Vintage piano given Valentine's Day deadline

HALF MOON BAY, Calif. — The piano was delivered to its bluff-top perch under cover of fog nearly two weeks ago. It is scheduled to leave this coastal enclave in a burst of flames on Sunday.

In between the fog and the fire, musician and sculptor Mauro Ffortissimo has been treating his neighbors to an illicit outdoor concert series grandly dubbed Sunset Piano. Chopin, Debussy, a tango or two. The performances are timed to end the moment the sun sinks below the horizon.

He plays to cyclists and dog walkers, babies in strollers, his landlady in a folding chair, the charmed, the perplexed. Every night the battered baby grand has sounded just a little bit worse as the elements erode the aging, al fresco instrument. Every night, the audience has grown.

Ffortissimo (not his real name, but you probably figured that out already) had hoped to serenade the residents of Half Moon Bay for a month. But it didn't take long for reality to intrude on the 50-year-old artist's well-laid plans.

Two days after Ffortissimo and friends rolled the piano out to a scenic spit of city land, a code enforcement officer sent a warning via email. Someone had complained.

No permit, no piano.

The 90-year-old Estey "appears to be an unauthorized encroachment onto public property," wrote Lamonte Mack. If you can't prove the installation is authorized, he told Ffortissimo, "please remove the piano — and platform — within 10 (ten) days."

That made the deadline Valentine's Day, an occasion to celebrate love, if not misplaced musical instruments.

The artist legally known as Mauro Dinucci has taken the bad news in stride. Asked about the end of the piano during Tuesday night's crowded concert, he crowed: "Woo, hoo! Valentine's Day! Bring chocolate!" and promised that "before we burn this baby, we give it one last boat ride."

Thursday will be the piano's last scheduled bluff-side concert along the Coastside Trail at the end of Kelly Avenue. Friday, Ffortissimo said, he has been invited to play the instrument at the Half Moon Bay Yacht Club.

Saturday he'll give a sunset performance on the water, a nod to the piano's earlier owners who once sent it from California to Panama and back by sea. Sunday he plans to set the piano ablaze in the flower-strewn field behind his studio.

"The idea of the burning," Ffortissimo said, "is a cremation, to liberate the piano from its physical form … I just hope it won't be a 'Spare the Air' day."

Not everyone is as happy as Ffortissimo about the piano's upcoming freedom.

Mayor Rick Kowalczyk, who has yet to hear the Sunset Piano himself, said he was trying to "see if I can't get something done in the short term to allow Mauro to stay." Kicking the Estey off of the bluff, he said, "feels a little bit like a child has a lemonade stand and the city shuts it down."

On Tuesday evening, more than 100 music lovers gathered round as the sun — and the temperature — dropped. Two women danced together on the grass. Wine was sipped and beer chugged. Children ate cold pizza. Shorebirds glided by.

Far away from Half Moon Bay, President Obama was preparing to give his State of the Union address. Christopher Dorner was thought to be shooting it out with police.

But here on a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean, Susan Swanson of Redwood City poured white wine from a blue metal flask as Ffortissimo played Albinoni's "Adagio in G Minor." She'd read about the piano performance in the local newspaper, she said, "and it's the kind of news I like to read — good news.

"This to me is everything," said the trying-to-retire office manager. "It's a perfect moment. Once in a lifetime maybe. It's so odd, isn't it?"

maria.laganga@latimes.com

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Epic to pull song with offending Lil Wayne lyric

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Epic Records is going to “great efforts” to take down a new Future remix leaked over the weekend with a vulgar Lil Wayne lyric that has offended the family of Emmett Till.

The New Orleans rapper made a sexual reference to the beating death of Till, a 14-year-old Chicago boy tortured and shot in Mississippi in 1955 for whistling at a white woman. Till’s family objected and the Rev. Jesse Jackson reached out to his management, The Blueprint Group, on the family’s behalf.

The label issued a statement Wednesday night apologizing for the release of the song.

“We regret the unauthorized remix version of Future’s ‘Karate Chop,’ which was leaked online and contained hurtful lyrics,” the statement said. “Out of respect for the legacy of Emmett Till and his family and the support of the Reverend Jesse L. Jackson, Sr. … we are going through great efforts to take down the unauthorized version.”

Epic will release an official version of the song that “will not include such references.”

Neither Jackson nor members of Till’s family could be reached late Wednesday. A publicist says Lil Wayne has had no comment so far.

He appears briefly on the song, alluding to the black teenager’s beating in a way too vulgar to print.

Till, a native of Chicago, was in Mississippi visiting family in 1955 when he was killed. He was beaten, had his eyes gouged out and was shot in the head before his assailants tied a cotton gin fan to his body with barbed wire and tossed his body into the Tallahatchie River. Two white men, including the woman’s husband, were acquitted of the killing by an all-white jury.

Till’s body was recovered and returned to Chicago where his mother, Mamie Till, insisted on having an open casket at his funeral. The pictures of his battered body helped push civil rights into the cultural conversation in the U.S.

Bob Dylan wrote a song about it: “The Death of Emmett Till.”

A Facebook posting on the Mamie Till Mobley Memorial Foundation page Wednesday night said Epic Records Chairman and CEO LA Reid had reached out to the family to personally apologize.

___

Follow AP Music Writer Chris Talbott: http://twitter.com/Chris_Talbott

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Use of Morning-After Pill Is Rising, Report Says

The use of morning-after pills by American women has more than doubled in recent years, driven largely by rising rates of use among women in their early 20s, according to new federal data released Thursday.

The finding is likely to add to the public debate over rules issued by the Obama administration under the new health care law that require most employers to provide free coverage of birth control, including morning-after pills, to female employees. Some religious institutions and some employers have objected to the requirement and filed lawsuits to block its enforcement.

Morning-after pills, which help prevent pregnancy after sex, were used by 11 percent of sexually active women from 2006 to 2010, the period of the study. That was up from just 4 percent in 2002. Nearly one in four women between the ages of 20 and 24 who had ever had sex have used the pill at some point, the data show.

Morning-after pills are particularly controversial among some conservative groups who contend they can cause abortions by interfering with the implantation of a fertilized egg that the groups regard as a person.

Medical experts say that portrayal is inaccurate, and that studies provide strong evidence that the most commonly used pills do not hinder implantation, but work by delaying or preventing ovulation so that an egg is never fertilized in the first place, or thicken cervical mucus so sperm have trouble moving.

This month, the Obama administration offered a proposal that could expand the number of groups that do not need to provide or pay for birth control coverage. But the proposal did not end the political fight over the issue, which legal experts say may end up in the Supreme Court.

The new data was released by the National Center for Health Statistics and based on interviews with more than 12,000 women from 2006 to 2010. Researchers asked sexually active women if they had ever used emergency contraception, “also known as Plan B, Preven or morning-after pills,” as well as about their use of other forms of birth control.

Over all, 99 percent of sexually active women ages 15 to 44 have used contraception at some point in their lives, or about 53 million women, up slightly from 2002. An earlier report found that 62 percent of all women of reproductive age were currently using some form of birth control.

The new report found that 98.6 percent of sexually active Catholic women had used contraception at some point, but the data did not show how many Catholic women currently use contraception.

Condom use has risen markedly. More than 93 percent of women said they had partners who had used condoms at some point, compared with 82 percent of women in 1995, a likely effect of strong public advocacy for condom use during the AIDS epidemic.

In contrast, women who had used intrauterine devices, or IUDs, at some point in their lives declined to about 8 percent from 10 percent in 1995. The use of birth control pills has remained steady since 1995 at 82 percent.

Eighty-nine percent of white women said they had used birth control pills at some point, compared with 67 percent of Hispanic women, 78 percent of black women and 57 percent of Asian women.

Education played a role in the type of contraception used. Forty percent of women without a high school diploma said they chose sterilization, while just 10 percent of women with a bachelor’s degree said they used that method. Those without a high school diploma were also far more likely to use three-month injectables, like Depo-Provera — 36 percent compared with 13 percent of women with a college degree.

About 12 percent of college graduates said they had used emergency contraception, while 7 percent of women with only a high school degree said they had used it.

Educated women were far more likely to have practiced periodic abstinence based on the menstrual cycle. About 28 percent of women with a master’s degree or higher had practiced this method, while just 13 percent of women without a high school diploma had, the report found.

White women, American-born Hispanic women and black women were most likely to practice withdrawal, with more than half of women in each group saying they have used that method. Just 44 percent of foreign-born Hispanics said they practiced withdrawal.

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Japanese Economy Contracts and Remains in Recession

TOKYO (AP) — Japan’s economy remained mired in recession late last year, shrinking 0.4 percent in annualized terms for the third straight quarter of contraction on feeble demand at home and overseas.

The government reported Thursday that growth for all of 2012 was 1.9 percent, after a 0.6 percent contraction in 2011 and a 4.7 percent increase in 2010 and a 5.5 percent contraction in 2009.

The figures were worse than expected, as many analysts had forecast the economy may have emerged from recession late last year as the Japanese yen weakened against other major currencies, giving a boost to Japanese export manufacturers.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who took office in late December, is championing aggressive spending and monetary stimulus to help get growth back on track. He has lobbied the central bank to set an inflation target of 2 percent, aimed at breaking out of Japan’s long bout of deflation, or falling prices, that he says are inhibiting corporate investment and growth.

But the Bank of Japan was not expected to announce any major new initiatives from a policy meeting on Thursday. The current central bank governor, Masaaki Shirakawa, is due to leave office on March 19, and Mr. Abe is expected to appoint as his successor an expert who favors his more activist approach to monetary policy.

Last year began on an upbeat note with annual growth in the first quarter at 6 percent as strong government spending on reconstruction from the March 2011 tsunami disaster helped spur demand. But the economy contracted in the second quarter and deteriorated further as frictions with China over a territorial dispute hurt exports to one of Japan’s largest overseas markets.

Despite the dismal data for last year, many in Japan expect at least a temporary bump to growth from higher government spending on public works and other programs. An index measuring consumer confidence, released this week, jumped to its highest level since 2007, the biggest increase in a single month.

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Charred human remains found in burned cabin

Charred human remains
have been found in the burned cabin where police believe fugitive ex-cop
Christopher Dorner was holed up after trading gunfire with law enforcement, authorities
said.

If the body is identified
to be Dorner’s, the standoff would end a weeklong manhunt for the ex-LAPD
officer and Navy reserve lieutenant, who is accused of going on a
revenge-fueled spree following his firing by the Los Angeles Police Department several
years ago. Four people have died allegedly at Dorner’s hands.

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

PHOTOS: Manhunt for ex-LAPD officer

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

Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck said he would not consider the manhunt
over until a body was identified as Dorner.

TIMELINE: Manhunt for ex-LAPD officer

"It is a bittersweet night," said Beck as he drove to the hospital
where the injured deputy was located. He is expected to survive, but is expected to need several surgeries. "This could have ended
much better, it could have ended worse. I feel for the family of the deputy who
lost his life."

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

INTERACTIVE MAP: Searching for suspected shooter

Dorner, 33, vowed to wage "unconventional and asymmetrical
warfare" against law enforcement officers and their families, the
manifesto said. "Self-preservation is no longer important to me. do not
fear death as I died long ago."

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

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

FULL COVERAGE: Sweeping manhunt for ex-cop

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

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

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

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

DOCUMENT: Read the manifesto

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

"You can leave and you can take your dog," the man said. He then
sped off in the Dodge extended-cab pickup — and quickly encountered two
Department of Fish and Wildlife trucks.

As the suspect zoomed past the officers, he rolled down his window and fired
about 15 to 20 rounds. One of the officers jumped out and shot a high-powered
rifle at the fleeing pickup. The suspect abandoned the vehicle and took off on
foot.

Police said he ended up at the Seven Oaks Mountain Cabins, a cluster of
wood-frame buildings about halfway between Big Bear Lake and Yucaipa. The
suspect exchanged gunfire with San Bernardino County sheriff's deputies as he
fled into a cabin that locals described as a single-story, multi-room
structure.

The suspect fired from the cabin, striking one deputy, law enforcement
sources said. Then he ducked out the back of the cabin, deployed a smoke bomb
and opened fire again, hitting a second deputy. Neither deputy was identified
by authorities. The suspect retreated back into the cabin.

The gun battle was captured on TV by KCAL-TV Channel 9 reporter Carter Evans, who said
he was about 200 feet from the cabin. As Evans described on air how deputies
were approaching the structure, he was interrupted by 10 seconds of gunfire.

Deputies drew their weapons and sprinted toward Evans. Someone yelled for
him to move — then about 20 more seconds of shooting erupted.

"Hey! Get … out of here, pal," someone shouted. Evans was
unharmed.

The gunfire gave way to a tense standoff. Mountain residents locked their
doors and hunkered down.

Holly Haas, 52, who lives about a mile from where the shootout unfolded,
said she heard helicopters buzzing on and off until about 3:30. One dipped so
close to her home, she said, "I could throw a rock and hit it."

Others watched the standoff unfold on television. At her home, Candy Martin
sat down to watch TV when, to her surprise, she spotted her rental cabin
on-screen — where the suspect was believed to be holed up.

She contacted police and told them that the furnished, 85-year-old cabin had
no cable, telephone or Internet service. No one had booked it for Monday.

"There should have been nobody," she recalled saying. "Nobody
in any way."

Within hours, authorities moved in on the cabin. The fire broke out, setting
off ammunition that had apparently been inside. On TV, viewers saw only the
orange flames and curls of black smoke.

LAPD Chief Beck said his officers have been providing
around-the-clock protection for more than 50 people thought to be Dorner's
targets since the manifesto was discovered.

Police say Dorner's first victims were the daughter of the retired LAPD
official who represented him at his disciplinary hearing and her fiance. Monica Quan and Keith Lawrence were
found shot to death Feb. 3 in their car in their condo complex's parking structure.

Days later, Dorner allegedly attempted to steal a boat in San Diego in a
failed bid to escape to Mexico. By Feb. 7, authorities said, he had fled to the
Inland Empire. In Corona, police said, he fired at an LAPD officer searching
for him at a gas station. About half an later, he allegedly opened fire on two
Riverside officers, killing Michael Crain, 34, and injuring his partner.

Early on in the manhunt, officers mistakenly fired on three people in the
Torrance area — two Latina women and a white man — while searching for Dorner,
who is 6 feet tall and 270 pounds.

After his truck was found in Big Bear, authorities swarmed the area, where
many cabins sit empty during the winter.

At the height of the search, more than 200 officers scoured the mountain,
while others sifted through more than 1,000 tips that poured in after officials
offered a $1-million reward.

Just as some officials began to speculate that the former cop had failed to
survive in the wilderness, Dorner apparently surfaced.

ALSO:

Dorner manhunt: Wounded deputy will need several surgeries

Dorner manhunt: Fish and Wildlife officers make the big break

Dorner manhunt: Maids stumbled on suspect, were tied up, then called 911

--- Andrew Blankstein, Joel Rubin and Ashley
Powers; with Phil Willon, Louis Sahagun, Adolfo
Flores, and Ruben Vives in San Bernardino County and Julie Cart, Matt Stevens, Kate Mather, Wesley Lowery, Samantha Schaefer, Frank Shyong and Rong-Gong Lin II

Photo: San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department public information officer Cindy Bachman updates reporters after a standoff and a shootout with
a man suspected to be former Los Angeles Police Department officer Christopher Dorner. Credit: Kevork Djansezian / Getty Images

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Beyonce hopes her documentary inspires Blue Ivy

NEW YORK (AP) — Beyonce is hoping that her ultra-revealing documentary will someday provide inspiration for Blue Ivy, the year-old daughter she and husband Jay-Z have.

“I hope that she will see all of the beautiful times (and) all the tough times that led up to her being here,” the singer said Tuesday night at the New York premiere of her upcoming HBO documentary, “Life is But a Dream.”

She added: “I’m hoping that … it can comfort her and inspire her in her life when she needs it.”

The autobiographical film takes a no-holds-barred look at the entertainer. It stems from personal conversations the 31-year old singer made using the video camera on her computer over the past couple of years. It also includes home movies of the Grammy-winning singer and her two sisters.

In the film, Beyonce candidly discusses personal matters like her miscarriage, reports of faking her pregnancy, and firing her father as her manager.

She claims the process of talking into a camera to get all her thoughts out was therapeutic.

“I really grew so much,” she says of the process. “This movie has really been my therapy. I’ve healed from so many wounds and I’ve been able to understand why some of the things I’ve been through, why I went through, so feel really proud, and hopefully I can inspire other people.”

The singer has been private about her life in the past. But she felt the time was right to let people know how she felt.

“I felt that after 16 years of being a public singer, people didn’t know who I was,” she admitted. But then she added: “I will always keep certain things to myself because it’s only natural.”

Oprah Winfrey made a surprise visit to the premiere, and posed with Beyonce on the red carpet. Before going into the Ziegfeld Theatre, Winfrey, known for her tough, results-driven interview style, was asked if this was the kind of story she would have done on Beyonce.

She said Beyonce did a “much better job” of telling her own story. “I wouldn’t have been in the bedroom and in the closet and in the car and on vacation,” she said.

Beyonce acted as the film’s executive producer and co-directed it with Ed Burke. He previously worked on some of her video projects. “Life is But a Dream” airs Saturday on HBO.

_____

Online:

http://www.hbo.com

___

John Carucci covers entertainment for The Associated Press. Follow him at — http://www.twitter.com/jcarucci_ap

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Well: Getting the Right Dose of Exercise

Phys Ed

Gretchen Reynolds on the science of fitness.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Media Decoder Blog: Comcast Buys Rest of NBC in Early Sale

8:53 p.m. | Updated Comcast gave NBCUniversal a $16.7 billion vote of confidence on Tuesday, agreeing to pay that sum to acquire General Electric’s remaining 49 percent stake in the entertainment company. The deal accelerated a sales process that was expected to take several more years.

Brian Roberts, chief executive of Comcast, said the acquisition, which will be completed by the end of March, underscored a commitment to NBCUniversal and its highly profitable cable channels, expanding theme parks and the resurgent NBC broadcast network.

“We always thought it was a strong possibility that we’d some day own 100 percent,” Mr. Roberts said in a telephone interview.

He added that the rapidly changing television business and the growing necessity of owning content as well as the delivery systems sped up the decision. “It’s been a very smooth couple of years, and the content continues to get more valuable with new revenue streams,” he said.

Comcast also said that NBCUniversal would buy the NBC studios and offices at 30 Rockefeller Center, as well as the CNBC headquarters in Englewood Cliffs, N.J. Those transactions will cost about $1.4 billion.

Mr. Roberts called the 30 Rockefeller Center offices “iconic” and said it would have been “expensive to replicate” studios elsewhere for the “Today” show, “Saturday Night Live,” “Late Night With Jimmy Fallon” and other programs produced there. “We’re proud to be associated with it,” Mr. Roberts said of the building.

With the office space comes naming rights for the building, according to a General Electric spokeswoman. So it is possible that one of New York’s most famous landmarks, with its giant red G.E. sign, could soon be displaying a Comcast sign instead.

When asked about a possible logo swap on the building, owned by Tishman Speyer, Mr. Roberts told CNBC, that is “not something we’re focused on talking about today.” Nevertheless, the sale was visible in a prominent way Tuesday night: the G.E. letters, which have adorned the top of 30 Rock for several decades, were not illuminated for an hour after sunset. But the lights flickered back on later in the evening.

Comcast, with a conservative, low-profile culture, had clashed with the G.E. approach, according to employees and executives in television. Comcast moved NBCUniversal’s executive offices from the 52nd floor to the 51st floor — less opulent space that features smaller executive offices and a cozy communal coffee room instead of General Electric’s lavish executive dining room.

Comcast took control of NBCUniversal in early 2011 by acquiring 51 percent of the media company from General Electric. The structure of the deal gave Comcast the option of buying out G.E. in a three-and-a-half to seven-year time frame. In part because of the clash in corporate cultures, television executives said, both sides were eager to accelerate the sale.

Price was also a factor. Mr. Roberts said he believed the stake would have cost more had Comcast waited. Also, he pointed to the company’s strong fourth-quarter earnings to be released late Tuesday afternoon, which put it in a strong position to complete the sale.

Comcast reported a near record-breaking year with $20 billion in operating cash flow in the fiscal year 2012. In the three months that ended Dec. 31, Comcast’s cash flow increased 7.3 percent to $5.3 billion. Revenue at NBCUniversal grew 4.8 percent to $6 billion.

“We’ve had two years to make the transition and to make the investments that we believe will continue to take off,” Mr. Roberts said.

The transactions with General Electric will be largely financed with $11.4 billion of cash on hand, $4 billion of subsidiary senior unsecured notes to be issued to G.E. and a $2 billion in borrowings.

Even with the investment in NBCUniversal, Comcast said it would increase its dividend by 20 percent to 78 cents a share and buy back $2 billion in stock in 2013.

When it acquired the 51 percent stake two years ago, Comcast committed to paying about $6.5 billion in cash and contributed all of its cable channels, including E! and some regional sports networks, to the newly established NBCUniversal joint venture. Those channels were valued at $7.25 billion.

The transaction made Comcast, the single biggest cable provider in the United States, one of the biggest owners of cable channels, too. NBCUniversal operates the NBC broadcast network, 10 local NBC stations, USA, Bravo, Syfy, E!, MSNBC, CNBC, the NBC Sports Network, Telemundo, Universal Pictures, Universal Studios, and a long list of other media brands.

Mr. Roberts and Michael J. Angelakis, vice chairman and chief financial officer for the Comcast Corporation, led the negotiations that began last year with Jeffrey R. Immelt, chief executive of General Electric, and Keith Sharon, the company’s chief financial officer. JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Centerview Partners and CBRE provided financial and strategic advice.

The sale ends a long relationship between General Electric and NBC that goes back before the founding days of television. In 1926, the Radio Corporation of America created the NBC network. General Electric owned R.C.A. until 1930. It regained control of R.C.A., including NBC, in 1986, in a deal worth $6.4 billion at the time.

In a slide show on the company’s “GE Reports” Web site titled “It’s a Wrap: GE, NBC Part Ways, Together They’ve Changed History,” G.E. said the deal with Comcast “caps a historic, centurylong journey for the two companies that gave birth to modern home entertainment.”

Mr. Immelt has said that NBCUniversal did not mesh with G.E.’s core industrial businesses. That became even more apparent when the company became a minority stakeholder with no control over how the business was run, according to a person briefed on G.E.’s thinking who could not discuss private conversations publicly.

“By adding significant new capital to our balanced capital allocation plan, we can accelerate our share buyback plans while investing in growth in our core businesses,” Mr. Immelt said in a statement. He added: “For nearly 30 years, NBC — and later NBCUniversal — has been a great business for G.E. and our investors.”

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Ex-Bell officials defend themselves as honorable public servants

Less than three years ago, they were handcuffed and taken away in a case alleged to be so extensive that the district attorney called it "corruption on steroids."

But on Monday, two of the six former Bell council members accused of misappropriating money from the small, mostly immigrant town took to the witness stand and defended themselves as honorable public servants who earned their near-$100,000 salaries by working long hours behind the scenes.

During her three days on the stand, Teresa Jacobo said she responded to constituents who called her cell and home phone at all hours. She put in time at the city's food bank, organized breast cancer awareness marches, sometimes paid for hotel rooms for the homeless and was a staunch advocate for education.

"I was working very hard to improve the lives of the citizens of Bell," she said. "I was bringing in programs and working with them to build leadership and good families, strong families."

Jacobo, 60, said she didn't question the appropriateness of her salary, which made her one of the highest-paid part-time council members in the state.

Former Councilman George Mirabal said he too worked a long, irregular schedule when it came to city affairs.

"I keep hearing time frames over and over again, but there's no clock when you're working on the council," he said Monday. "You're working on the circumstances that are facing you. If a family calls … you don't say, '4 o'clock, work's over.' "

Mirabal, 65, said he often reached out to low-income residents who didn't make it to council meetings, attended workshops to learn how to improve civic affairs and once even made a trip to a San Diego high school to research opening a similar tech charter school in Bell.

"Do you believe you gave everything you could to the citizens of Bell?" asked his attorney, Alex Kessel.

"I'd give more," Mirabal replied.

Both Mirabal and Jacobo testified that not only did they perceive their salaries to be reasonable, but they believed them to be lawful because they were drawn up by the city manager and voted on in open session with the city attorney present.

Mirabal, who once served as Bell's city clerk, even went so far as to say that he was still a firm supporter of the city charter that passed in 2005, viewing it as Bell's "constitution." In a taped interview with authorities, one of Mirabal's council colleagues — Victor Bello — said the city manager told him the charter cleared the way for higher council salaries.

Prosecutors have depicted the defendants as salary gluttons who put their city on a path toward bankruptcy. Mirabal and Jacobo, along with Bello, Luis Artiga, George Cole and Oscar Hernandez, are accused of drawing those paychecks from boards that seldom met and did little work. All face potential prison terms if convicted.

Prosecutors have cited the city's Solid Waste and Recycling Authority as a phantom committee, created only as a device for increasing the council's pay. But defense attorneys said the authority had a very real function, even in a city that contracted with an outside trash company.

Jacobo testified that she understood the introduction of that authority to be merely a legal process and that its purpose was to discuss how Bell might start its own city-run trash service.

A former contract manager for Consolidated Disposal Service testified that Bell officials had been unhappy with the response time to bulky item pickups, terminating their contract about 2005, but that it took about six years to finalize because of an agreement that automatically renewed every year.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Edward Miller questioned Mirabal about the day shortly after his 2010 arrest that he voluntarily told prosecutors that no work was done on authorities outside of meetings.

Mirabal said that if he had made such a statement, it was incorrect. He said he couldn't remember what was said back then and "might have heed and hawed."

"So it's easy to remember now?" Miller asked.

"Yes, actually."

"More than two years after charges have been filed, it's easier for you to remember now that you did work outside of the meetings for the Public Finance Authority?"

"Yes, sir."

Miller later asked Mirabal to explain a paragraph included on City Council agendas that began with the phrase, "City Council members are like you."

After some clarification of the question, Mirabal answered: "That everybody is equal and that if they look into themselves, they would see us."

corina.knoll@latimes.com

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Report Faults Priorities in Breast Cancer Research

Too little of the money the federal government spends on breast cancer research goes toward finding environmental causes of the disease and ways to prevent it, according to a new report from a group of scientists, government officials and patient advocates established by Congress to examine the research.

The report, “Breast Cancer and the Environment — Prioritizing Prevention,” published on Tuesday, focuses on environmental factors, which it defines broadly to include behaviors, like alcohol intake and exercise; exposures to chemicals like pesticides, industrial pollutants, consumer products and drugs; radiation; and social and socioeconomic factors.

The 270-page report notes that scientists have long known that genetic and environmental factors contribute individually and also interact with one another to affect breast cancer risk. Studies of women who have moved from Japan to the United States, for instance, show that their breast cancer risk increases to match that of American women. Their genetics have not changed, so something in the environment must be having an effect. But what? Not much is known about exactly what the environmental factors are or how they affect the breast.

“We know things like radiation might cause breast cancer, but we don’t know much that we can say specifically causes breast cancer in terms of chemicals,” said Michael Gould, a professor of oncology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and a co-chairman of the 23-member committee that prepared the report.

At the two federal agencies that spend the most on breast cancer, only about 10 percent of the research in recent years involved environment and prevention. From 2008 to 2010, the National Institutes of Health spent $357 million on environmental and prevention-related research in breast cancer, about 16 percent of all the financing for the disease. From 2006 to 2010, the Department of Defense spent $52.2 million on prevention-oriented research, about 8.6 percent of the money devoted to breast cancer. Those proportions were too low, the group said, though it declined to say what the level should be.

“We’re hedging on that on purpose,” Dr. Gould said. “It wasn’t the role of the committee to suggest how much.”

He added, “We’re saying: ‘We’re not getting the job done. We don’t have the money to get the job done.’ The government will have to figure out what we need.”

Jeanne Rizzo, another member of the committee and a member of the Breast Cancer Fund, an advocacy group, said there was an urgent need to study and regulate chemical exposures and inform the public about potential risks. “We’re extending life with breast cancer, making it a chronic disease, but we’re not preventing it,” she said.

“We have to look at early life exposures, in utero, childhood, puberty, pregnancy and lactation,” Ms. Rizzo said. “Those are the periods when you get set up for breast cancer. How does a pregnant woman protect her child? How do we create policy so that she doesn’t have to be a toxicologist when she goes shopping?”

Michele Forman, a co-chairwoman of the committee and an epidemiologist and professor of nutritional sciences at the University of Texas, Austin, said the group found that breast cancer research at various government agencies was not well coordinated and that it was difficult to determine whether there was duplication of efforts.

She said that it was essential to study how environmental exposures at different times of life affected breast-cancer risk, and that certain animals were good models for human breast cancer and should be used more.

The report is the result of the Breast Cancer and Environmental Research Act, which was passed in 2008 and required the secretary of health and human services to create a committee to study breast cancer research. A third of the members were scientists, a third were from government and a third were from advocacy groups. The advocates, Dr. Forman said, brought a sense of urgency to the group

“People who are not survivors need to have that urgency there,” she said.

Pointing to the vaccine now being offered to girls to prevent cervical cancer, Dr. Forman said, “I look forward to the day when we have an early preventive strategy for breast cancer.”

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