Gunfire and deadly crash rattle the Las Vegas Strip

LAS VEGAS — A spectacular predawn crash on the Strip — triggered when bullets fired from a black Range Rover peppered a Maserati — hit this resort city right between the eyes. In the end, three people were dead and a major intersection under lockdown during a three-state manhunt for the shooters, leaving even casino veterans used to the extraordinary scratching their heads.

The mayhem was sparked, witnesses told police, by a quarrel early Thursday at a hotel valet stand.

The two vehicles left the Aria resort hotel and were heading north on Las Vegas Boulevard at 4:20 a.m., an hour when the casino marquees shine brightly but the gambling thoroughfare is largely empty. At Harmon Avenue, occupants inside the Range Rover opened fire on the Maserati, police said.

The silver-gray sports car, which was struck several times, sped into the intersection at Flamingo Road, ramming a Yellow cab. The taxi exploded, killing the driver and a passenger. Four other vehicles in the intersection were also involved in the crash and explosion, but officers offered no details.

"Omg Omg Omg that car just blew up!" one witness tweeted shortly after the crash, posting a photo of the wreckage. "God Bless their Souls! Omg!"

The driver of the Maserati died later at a hospital, police said. A passenger in the vehicle received minor injuries and was being interviewed by investigators. At least three others were also injured.

Police in Nevada, California, Arizona and Utah were on alert for the distinctive black Range Rover SUV, described as having dark-tinted windows, black rims and out-of-state paper dealer plates.

"We are going to pursue these individuals and prosecute them," Clark County Sheriff Doug Gillespie said at an afternoon news conference. "This act was totally unacceptable. It's not just tragic but unnecessary — the level of violence we see here in Las Vegas and across America."

Authorities had not publicly identified the dead. But a Las Vegas television station late Thursday identified the taxi driver as Michael Boldon, 62, who the station said had recently moved here from Michigan to care for his 93-year-old mother.

The victim's son, who drives a limousine, told Fox News 5 that he last talked with his father after 3 a.m., and later called his cellphone shortly after the crash to warn him to avoid the Strip. But there was no answer.

The station also identified the driver of the Maserati as Ken Cherry, a rap artist from Oakland who also is known as "Kenny Clutch." The station quoted family members identifying Cherry as the driver. An Internet video of a Cherry song called "Stay Schemin" shows two men in a vehicle on the Strip.

Police had more questions than answers.

"It began with a dispute at a nearby hotel and spilled onto the streets," said Capt. Chris Jones of the Las Vegas Police Robbery and Homicide Division.

The morning's events threw the Strip into disarray all day. The gambling boulevard's busiest and best-known intersection was cordoned off by yellow police tape until nightfall, keeping traffic and curious pedestrians away from the carnage. Even skywalks were blocked off.

While slot machines beeped and card games continued inside casinos around the accident scene — including the Bellagio, Caesars Palace and Paris Las Vegas — hotel bell captains were fielding questions from tourists who had awakened to news of the crash and the Strip shutdown. The alleys and side streets between nearby hotels were clogged with pedestrians who inched along on narrow sidewalks, past delivery doors, many making their own paths between the landscaped bushes and palm trees.

Even casino industry workers were thrown into turmoil. Hotel maids and dealers who finished their midnight shifts after dawn were left without bus service home. "I'm stranded," said Tiruselam Kefyalew, 25, a maid. "What a day to leave my cellphone at home."

Limousine drivers who normally prowl the city's gambling core improvised detours. Some said the police blockade would cost them $500 or more in lost business and tips.

"Most people understand, but you have your complainers," said Jim DeSanto, a limo driver who waited for fares outside Bally's casino. "Those people will complain, even when everything is perfect."

Well after noon, guests peered out nearby hotel windows and others leaned into the street to glimpse the crime scene.

"Hey, honey, it must have happened right here," one man told his wife as they left Caesars around noon. The tourist, who would only say that he had arrived from Tampa, Fla., the previous evening, had looked out his hotel window at 4:30 to see a vehicle in flames.

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Building of the Week: Atlas' Exoskeleton

Each week, Wired Design brings you a photo of one of our favorite buildings, showcasing boundary-pushing architecture and design involved in the unique structures that make the world's cityscapes interesting. Check back Fridays for the continuing series, and feel free to make recommendations in the comments, by Twitter, or by e-mail.

Like a big, square, beetle, Wageningen University's Atlas Building is primarily supported by its exoskeleton. The concrete latticework reduces the need for pillars on the inside, and the building contains a large, open atrium with footbridges between floors. Completed in 2007, Atlas was also built with convertible labs, so it can be reconfigured internally as its occupants' needs change. Designed by Rafael Vinolly Architects and OeverZaaijer Architecture and Urbanism, the building houses Wageningen's Water and Climate Center, Soil Group, and Environmental Sciences Group. as well as a massive, hanging globe of the Earth, fittingly.

Top photo: Courtesy of Rafael Vinoly Architects;

Bottom photo: Courtesy Flickr/Erik van Ravenstein

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Well: Savory Pie Recipes for Health

Pie is an indulgence often saved for holiday time. But this week Martha Rose Shulman shows us how to bake a pie and eat it too, without the guilt. She offers savory vegetable pies, showcased in whole grain crusts. She writes:

This week I slowed down and made pies: savory ones filled with vegetables … I used a number of different crusts for my winter pies. My favorite remains the whole wheat yeasted olive oil crust that I have used before in this column, but I also worked with a simple Mediterranean crust made with a mix of whole wheat flour, all-purpose flour and olive oil. And for those of you who are gluten-free, I made another foray into gluten-free pastry and produced one I liked a lot, which was a mix of buckwheat flour, millet flour and potato starch. It had a strong nutty flavor that worked well with a very savory, very vegan, tofu and mushroom “quiche.” They are all simple to mix together and easy to roll or press out. And if you don’t feel like dealing with a crust, just use Greek phyllo. The important things, after all, are the savory vegetables inside.

Here are recipes for a pie crust and four savory winter vegetable pies.

Whole Wheat Mediterranean Pie Crust: A simple Mediterranean crust made with a mix of whole wheat flour, all-purpose flour and olive oil.

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Mixed Greens Galette With Onions and Chickpeas: A tasty way to use bagged greens in a dish with Middle Eastern overtones.

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Goat Cheese, Chard and Herb Pie in a Phyllo Crust: A garlicky mix of greens and your choice of herbs inside a crispy phyllo crust.

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Tofu Mushroom ‘Quiche’: A vegan dish with a deep, rich flavor.

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Winter Tomato Quiche: Canned tomatoes can be used in the off season for a delicious dinner.

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Fed Officials Debate Bank’s Losses Once Economy Mends

The Federal Reserve’s plans for the eventual wind-down of its economic stimulus campaign could provoke a political reaction that will make it more difficult to control inflation, a current Fed official and a former Fed governor said Friday.

Peter Newcomb/Reuters

James Bullard, president of the St. Louis Fed, sees political fallout from coming losses.

Pat Greenhouse/The Boston Globe

Eric Rosengren, head of the Boston Fed, noted 400,000 jobs would be added this year.

Kevin Lamarque/Reuters

Jerome Powell, a Fed governor, said the bank would resist any pressure from Congress.

When the economy grows stronger, the Fed plans to sell some of its vast holdings of Treasury and mortgage-backed securities. The Fed also plans to pay banks to leave some money on deposit with it to limit the pace of new lending.

And that could prove an awkward combination. The Fed faces the possibility of large losses as it sells off securities, which could force the central bank to suspend annual payments to the Treasury Department for the first time since the 1930s, even as it would be increasing the amounts paid to the banking industry for its cash holdings at the Fed to control inflation.

“That sounds like a recipe for political problems,” said James Bullard, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. He described the predicament as one reason the Fed might consider limiting its plans for additional asset purchases.

But Eric S. Rosengren, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, said that concerns about potential losses needed to be weighed against the benefits of asset purchases. The Fed holds almost $3 trillion in Treasuries and mortgage bonds, and it is adding about $85 billion a month in an effort to cut unemployment.

Mr. Rosengren, a leading advocate of the purchases, said Boston Fed research showed asset purchases this year could help create about 400,000 new jobs.

“That’s what the Federal Reserve should really be caring about, what’s happening with the dual mandate with and without” the asset purchases, Mr. Rosengren said. “When I think about the costs, I have to weigh that against the benefits,” he said at the US Monetary Policy Forum in New York on Friday.

By law, the Fed sends most of its profits to the Treasury, and in recent years those profits have soared as the Fed has collected interest on its investments. Last year, the central bank contributed $89 billion to the public coffers — essentially refunding a significant portion of the federal government’s annual borrowing costs.

The purpose of the investment portfolio is to hold down borrowing costs for businesses and consumers. As the economy revives, the Fed has said it will begin selling some of those holdings. But it faces potential losses on those sales because interest rates would be rising. Security prices, which move inversely to rates, would be falling, and the government would be issuing new debt at the higher rates, making the low-yield bonds that the Fed holds less valuable.

Estimating the potential losses requires a wide range of assumptions on Fed policy, economic growth and interest rates. A Fed analysis published last month, which assumed that interest rates rose to 3.8 percent later this decade, estimated that the central bank might record losses of $40 billion and suspend contributions to the Treasury for four years beginning in 2017. If rates rose by another percentage point, however, the analysis estimated that losses would triple. An independent analysis published on Friday foresaw losses of around $20 billion and a suspension of payments for only three years.

The Fed can afford to lose money because it can simply print more. It would record a liability, and pay down the debt as profits rebounded.

But there are signs that the Fed’s political opponents would seize on any losses as evidence of economic malpractice. And such that criticism could come at a vulnerable moment: central banks are never popular when they are raising interest rates.

Representative Jim Jordan, an Ohio Republican, cited the potential losses in an open letter this week to the Fed chief, Ben S. Bernanke, requesting more information on what he called “the potentially devastating consequences from any unwind.”

Jerome H. Powell, a Fed governor, insisted Friday that the central bank would not allow its course to be influenced by such political pressure.

“We’re independent for a reason,” he said. “Congress has given us a job to do.”

Some supporters of current Fed policy also argue that an economic revival would inoculate the central bank against criticism, in part because the government’s coffers would be filling even without the Fed’s contributions.

But Frederic S. Mishkin, a Columbia economist and one of the authors of the independent analysis of the Fed’s potential losses, said that was wishful thinking.

“Politicians have very short memories,” said Professor Mishkin, a former Fed governor. “They’re going to focus very much on the fact that the Fed is no longer pulling its weight in terms of producing remittances for the federal government.”

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Coronado sailors clean up imperiled birds' nesting areas

CORONADO —On most days, a three-mile stretch of Silver Strand beach here is used for training Navy SEALs, sailors and Marines.

Thursday was not a usual day.

Dozens of sailors spent the morning in a slow, head-down walk along the restricted beach, searching for detritus that could harm the Western snowy plover and the California least tern, two imperiled bird populations that use the strand for nesting.

"This is our office," said sailor Daniel Torres, 26, from New Mexico, one of the Navy beachmasters — specialists in bringing vehicles and other heavy equipment ashore from amphibious assault ships. "We're here every day. It's good to clean up your office once in a while."

And clean they did: 14 cubic yards of junk, including plastic bags, foam cups, straws, small pieces of rope, Chemlights, cigarette packages, aerosol cans, chunks of wood and a few tires. Much of the stuff probably washed ashore from civilian boats, but the dummy bullets were definitely military.

"I love birds," said sailor Jake Herman, 20, of Chicago, opening his hand to display a half-dozen of the blanks that he had just scooped from the sand.

For the plover and the tern, nesting season stretches from March to September. Training continues, but officers in charge of the exercises are given maps indicating the location of tern nests. The nests of the plovers, the more imperiled of the populations, are marked by blue stakes, said Tiffany Shepherd, wildlife biologist for Naval Base Coronado.

Two years ago, 139 plover nests and 1,146 tern nests were found on military locations in Coronado. Records are kept of how many tern nests are destroyed by training — about 30 to 40 a year on the oceanfront, Shepherd said.

The military plans to greatly increase training on Silver Strand, giving the cleanup and mapping process added significance. The SEALs are boosting their numbers, and the Marines, with the war in Afghanistan winding down, are returning to their historic specialty: striking from the sea.

In an 818-page environmental impact report, written by the Navy and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the military pledged that the birds will not suffer because of the increased military use of the beach.

Environmental groups are taking a wait-and-see attitude.

"If the military does everything it has promised, the birds should not be negatively impacted," said Rebecca Schwartz, conservation program manager with the San Diego Audubon Society. "Audubon, and other groups, will be watching very closely."

Katherine Weiler of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency walked beside the sailors Thursday, taking notes.

"The birds target small pieces of brightly colored plastic," she said. "They think it's something to eat."

Also monitoring the cleanup was Malloy Watson, community engagement coordinator with San Diego Coastkeeper, which leads cleanup drives on public beaches.

This beach may be military, she noted, but the debris "is still public."

tony.perry@latimes.com

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Zendesk Security Breach Affects Twitter, Tumblr and Pinterest

Customer service software provider Zendesk announced a security breach that allowed attackers into its system, where they could access data from three customers this week. Wired learned those three clients were Twitter, Pinterest and Tumblr.

The San Francisco-based company announced the breach in a blog post published early Thursday night. Tumblr notified affected users in a tweet at 6:35 p.m. Pacific time; Twitter and Pinterest are expected to do so shortly. Zendesk declined to comment beyond its blog post, titled, appropriately, “We’ve been hacked.” The post reads in part:

We’ve become aware that a hacker accessed our system this week. As soon as we learned of the attack, we patched the vulnerability and closed the access that the hacker had. Our ongoing investigation indicates that the hacker had access to the support information that three of our customers store on our system. We believe that the hacker downloaded email addresses of users who contacted those three customers for support, as well as support email subject lines. We notified our affected customers immediately and are working with them to assist in their response.

Zendesk allows companies to outsource many of their customer service functions to it via software tools. It has more than 25,000 clients, according to its website.

Zendesk noted that a hacker downloaded email addresses of users who contacted those three customers for support, along with the email subject lines. Wired’s source claims some customers also may have had their phone numbers revealed, but no passwords, password hashes, or even encrypted passwords were revealed. Neither Twitter nor Pinterest are aware of any user accounts that were compromised by the attack.

The email sent by Tumblr states:

Important information regarding your security and privacy

For the last 2.5 years, we’ve used a popular service called Zendesk to store, organize, and answer emails to Tumblr Support. We’ve learned that a security breach at Zendesk has affected Tumblr and two other companies. We are sending this notification to all email addresses that we believe may have been affected by this breach.

This has potentially exposed records of subject lines and, in some cases, email addresses of messages sent to Tumblr Support. While much of this information is innocuous, please take some time today to consider the following:
The subject lines of your emails to Tumblr Support may have included the address of your blog which could potentially allow your blog to be unwillingly associated with your email address.
Any other information included in the subject lines of emails you’ve sent to Tumblr Support may be exposed. We recommend you review any correspondence you’ve addressed to support@tumblr.com, abuse@tumblr.com, dmca@tumblr.com,legal@tumblr.com, enquiries@tumblr.com, or lawenforcement@tumblr.com.
Tumblr will never ask you for your password by email. Emails are easy to fake, and you should be suspicious of unexpected emails you receive.
Your safety is our highest priority. We’re working with law enforcement and Zendesk to better understand this attack. Please monitor your email and Tumblr accounts for suspicious behavior, and notify us immediately if you have any concerns.

The email Pinterest is sending its users reads:

An important notice about security on Pinterest

We recently learned that the vendor we use to answer support requests
and other emails (Zendesk) experienced a security breach.

We’re sending you this email because we received or answered a message from you using Zendesk. Unfortunately your name, email address and subject line of your message were improperly accessed during their security breach. To help keep your account secure, please:

Don’t share your password. We will never send you an email asking for your password. If you get an email like this, please let us know right away.
Beware of suspicious emails. If you get any emails that look like they’re from Pinterest but don’t feel right, please let us know—especially if they include details about your support request.
Use a strong Pinterest password. Hackers can sometimes guess very short passwords with no letters or symbols. If your password is weak, you can create a new one.

We’re really sorry this happened, and we’ll keep working with law enforcement and our vendors to ensure your information is protected.

Twitter’s message to its affected users notes:

Twitter – along with a number of other companies – uses a customer support portal called Zendesk. Zendesk recently blogged about a significant security breach. In order to ensure those who may be impacted by this breach are notified as quickly as possible, we are sending this notification to all email addresses, including this one, that we believe could have been involved.

Zendesk’s breach did not result in the exposure of information such as Twitter account passwords. It may, however, have included contact information you provided when submitting a support request such as an email, phone number, or Twitter username. Further information about the breach can be found in their blog post.

We do not believe you need to take any action at this time but wanted to ensure that you were notified of this incident.

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Living With Cancer: Arrivals and Departures

After being nursed and handed over, the baby’s wails rise to a tremolo, but I am determined to give my exhausted daughter and son-in-law a respite on this wintry evening. Commiserating with the little guy’s discomfort — gas, indigestion, colic, ontological insecurity — I swaddle, burp, bink, then cradle him in my arms. I begin walking around the house, swinging and swaying while cooing in soothing cadences: “Yes, darling boy, another one bites the dust, another one bites the dust.”

I kid you not! How could such grim phrases spring from my lips into the newborn’s ears? Where did they come from?

I blame his mother and her best friend. They sang along as this song was played repeatedly at the skating rink to which I took them every other Saturday in their tweens. Why would an infatuated grandma croon a mordant lullaby, even if the adorable one happily can’t understand a single word? He’s still whimpering, twisting away from me, and understandably so.

Previously that day, I had called a woman in my cancer support group. I believe that she is dying. I do not know her very well. She has attended only two or three of our get-togethers where she described herself as a widow and a Christian.

On the phone, I did not want to violate the sanctity of her end time, but I did want her to know that she need not be alone, that I and other members of our group can “be there” for her. Her dying seems a rehearsal of my own. We have the same disease.

“How are you doing, Kim?” I asked.

“I’m tired. I sleep all the time,” she sighed, “and I can’t keep anything down.”

“Can you drink … water?” I asked.

“A little, but I tried a smoothie and it wouldn’t set right,” she said.

“I hope you are not in pain.”

“Oh no, but I’m sleeping all the time. And I can’t keep anything down.”

“Would you like a visit? Is there something I can do or bring?” I asked.

“Oh, I don’t think so, no thanks.”

“Well,” I paused before saying goodbye, “be well.”

Be well? I didn’t even add something like, “Be as well as you can be.” I was tongue-tied. This was the failure that troubles me tonight.

Why couldn’t I say that we will miss her, that I am sorry she is dying, that she has coped so well for so long, and that I hope she will now find peace? I could inform an infant in my arms of our inexorable mortality, but I could not speak or even intimate the “D” word to someone on her deathbed.

Although I have tried to communicate to my family how I feel about end-of-life care, can we always know what we will want? Perhaps at the end of my life I will not welcome visitors, either. For departing may require as much concentration as arriving. As I look down at the vulnerable bundle I am holding, I marvel that each and every one of us has managed to come in and will also have to manage to go out. The baby nestles, pursing his mouth around the pacifier. He gazes intently at my face with a sly gaze that drifts toward a lamp, turning speculative before lids lower in tremulous increments.

Slowing my jiggling to his faint sucking, I think that the philosopher Jacques Derrida’s meditation on death pertains to birth as well. Each of these events “names the very irreplaceability of absolute singularity.” Just as “no one can die in my place or in the place of the other,” no one can be born in this particular infant’s place. He embodies his irreplaceable and absolute singularity.

Perhaps we should gestate during endings, as we do during beginnings. Like hatchings, the dispatchings caused by cancer give people like Kim and me a final trimester, more or less, in which we can labor to forgive and be forgiven, to speak and hear vows of devotion from our intimates, to visit or not be visited by acquaintances.

Maybe we need a doula for dying, I reflect as melodious words surface, telling me what I have to do with the life left to be lived: “To love that well, which thou must leave ere long.”

“Oh little baby,” I then whisper: “Though I cannot tell who you will become and where I will be — you, dear heart, deliver me.”

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Susan Gubar is a distinguished emerita professor of English at Indiana University and the author of “Memoir of a Debulked Woman,” which explores her experience with ovarian cancer.

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Media Decoder: CNBC Buys ‘Nightly Business Report’ From Atalaya

“Nightly Business Report,” the pioneer public television series that has struggled in recent years, is getting a new, deep-pocketed commercial owner, the 24-hour business cable channel CNBC, a unit of Comcast’s NBCUniversal.

CNBC announced on Thursday that it would buy the rights to the show, available in 96 percent of television homes in the United States, from the investment firm Atalaya Capital Management for an undisclosed price. CNBC will begin producing “Nightly Business Report” from its New Jersey headquarters on March 4. The program now originates in Miami, with bureaus in New York and Washington.

The format will remain the same. Tyler Mathisen of CNBC will anchor with Susie Gharib, the current co-anchor, who is under contract through 2013. The co-anchor Tom Hudson and the remaining staff of 18 will leave.

In a telephone interview, Rick Schneider, president of the Miami public station WPBT, where the show is based, called the new owners “a good thing for the program and for the public television system.” Not only will the show survive, but “it will likely be enhanced,” he said. “ ‘N.B.R.’ has always lacked having a major news-gathering organization behind it.”

The purchase is the show’s third change of hands in less than three years. In August 2010, Mykalai Kontilai, an entrepreneur and former mixed martial arts manager, bought it from WPBT, which founded the show in 1979 before the era of 24-hour cable business news. Atalaya Capital Management, Mr. Kontilai’s backer, took over in November 2011, after few of Mr. Kontilai’s ambitious expansion plans were achieved.

In a telephone interview, Nikhil Deogun, CNBC’s senior vice president and editor in chief for business news, said the show’s audience “has very little duplication, as best we can tell” with the CNBC audience. He said it would provide additional opportunities for CNBC journalists.

PBS withdrew its financial support of “Nightly Business Report” in 2011 and stopped distributing it. American Public Television now distributes the show to 180 stations and will continue to do so.

Ratings have drifted lower and the show’s sole financial underwriter, Franklin Templeton Investments, withdrew in August, leading to layoffs and the closing of the Chicago bureau.

In a memorandum to the staff on Thursday, Mr. Schneider wrote, “It has been clear for months, even years, that the existing business model for ‘N.B.R.’ was unsustainable as national production underwriting dried up.”

Mr. Deogun said CNBC would seek new underwriters, adding that NBCUniversal “has a great sales team.”

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Interstate 5 reopens through the Grapevine

From Times Staff

February 20, 2013, 9:44 a.m.

The California Highway Patrol has reopened a stretch of Interstate 5 through the Grapevine that was closed earlier today because of ice.

The highway was opened to vehicles with escorts at about 9:15 a.m., said CHP Officer Ed Jacobs. The freeway was closed between Castaic and Grapevine Road about 6:35 a.m., Jacobs said.

Comments are filtered for language and registration is required. The Times makes no guarantee of comments' factual accuracy. Readers may report inappropriate comments by clicking the Report Abuse link next to a comment. Here are the full legal terms you agree to by using this comment form.

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Nvidia Answers Apple Spaceship With Triangle Temple

Chip-maker Nvidia has released artist renditions of its new Santa Clara, California, headquarters, set to open up in July 2015.

The company wants to build a pair of cool-looking 500,000-square-foot, triangular buildings on a lot that’s just across the street from Nvidia Building A. These massive triangles will then be covered by hundreds of other triangles.

The triangle, you see, is “the fundamental building block of computer graphics. So says a blog post from Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang. He’s talking about a process called rasterization, or the assembling of thousands of tiny triangles on a computer screen into recognizable shapes. That’s the kind of thing that Nvidia’s graphic processing units are designed to do, speeding up videogames and high-tech animation programs — and, lately, some supercomputing applications too.

So, it makes a lot more sense than Apple’s new spaceship headquarters.

Nvidia is going to break ground on triangle town in June and hopes to have the first of its buildings finished in July 2015. The company isn’t exactly sure when it will build phase two of the project.

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