like the world inhabited by X-Men, that's because it is, and "Infamous: Second Son" likewise has allegorical ambitions — at least partly.

Developed by Sony-owned, Seattle-based Sucker Punch Productions, "Infamous: Second Son" is also designed to be a showcase title for the PlayStation 4, the system's first major exclusive work that will illustrate the new home console's graceful slickness.

Delsin Rowe and Fetch, who can turn neon light into a weapon in "Infamous: Second Son." (Sucker Punch Productions / Sony Computer Entertainment)

On that level, "Infamous: Second Son" is a success. Praise to the PlayStation's 4's handling, as the controller is outfitted with a small touchpad that allows heavy gates to be opened with a swipe of the finger rather than annoying button-mashing of yore. And then there's the look of the game. One of Delsin's superpowers permits him the ability to harness neon light, allowing him to zip through an impressively realized Seattle as a blast of fluorescent pink and blue.

It's hard not to get swept up in a lighthearted game that relies on phosphorescent neon laser-dust as a weapon. Other nice touches abound, whether it's ungrateful citizens complaining that Delsin should "go back to Portland" or simply the detail devoted to re-creating hipster breweries in Georgetown, which are still packed with selfie-taking drinkers, as this is a dystopian future with a narcissistic bent.

But it's the game's highly politicized undercurrent that serves as its most alluring characteristic. Unmanned drones haunt the skies, fingerprint checkpoints protect entry into Seattle, the government is tapping cellphones and Delsin watches the evening news manipulate his own exploits. "Infamous: Second Son," the third and most topical game in the "Infamous" series, hints at quite a bit yet ultimately backs away from most it, as the game ends up content largely to make allusions rather than stake out a point of view.

The mutants here are called "bio-terrorists," a word Delsin is careful to remind his thick-headed cop of a brother is a slur. When Seattle protesters holler that "bio-terrorism is un-American," Delsin attacks their hypocrisy with biblical quotes, and when his sibling tells him he'll find a cure for his magical abilities, the punk-looking rebel makes like Lady Gaga and hollers that he was "born this way."

FULL COVERAGE: Video games

The scenes come quick, all within the first hour or so of the game. While one will have to forgive some clunky Rosa Parks dialogue when Delsin is refused passage on a bus, they make for an exciting entryway, as "Infamous: Second Son" delivers a series of not-so-subtle hints on racism and gay rights. Add in the fact that Delsin hails from a Native American tribe, and "Infamous: Second Son" is overflowing in themes of oppression.

While the Native American back story serves as the revenge-inspired springboard for the action — when it's discovered the Delsin has powers, a corrupt government agency, the Department of Unified Protection (DUP), leaves the tribe for dead — the culture is left unexplored. Likewise, as Delsin meets other "conduits," the politically correct term for those with hidden powers, the subplots of "Infamous: Second Son" obscure its main one.

The supporting cast exists in part to gift Delsin new abilities, as the protagonist has the power to siphon other's traits. A neon-spraying young woman, Fetch, is on her own personal war on drugs, and Eugene, a video-game-obsessed homebody, is tormented by bullies. Weighty subjects both, but what impresses most is their special effects rather than their characterization.

Delsin Rowe is blessed with superpowers in "Infamous: Second Son." (Sucker Punch Productions / Sony Computer Entertainment)

That's likely due to the inherent design of the "Infamous" series, in which players can choose between one of two options at pivotal plot points. One path is good, the other is evil. You can, for instance, "redeem" Fetch, or "corrupt" her. Don't necessarily think of it as a moral decision, as Delsin's very desire to save his tribe would simply make it out of character for him to wreak havoc on the lives of those who are similarly shunned by society.

Instead, it's often a choice between doing right by the plot or making a decision based on what may look neater in the game's action scenes. The main story won't vary too greatly depending on one's choices, but one's special powers will. And as the game gets deeper, the talking points raised at the start stay just that. There's a sense that everything has to stay just vague enough to account for those who play it nice (blasting foes in the feet to stun them) versus those who play it maniacally (destroy it all, civilians included).

While humans are complex, the result is that Delsin is a contradiction. In a sleeveless jean jacket and beanie, he looks the part of the most pretty and generic of grunge-era rockers (think Gavin Rossdale, not the Seattle area's Kurt Cobain), and his dialogue veers from do-gooder excitement to sarcastic one-liners in seconds.

The argument is that players can take away what they want — latch onto whatever aspect best suits their own personalities. That may have worked in prior game generations, but the PlayStation 4 allows for a more vivid rendering of Seattle and its residents, and "Infamous: Second Son" appears eager to be the rare mainstream game that goes to bat with hot-button issues. As it veers more into old-fashioned action-game tactics (cue the machine-gunning turrets), some of the initial excitement present in the game's opening hours can't help but be lost.

Applaud "Infamous: Second Son" for offering so many complexities to play with, but in the end, the extremities presented to the main character make a personal connection difficult and an artistic statement hard to find. But heck if it isn't thrilling to watch Delsin paint Seattle neon pink.

– Todd Martens | @toddmartens | @LATHeroComplex

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China satellite image gives new focus to Malaysia jetliner search

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — China said Saturday that its satellite spotted a large object floating in the same south Indian Ocean area that has become a focal point in the search for the missing Malaysia Airlines plane.

A Chinese defense agency said on its website that satellite pictures taken around noon on Tuesday showed an object measuring 74 feet by 43 feet and located about 75 miles southwest of where Australia two days earlier captured images of two indistinct objects, one of them estimated at 79 feet long. Australian officials have said these could be related to the flight that disappeared March 8.

Since Australia reported its satellite sightings on Thursday, an increasingly intensifying effort has been undertaken to comb the waters about 1,500 miles off the coast of the western Australian city of Perth. But Saturday's hunt ended with aircraft equipment and human spotters finding little more than a wooden pallet and clumps of seaweed, said the Australian Maritime Safety Authority, which is coordinating the operation in that area.

In a statement, the maritime agency said it had plotted the position of the new Chinese satellite image and that it fell within Saturday's search area. The authority said it would take the new information into account in Sunday's search plans, which could be affected by bad weather.

The report of the Chinese image came amid concerns that any objects seen by satellite days ago may already have sunk, but it is still likely to give further impetus to the multinational search in the so-called southern corridor that is thought to be a likely path taken by Flight 370, though it had flown from Kuala Lumpur en route to Beijing. Malaysia's defense minister, Hishammuddin Hussein, said that China would be dispatching ships to the area of the object sightings.

China already has five ships in the southern corridor and is sending an additional two there, Hishammuddin said in a statement during a daily press briefing, which was cut short by the Chinese satellite news. He also said two Chinese aircraft capable of hauling heavy items were to arrive Saturday in Perth to join Australia, the United States and New Zealand in the search operations.

Two merchant ships and an Australian navy vessel also are in the search area, which encompasses some 13,900 square miles.

Japanese planes will arrive Sunday, and two Indian aircraft that landed in Malaysia on Friday night also will assist with the search in the southern area, Hishammuddin said. In addition, a British vessel equipped with underwater search sensors is en route, he said.

Despite the growing and sophisticated resources, the operation has proved daunting, not only because of the large search area but also the generally strong currents and rough seas in this remote section of the Indian Ocean. Hishammuddin said there was a cyclone warning for the southern corridor.

On Saturday, weather conditions and visibility were good as four Orion military aircraft and two long-range commercial planes scoured the waters, with 10 volunteer air observers helping to look for any objects that could be related to the missing jetliner.

Australia's maritime agency said observers in one of the civilian planes spotted a number of small objects, including a pallet, within a radius of about three miles, but an inspection later by a New Zealand Orion found only seaweed.

Despite the lack of success thus far, Malaysian officials have pledged to keep search and rescue operations going as long as there was hope.

"I know this roller-coaster has been incredibly hard for everyone, especially for the families," Hishammuddin said Saturday in the news briefing. Flight 370 took off with 239 passengers and crew on board. "We hope and pray this difficult search will be resolved, and bring to closure to those whose relatives were on board," he said.

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don.lee@latimes.com

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Ukraine signs deal with European Union

, firmly looking to the West for guidance and support even as Russia pulled the contested

eastward.

The pact revives an agreement that Brussels offered the government in Kiev several months ago but that the then-president of Ukraine jettisoned at the last minute in favor of closer ties with Moscow. The abrupt turnaround touched off months of protests, the toppling of the former president and Russia's incursion into Crimea.

The signing of the EU deal risks further angering Moscow, which sees a European-leaning Ukraine as a threat. But acting Ukraine Prime Minister Arseny Yatsenyuk brushed aside any concern and hailed the agreement.

"Frankly speaking, I don't care about Russia [in] signing this deal. I care about Ukraine, Ukrainians and our European future," Yatsenyuk said. "This deal meets an aspiration of millions of Ukrainians that want to be a part of the European Union."

EU membership is not actually on offer. But the agreement puts Ukraine squarely in the orbit of the EU, which pledged to sign it immediately as a riposte to Russia's takeover of Crimea. On Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin formally approved the peninsula's annexation, which the West refuses to recognize as legitimate.

An economic deal between Kiev and Brussels, which formed part of the original pact, is being deferred until after Ukrainian elections in May. In a further dig at Moscow, the EU said it would sign similar political agreements with Georgia and Moldova, which Russia sees as also properly in its sphere of influence.

Earlier Friday, the leaders of the 28 EU nations announced their intention to add a dozen more names to the list of mostly Russian and Crimean officials on whom they've imposed travel bans and asset freezes in response to the Crimean crisis. The leaders also instructed EU staff to come up with possible economic sanctions on Moscow if the situation deteriorates – namely, if Russian forces move into eastern Ukraine.

In an unexpected move, the EU said it was slapping a near-embargo on any goods from Crimea that did not transit through Ukraine first.

"We will only accept Crimean goods in the EU if they come from Ukraine and not Russia," British Prime Minister David Cameron said. "From now on, goods from Crimea have to come through Ukraine or they're going to get very hefty penalties and tariffs put on them."

Yatsenyuk said that "the best way to contain Russia is to impose real economic leverage over them," and criticized Moscow's attempt to "impose a new post-Cold War order and to revise the results of the Second World War."

But a pro-Kremlin political scientist in Moscow ridiculed the new accord between the EU and Ukraine – and called for an invasion of Ukraine to keep it from going into effect.

"The Kremlin should stop this farce and deploy Russian troops in Ukraine as soon as possible to create a situation for really free and democratic elections of its organs of power," said Sergei Markov, vice president of Russian Plekhanov University of Economics. "We will not allow Russians and Ukrainians in Ukraine to be turned into slaves."

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Times staff writer Sergei L. Loiko in Moscow contributed to this report.

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Stocks head for solid weekly gains

The stock market looked ready to finish off a turbulent week with solid gains, and the Standard & Poor's 500 index was on track to close Friday at an all-time high. 

KEEPING SCORE: The Standard & Poor's 500 rose 10 points, or 0.5 percent, to 1,882 as of 11: 30 a.m. Eastern time. If that gain holds through the close of trading, it would mark an all-time high for the index. The Dow Jones industrial average rose 119 points, or 0.7 percent, to 16,451. The Nasdaq composite slipped three points, or 0.1 percent, to 4,316. 

COMPARE, CONTRAST: It might sound surprising that the stock market is trading at an all-time high with all the uncertainty surrounding China's slowing growth and simmering tensions between Russia and the West. But these concerns also highlight the relative health of the U.S. economy and stock market, said Dan Veru, chief investment officer of Palisade Capital Management in Fort Lee, N.J. 

"In a perverse way, these geopolitical issues drive home the fact that the U.S. has been overlooked. The U.S. was the first major economy to go into recession, and it's the first major country coming out of recession right now." 

COMING BACK: A week ago, the S&P 500 index turned in a 1.9 percent weekly loss, its worst slump in nearly two months. This week looks entirely different, with the S&P 500 on track to gain 2.1 percent, as concerns have eased over China's slower economic growth. 

The only stumble came Wednesday, when the Federal Reserve said it could start raising short-term interest rates as soon as next year. Traders drove down prices for gold, government bonds and stocks. 

GOLDEN GATE'S TOUCH: News that Golden Gate Capital has acquired a stake in Ann Inc. shot the retailer's stock up $5.20, or 15 percent, to $42.43. The private equity firm disclosed the 9.5 percent stake in the parent company of Ann Taylor and LOFT late Thursday. 

SWOOSH: Nike fell after warning that a stronger U.S. dollar will dampen its results this quarter. Strong demand for its shoes and apparel ahead of the World Cup in June helped its beat expectations in the previous quarter, the company said late Thursday. Nike, one of the 30 stocks in the Dow, lost $2.50, or 3 percent, to $76.77. 

BOOTED: Symantec slumped $2.85, or 14 percent, to $18.08. The maker of security software abruptly fired its CEO late Thursday. It was the second time in less than two years that the company has dismissed its chief executive. 

OVERSEAS: European indexes closed slightly higher. Germany's DAX rose 0.2 percent and Britain's FTSE 100 rose 0.1 percent. Russia's stock market sank 1.3 percent. 

In Asia, Hong Kong's Hang Seng gained 1.2 percent. China's Shanghai Composite Index rose 2.7 percent. Japanese markets were closed for a holiday. 

TREASURYS AND COMMODITIES: Prices for U.S. government bonds were little changed. The yield on the 10-year government was 2.77 percent. The price of crude oil rose $1.15 to $100.05 a barrel. Gold gained $5.60 to $1,336.10 an ounce. 

 

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